Catfish

source: Catfish

Ultimately unimpressive documentary, reminiscent of Maysles brothers direct cinema approach to film. Unlike Grey Gardens, and the Maysles sensitive treatment of the relatives of the Bouviers, the filmmakers failed to sensitively explore the psychological back story, which used photos of the past to humanize the character who'd taken them on the journey. They failed to represent the complexity and sadness of what led their trickster to connect. They simply dove into the other world in order to get a documentary about it. After the Q and A with the filmmakers, I was even more disappointed to see that they were standing behind their own lies, pretending as if they didn't know that they were filming a subversive story. They remained a bit too smirky and self-satisfied with the research they did on clearing up the lies they'd been told, which the audience had already been let in on by the way the documentary was treated. The brothers found it an extraordinary feat, and wre less devoted to the actual story they were telling. It seems to be marketed as a suspense film, and one would only hope the documentarians could be as clever as we'd want them to be in navigating us through a social commentary about the reality of connecting online. Although it seemed to move in a moving direction, it lacked the sweetness and genuine warmth of a Maysles documentary.

A documentary about a man (Nev) who starts a relationship with a woman he meets on face-book, and starts to wonder how truthful this person is. If you watch the trailer for this movie it is very misleading, not to say its a bad movie but it's not at all what I expected. This is a true life account that I'm sure has happened to many people. An 8 year old girl named Abby starts to send Nev paintings she has done after seeing a picture Nev took in a newspaper. Out of that Nev begins to talk with Angela (Abby's mom) and it carries over to Megan (Abby's sister). After quickly falling in love with Megan, Nev soon discovers Megan may not be who she says she is and plans a trip to visit her and find out the truth. Every once in a while a movie comes along that you just have to keep watching and your not sure why, and when it's over your not sure why it had this grip on you, this is one of those movies. This is not for everyone, being that it is a documentary and slow in parts, but it is very interesting and has an ending that sneaks up on you and affects you in a way you can't explain. At least it did to me. I give it a B-

This movie is over hyped as a thriller but I can honestly say that the only thrilling part was right before the reveal of the twist. The story it built up very well and the acting is pretty great. I laughed at many point of the film and it definitely hooked me into the story and I felt almost nervous for what was going to happen since all the trailers and promos talked about thrilling scenes. I was kind of disappointed at the fact that it was nothing close to actually being a thriller. The twist was very interesting, and close to the heart since I know it happens in real life. This is a more extreme version of internet communication gone wrong. I won't say what happened since it is an actual interesting movie, but don't expect the movie to be a thriller, or else you will leave the movie with your head down and wanting your money back.

Unfortunately, I was not aware that a movie which is made using a handy cam with no actual twist can be released in theaters. This movie starts with documentary style and video shot using handy-cam. We all friends were guessing in the whole movie that now some good twist will come, some real exciting will happen, but the movie is deadly boring and awful. This kind of movie, I believe any person can make at home with a normal script. Neither the script nor the direction is worth watching. I mean horror is no where, not even anything exciting. I believe there should be specific guidelines to consider and allowing any movie as movie. I really thought i wasted my 11 dollars in watching this movie. Pathetic!!!

It is my opinion that this awful crap-fest belongs on a dung-heap. What were the (ahem) filmmakers thinking? Honestly, really. First of all, this is not a thriller at all. It is not suspenseful. It started out interesting but lost me after the deceptive reveal. Not the storyline's deceptive reveal--the marketing dept.'s deceptive reveal. But by that time, it's too late. I mean, come on, disguising this movie as a thriller was the first sin. Secondly, once I was there, at the point where I knew it was too late, I was stuck watching a real bore of a documentary about real people with really boring lives. Okay, so the catfish story was pretty cool, but for crying out loud, I had to wait until the end of the movie to get the story? And...it was the only redeeming quality of the movie. Other than that, it was an otherwise absolute snorer. Finally, this movie should be up there with some of the other bad movies on this site, including: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Manos: The Hands of Fate, and Daniel - Der Zauberer. Although, this will probably never happen...not so long as there is vested interest in promoting this movie as a thriller and not as what it really is: a lame excuse for a documentary.

It's been a few months since I saw this film, and I've had some time to process it. As plenty of folks have noted, the trailer is absolutely misleading -- almost funny, since the entire PREMISE of the film is "dishonesty" (something the filmmakers express horror at). This is not a shocker, not a horror film, the "reveal" is not surprising at all. I have also noticed that nobody (here or in paid professional reviews) has noted that filmmakers Henry Joose and Ariel Schulman are most famous for making the "fake documentary" horror film, "Paranormal Activity" (and the subsequent big money sequels). The original was a scary little low budget ($11,000) indie film, that was picked up by Steven Spielberg and shot to fame and money for the two filmmakers. That was in 2007; the events of this documentary happened inbetween the first two Paranormal films. I guess time weighed heavy on their hands. It also explains why the three young adult men seem to have oodles of free time and no apparent form of gainful employment. As noted, it is hard to believe extremely smart, college-educated, tech-savvy young hipsters in Manhattan/Brooklyn were naive enough to believe this story (about a child prodigy painter in Michigan) and her hottie teen sister, without the slightest research or fact checking -- or that they had their cameras turned from the earliest part of the story.....at a point where there was no reason to believe some big "mystery" would ever be at the other end. For all they could have known early on, this would be nothing but filming brother Yaniv ("Nev") Schulman's internet hook-up with a teenager. (Ew.) So in fact, my gut feeling is that everything here is staged, and even re-created, to make the documentary -- not too shocking in a pair of guys who filmed a "cinema verite" horror story and made millions off it. The only real part is that I think at some point, they DID get a copy of a painting (done by the adult Angela, not her 9 year old daughter) in the mail. I think that got them interested enough to start communicating with the family, and after that, the idea of exploiting them for a film mocking Facebook relationships must have seemed irresistible. That just gives the whole thing a glaze of slick, urban contempt for "those awful low-class people in Mid-America" (who are so unlike cool, honest Brooklyn hipsters) and makes the film come across as exploitive and cruel. Angela never really scammed them; she wanted some attention and some innocent (non-physical) flirting with a handsome New Yorker half her age. There is no indication she asked them for money, even though her situation (caring for her husband's two profoundly retarded and handicapped teenage sons) appears to be just wretched. Clearly, Angela has some serious mental problems as well, that they also exploited. Flirting is one thing; flirting in the identity of your OWN teenage (estranged) daughter online is deeply troubling, even incestuous. I also agree with some other posters that the final speech, given by Angela's husband, is both scripted and fake. He must be the most tolerant man in Michigan, to allow 3 creepy strangers into his home, hear about their association with his wife, expose his handicapped sons in a very unflattering way and then confess all this stuff about his wife. Why isn't he furious? Why doesn't he throw them off his property? The storyline of the homely, unattractive person (almost always a woman, though there is always Cyrano de Bergerac for the fellows) who masquerades in secret, to able to flirt with a handsome/beautiful and unobtainable partner, is a very old one and very popular in films and novels. Nothing new here, except the allusions to the internet and that Facebook lets you lie to people (yawwwn....). Like we didn't know that.

I recently saw Catfish, Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. I wish I could say that this "reality thriller" or as noted by most a "mockumentary", was worth the free ticket I used. But the whining of Yaniv Schulman at his director for "pushing" him through the film was anything but dramatized. Of course the initial plot was very intriguing, a guy starts to fall for a woman he met online. He talks to her, and her family, and even buys paintings from the 9 year old sister. Going into the film thinking it was a thriller like most things I had read beforehand, I was holding high expectations that were soon shot down. But unfortunately all I could think of toward then end was man I hope some huge Hillbilly comes out of the barn later in the movie with a banjo and someone dies. The "actors" in this movie, as I try to portray this as a documentary, were anything but real life. The emotions of everyone except for the mother , Angela, were dull and put on. I do give it to Angela for having both the creepiness and sadness to make you have a different outlook of her. But I don't have much to say of Yaniv who throughout the movie was trying to portray, very unbelievably at that, a heterosexual man. There was constant reading which made him hard to believe he was in a documentary. This movie isn't even worth wasting a free code for one of those DVD boxes, let alone seven bucks at your local theater. Since there really wasn't a climax to the movie since you go in knowing that the woman he fell for was fake, and there's really no resolution to the film I cant even recommend this film to high-schoolers looking for a place to make-out, for fear of death by boredom.

I can't believe that I'm not allowed to request a refund or sue the producers of this movie for the entirely misleading, and at some points, outright lying trailer! If you have seen the trailer, you would expect a thriller movie with the real story happening at some point after they find the empty farmhouse. The trailer states that: "The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won't be able to shake for days". Sure, being surprised by the lameness of the final 40 minutes, and then angry about this kind of tricks could be described as an emotional roller-coaster. "A bizarre and completely unpredictable mystery" Unpredictable because the trailer is deliberately misleading. "A shattering conclusion" Who was shattered by that conclusion? Can you imagine a more anti- climactic conclusion? And when you find out what the movie is actually about? Sure, some people may enjoy exploring the "unknown variables in internet relationships", but are those the same people that would go to see a thriller movie, based on the trailer? Maybe we should cut and copy together all of the love scenes from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, and then make a trailer portraying it as a romantic comedy!!! Seriously, they might as well have put a picture of themselves at the theater exit, laughing and rolling in piles of money.

Remember the edge-of-your-seat preview in which CATFISH gives you a taste of the suspenseful meeting of a random Facebook friend in person? The text appears on screen: THE LAST 40 MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE WILL BLOW YOUR MIND. Intrigued by the preview scene of the dark rural Michigan town, one naturally would assume the last 40 minutes of this movie would be a climactic mystery of disturbing horror and/or suspense. With the authentic camcorder cinematography and relatable cast of twenty-something-years-old New York guys who share the common human vice of an over-curious mind, one might also assume the film would be the long-anticipated, non-supernatural version of The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. Unfortunately, the only participants in this film who deserve a pat-on-the-back would be the trailer editors. Like most people, most of your excitement stemmed from the two-minute masterpiece of a preview or maybe the ambiguous two-sentence synopsis dangled in front of your noses. If you took the bait, I'm sorry. Truly, I feel your pain. Sitting through the second half of this movie is a bit like waiting for the bus: you somewhat feel the urge to pass the time by inserting your iPod ear-buds or asking the bum next to you for a swig of whatever he has in his brown bag. I suppose the only difference in this case would be that the bus never comes, no bums can afford movie theater prices anymore, and you just paid 10+ dollars. Without giving the ending away (because I do feel a sense of enjoyment when other people share my painful experiences, similar to if I trip over a crack in the sidewalk, it is quite funny to watch the unsuspecting walkers behind me do the same), it would be apt to say that this movie could have been a two-hour nightly news investigation. Before the credits began to role, I somewhat expected Ann Curry to appear on the screen stating, "This has been Dateline NBC, I'm Ann Curry," in her frighteningly dramatic, deep voice. And it would have been a damn good Dateline. Despite the sheer disappointment this movie will leave you drenched with, the first 40 minutes of the movie deserve an A+. The characters are easy to relate to, the story unfolds at a decent rate (in the beginning), and the suspense is subtle yet recognizable. As the film progresses, the development of the characters is spot-on and the mystery begins to unfold. Then, much to the horror/suspense-goers disappointment, the story hits a brick wall. Here, you might just want to walk out of the theater because the entertainment aspect of the film has ended. Overall, even though I admire the creators of CATFISH for their ability to outline the problems of technology and social networks through an intriguing story, they should have just sold it to Ann Curry. Whether you are Catfish or Cod, do not take this bait.