Catfish Review (Spoilers)

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

      I have never done this before.  I have never written two blogs for the same movie, one that contains spoilers and one that doesn't.  I feel an obligation to people to give my thoughts on a movie without spoiling the experience for potential movie-goers.  I like to be surprised when I watch movies too.  However, this is one movie that is just too unique and polarizing to accurately sum up my opinions about the movie without spoiling them.  So I have decided to do both.  Knowing what actually happens in the movie will make it easier for me to explain my repulsive reactions to this movie.  If you have already seen this movie or don't mind being spoiled, please read this review.  If this ends up working and people like it, I may end up doing it more often.  So please let me know what you think!

     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.  He takes a picture that ends up in the New York Sun.  He receives a painting in the mail from an 8 year old Abby, who painted an exact portrait of his photograph.  They begin a correspondence as she continues to send him paintings of the photographs she takes.  He becomes friends with her and her mother Angela, and especially Abby's attractive older sister Megan.  He begins a "virtual romance with her" and in the process spends hundreds of hours talking, texting, and chatting online.  He even photo shops a picture of them together, which shows how much he cared about his girl.  His two friends decide to document his experiences with this family, which is when things start to get weird.

    Megan is a songwriter/singer, and send Nev some songs she wrote and recorded.  Upon investigation, he not only discovers that he songs are not songs that she wrote but in fact songs already released by another artist, but that it is someone else entirely singing the song.  Basically, she stole a song from online and claimed it was hers.  After she refuses to admit that she stole the songs, Nev begins to get suspicious.  More and more mysteries begin to pile up, and Nev wonders whether the girl is even real at all.  He and his friends set out to her house in Michigan to discover the truth. 

     Once there, they quickly discover that many of the things she told them are false, such as Abby's supposed "art studio" and Megan's "horse farm".  They go to her house to meet Angela, Abby and Megan's mom.  They soon learn that Megan does not exist, and that Angela fabricated the whole thing.  She used a random model's pictures for Megan, and even created several other profiles for Megan's friends and family.  Angela does in fact have an 8 year old daughter named Abby, but she doesn't paint at all.  Angela painted all of the paintings, and even pretended to be Megan on the phone when talking to Nev.  Angela lives with her husband, who has two very mentally challenged twins from a previous marriage.  She alternates her time between taking care of them, taking care of the house, and...talking to Nev.

         As a Facebook user and an active and possibly addicted user of the Internet, 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.  

    Angela and her family are real people, and my heart goes out for them.  I watch this movie and my heart breaks.  Angela is a lonely and depressed woman, who feels like she is trapped in her life.  In an effort to escape her pathetic experience, she has to pretend to be someone else to have a friendship.  Her obsession with her fake persona goes to extreme limits and shows how truly desperate this woman is.  I think the filmmakers forget this.  I feel that because of this movie, Angela's life is now ruined forever.  She will never again be able to lead an anonymous life, and will always be known as the "Creepy Facebook Woman."  And that makes me angry.

    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 Angela and her family, 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".

    This has movie made me think more then most movies I have seen recently.  Where is the line drawn between telling a story, and protecting the innocent?  How far will people do in order to feel accepted?  Is  Facebook a tool for social networking, or a weapon destined to sabotage relationships?  Could this incident have been avoided?  If Nev had stopped talking her to things when got weird, could this whole debacle have been avoided?  What was it that drove Angela to such extreme measures to be friends with Nev.  Is it possible to answer any of these questions, and more importantly, would I even like the answers?   I will hand this to the filmmakers; they have created a movie that has caused me to think, more so then most movies I see.

     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.  I understand the merits of this movie, and can even understand why people are drawn to it.  It is certainly provocative and makes one think.  However, I just can't get Angel's crying eyes out of my head.  I pray to God that this movie is fake.  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

“Privacy is dead, and social media hold the smoking gun.” – Pete Cashmore, Mashable CEO