Catfish Review (Spoiler-Free)

Director: Henry Joost, Alan Schulman

Starring: Nev Schulman, Henry Joost, and Alan Schulman

Gross Revenue: $1,232,000 (As of October 2, 2010)

Rotten Tomatoes Tomator meter: 76%

IMDB Rating: 6.9

       We live in a digital age.  When the world is smaller then ever before, and information can be transferred in an instant, and you can hold an entire processing system in one's hand.  In the age of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and social profiling, friendship is simultaneously benefited and hindered.  On one hand, it makes it easier for people to stay in contact with one another.  On the other hand, it allows people to remain isolated from contact, and to fake relationships.  These are the kind of issues the polarizing and provocative documentary Catfish raises.  A timely documentary for our times, that has left everybody talking about it.
    First of all, I doubt many of you have heard of this movie Catfish.  Before you continue, please watch this trailer.  Catfish Trailer  It is about this young New York photographer named Nev Schulman.  Through a series of circumstances, he starts a correspondence with an 8 year old girl named Abby and her mother, named Angela.  He soon starts talking to her older sister Megan, and they begin a "virtual romance".  His two friends decide to document his experiences with this family, and what follows is an often unsettling look at the obsessiveness of people and how social networking has changed the way people interact with one another.

    As a Facebook user, I felt a personal connection to this movie.  The filmmakers did a very good job of making the documentary timely and a product for our times.  However, I feel that while the movie tries to be an "expose" and an "investigative mystery movie", all I got saw was an exploitation to the first degree.  Without spoiling the movie, all I can say is that this this movie made me feel sick to my stomach.  I didn't appreciate the way the filmmakers dealt with their subject matter, which in this case happened to be REAL people.  That's the problem with reality T.V. nowadays: sometimes it is actually real.  The filmmakers claim this movie is 100% real, and if it is, it makes me sad for the state of humanity.

    On one hand, I feel admiration for filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, for supposedly "stumbling" upon this story, and turning it into an engrossing movie.  However, I also feel empathy for the subjects of this documentary, and I can't help but ask: why couldn't you just leave these people alone?  Why did you have to expose their story to the whole world?  It seems like people don't care about the feelings of other anymore, and are willing to do anything in order to make a buck or in service of a "story".

   Catfish was a very weird movie.  It is definitely polarizing, and has I have been wrestling with myself about what I should rate this movie.  On one hand, the movie was engrossing and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, wondering what new discovery I would make next.  On the other hand, I was left numb by the callousness of the situation, and was a left unnerved by the handling of the filmmakers to their subject matter.  Despite being an engrossing documentary featuring a timely subject, Catfish ultimately ends up being exploitative of its participants, and will leave the audience feeling uneasy about relationships and social networking.  2.5/5
"There are these people who are catfish in life.  They keep you on your toes."

*Note: Due tot he vagueness of this review, I have decided to write a review that will contain spoilers, as to better explain my thoughts on the matter.  Check it out here: