Film Review: Chatroom

(movie poster courtesy of digital spy)

If some of you have tumblr, you have more than likely seen these gifs pop up on your dashboard every so often but don't know what they're from. Well they're from this film. 

(gifs courtesy of depressed-daydreamerr, jimestmort, another-clone)

Chatroom follows five British teenagers:

• William (Aaron Johnson), a depressed teen, recovering from self-harm
• Jim (Michael Beard), also a depressed teenager
• Eva (Imogen Poots), a model who's having an identity crisis
• Emily (Hannah Murray), every parents dream child but longs for more love and attention from her parents
• Mo (Daniel Kaluuya), ashamed that he may be a pedophile because he fancies his best friend's eleven-year old sister

They all meet on an online chatroom (duh), the teens keep in contact through online messaging and text but the film has them shown in a "hotel-like room", for a metaphorical sense. Throughout the film, each of their individual lives is shown coinciding with their online chats. Which will probably confuse you as you're watching, but you soon get the hang of deciphering which is reality and which are the online conversations. 

As the film progresses, you start to see the creator of the "Chelsea Teens!" chatroom, William, become more menacing, deceiving and just plain psychotic. 

William manipulates each of the teens, which in their minds, think its going to help them. He teams up with Eva who helps convince Emily into doing mildly violent things to bring her closer to her parents. He encourages Mo to tell his best friend that he is attracted to his sister, potentially ruins the career of one of Eva's co-workers and convinces Jim to stop taking anti-depressants. 

William has another chatroom (the safe room) that convinces individuals to take their own life and gleefully watches on as each victim records their suicide. Jim (the one in the gifs above and directly below) is William's next target. As you watch William fill Jim's head with suicidal thoughts and mentally scarring statements, the film gets more and more intense. 

(gifs courtesy of monsterdemon777, depressed-daydreamerr, jimestmort)

You can't help but sit on the edge of your seat the entire duration, this film is utterly thrilling. Aaron Johnson's portrayal of William is absolutely amazing and I personally think its Aaron's best work. Michael Beard as Jim is just plain phenomenal, the emotional pain he feels is so veraciously believable, it had me in tears. 

 (gifs courtesy of unicorns-and-shit, colourful-pyromaniac, necdeusnecdiabolus)

Definitely one of the most powerful and bone-chilling films I've seen since "Suicide Room" (now that is a brilliant film). I wholly recommend you watch this film, genuinely astonishing.