Catfish

Catfish
Starring: Yaniv Schulman, Megan Faccio, Ariel Schulman
Director: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Rating: 4 (out of 5)

Summary: In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel's brother, Nev. They had no idea that their project would lead to the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives...

To reveal too much about Catfish would be to its detriment. It's a film where nothing is what it seems, where reality and fiction blend seamlessly and where your knowledge level is better off being at zilch. But if you do watch Catfish on a double bill with The Social Network, you'll see the actions and consequences of building the biggest social networking phenomenon of all time - because if the former was Facebook Frankenstein then the latter is certainly the monster unleashed and creating havoc.

Starting off as a documentary about an up and coming New York photographer and his online relationship with a painting child prodigy as she reproduces his photos in oils, the film takes a number of dark twists, turns and becomes so much more as the documented story unfolds. Equally creepy as it is depressingly sad, it's as if someone took the lyrics of Phil Oakley's seminal eighties classic "Together in Electric Dreams", made Radiohead do a cover and then managed to create a coherent narrative out of the resulting musical abortion.

Comparisons can, and have, been made with "Capturing the Friedmans", another documentary where the dark truth, revealed quite unwittingly, was more riveting that the initial purpose of the piece. With Catfish, the hand held camera also studies the mundane reality of modern everyday life such as constant keyboard tapping and phone conversations but manages to keep up when the truth becomes something out of the ordinary. Most importantly it's able to make it as riveting as any Hollywood drama and create a world where nothing and nobody is as they seem - whether that be online or face to face. Believe me this is a real achievement in the expanding faux documentary genre.

But despite it's occasional flourishes, Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman have been at pains to convince audiences that this is not a fake; perhaps keeping that idea of blurred reality going beyond it's release date. Personally, I'm undecided. There are moments where everything about the story seems so fantastically convenient and melodramatic - but still engaging - that the cynic in you feels duped. For instance the final 20 minutes at the home of Megan Faccio or the unnerving quality of the spooky desolate farmhouse. But most importantly none of the characters on screen feel directed or false at any point.

Perhaps it's as the old saying goes "there's nowt queer as folk", and the gallery of unusual and detached individuals that crop up in Catfish live up to that old adage in a heartbreakingly real and riveting way.

OUT 17th December