Chatroom

Chatroom
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Imogen Poots, Matthew Beard
Director: Hideo Nakata
Rating: 1 (out of 5)

Summary: When five teenagers meet online, innocent friendships are forged. However, one dysfunctional member, increasingly drawn to the darker side of the online world, singles out the most vulnerable in the group and seizes the chance to erase his own past...

Think back to those halcyon days of school. Where the classroom was a melting pot of sexual tension, adolescent angst and insecurities were manifest in biting irreverence. Now remember what happened when a new teacher came into the mix. Maybe that teacher "listened" to the same music as you, wore the same clothes, had a cool haircut and tried to be your friend, but it just didn't sit right and eventually you thought that teacher was a dick. Well, this film is that dick and there are major problems in its hideous and condescending attempt to be relevant to the teenagers it's obviously aiming for.

First up is the Skins lite edginess and cast, with "hot property" Aaron Johnson skulking around his parents plush Chelsea flat with all the intensity of a misanthropic Kevin the Teenager (how's that for a pop culture reference?), cutting himself in a vain attempt for attention and dishing out online psycho babble to his chatroom buddies which even the most naive acne ridden teen would struggle to fall for. The performances whether they be from the young cast or elder statesman are poor to the point of panto. Believe me, this is only a £100,000 production budget away from the emotional resonance and acting prowess of a Hollyoaks episode.

Secondly is the concept of a chatroom being at the cutting edge of the social networking zeitgeist. You might as well be using carrier pigeons as the communication of evil. Who still uses them? Is this a parallel world where a movie about the creation of Friends Reunited is Oscar bound? Things have moved on and Chatroom is stuck in the last millennium and trying to dress its self up in Topshop clothing to get into the cool hipster club.

Director Hideo Nakata, he of original J Horror classics such as Ringu and Dark Water, seems unable to add any tension to playwright Enda Walsh's laboured, cliche ridden script - which I only assume was butchered from the original stage source. Sure Nakata occasionally harks back to his horror roots with some streaming online suicides which are played for obvious shocks and there are some initially interesting attempts to gel the real world with the online which ultimately feel too statically theatrical for a film adaptation but with this, and his US remake of Ring 2, he's sullied a career that was well respected. In fact after sitting through 80 minutes of Chatroom I felt like one of Ringu's cursed video tape victims - and I even had a similar horrfically shocked expression on my face.

Control. Alt. Delete. This is dialup cinema for the digital broadband age.

Released 22nd December