Nerve
- Jan 7, 2018
- 2 min read
Most of the movie reviews I have written are about movies that I wanted to watch. This time I wasn’t so lucky.
Nerve falls into the category of movies based off of young adult novels. Over the past few years there has been a notable rise in movies based on books of this type. Some, such as the Hunger Games, have been great. They introduced memorable characters and stories that inspire those who read the books or watch the movies to expand their imagination. Many of these stories use their fictional settings and characters to provide a narrative of how transitioning from youth to adulthood can be challenging yet possible. Characters who start off as unable and scared become heroes in a world they never thought they could be a part of. Nerve taps into many of these same themes and aims to teach a lesson through them but ends up lost in the technology it aims to demystify.
The story of Nerve focuses on high school students as they navigate a world where the game Nerve dominates their social interactions. Nerve requests that its users participate in dares which they must complete and post online. The early requests of the movie are simple yet embarrassing tasks that are mostly cliche for high school dramas. Students participate in these dares and become more popular while the challenges become more complicated and dangerous. The premise of this story sounds like it would fit right in among the best of Black Mirror episodes. There is tension created by how easily the main character falls into the trap of digital fame brought on by participating in Nerve. What starts as a decision to be an individual and different from who her peers think she is leads to her becoming controlled by the demands of Nerve participants.
Unfortunately the result of this story lacks the nuance of a Black Mirror episode. The dive into the idea of youth being controlled by social media is lost in the action and spectacle of the dares that the characters agree to complete. Characters fail to recognize that their identities are fading into instructions sent by their phones. Whenever the characters are sent a new request or find themselves doing something that they don’t want to, exciting music plays and the moment becomes romanticized. The message of loss becomes a joyful scene. When the characters reach the end of their tests, they fail to learn the importance of controlling one's own identity. This weakness the conclusion and further softens the lessons the movie could teach.
Nerve has a great core idea. Sadly it takes every opportunity it has to make itself different from its peers and uses them for extravagant moments. This movie thinks it’s more clever than it really is and lets down those who may look to it for advice on how to survive high school and a transition to adulthood.
5/10
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