Game:

NERVE (2021)

Category:

Review

Duration: 14:05

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"Nerve" (2016) directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman is a film without a distinct genre in my opinion, but it's about a fictional dark web money making streaming service gone wrong. I can't tell if this film was ahead of it's time or exactly on time, as TikTok released in the same year as this film and it's clearly designed for that audience.

A timid and shy girl named Vee (Emma Roberts) is pressured into joining an illegal dark web streaming service called Nerve. Once signed up, players compete in viewer chosen dares that can range from somewhat innocent to outright illegal and dangerous. Vee meets a charismatic player named Ian (Dave Franco) who she starts to fall for, and the viewers push their relationship forwards by setting up dares for them to do together. Vee competes against one of her best friends, Sydney (Emily Meade), to get the most viewers of everyone on the platform and earn the most amount of money in the upcoming finals.

I'm honestly ashamed to admit I kind of liked Nerve. This is by no means a high quality film but the premise was executed fairly well and the partnership between the two leads does carry it somewhat. The first and most obvious thing I want to address is the complete failure in logistics here, I wanted to know who was giving them the money, how many dares were allowed to be offered per hour and why the dares offered were relatively timid and realistic considering how psychopathic and sadistic the viewers of this game turn out to be, how the secrecy of the app was maintained despite everyone and their best friend having access to it (the over the top evil viewers even choose to wear masks and conceal their identities, so even they know that something this big can't be kept a secret), how nobody was arrested for their actions and cops were completely useless (were they paid off, viewers themselves, or just incompetent?), why the app's most popular players were all located in the same city in close proximity to each other, and how exactly the secret "third role" of prisoner was going to be enforced, among other questions I had. The second biggest issue is the overwhelming amount of cringe in the dialogue, situations, and some of the supporting actors chosen here (Machine Gun Kelly, Kimiko Glenn & Miles Heizer).

I guess the film was somewhat tense and thrilling, but it lacked a true identity to me and there was no main genre here, making it a strange watch. It felt more like a second screen experience than a cinematic movie. Sydney's constant whining and jealousy over Vee's newfound popularity felt a bit odd to me since they are supposed to be best friends and she is the one who was coercing her to sign up in the first place, plus it would have been more believable if their viewership counts were vastly different, but they're both quite low all things considered and very similar to each other. If Nerve is all about the money, there is certainly more clever ways to cheat the system than what the characters are doing in the film.

Nerve is a bunch of adults pretending to be relatable hipsters, committing tons of felonies along the way. The reason I slightly like it is solely for the two leads and the premise being executed better than I anticipated it would have been, also I've seen other movies like this that were far worse, such as "Countdown" (2019) & "Choose or Die" (2022), so at least it's better than those.

#rainynights #movies #nerve