Editted by Brianne Price and Mikayla Pullin
Rachel Raske
Facebook rules social media. People communicate through comments and pictures more than they communicate through phone calls and meetings. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Facebook has taken on another role as a site to meet people. Catfish is a movie that highlights the faults of Facebook; you never know who you’re truly talking to when you meet someone new. It’s a real life story unfolding and you can’t help but to question our security online. The story goes like this; Nev meets a young prodigy, her mother, and her sister. He develops different relationships with each one. As the story progresses, the twisting storyline becomes increasingly bizarre. By the end of this movie you’ll want to weed through your friends list.
Catfish was debuted at Sundance Film Festival, and was well-received. In 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story as they began to film the life of Ariel's brother, Nev. Filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost document a story involving Nev, a 24-year-old New York-based photographer, and Abby, from rural Michigan who contacts Nev via Facebook. She asks for permission to make a painting from one of his photographs. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, Catfish is a thriller that truly hits home to billions of people. Starring in the major roles are Ariel Schulman (Rel), Yaniv Schulman (Nev) and Angela Wesselman-Pierce (herself). From the success of their movie Catfish has gained well-deserved popularity and brought light to the over-trust we put into social media networks.
Nev, the main character, is a photographer; he sends his photos for Abby to paint. Abby is the young girl who contacts him and requests to paint his pictures. Megan is Abby’s older sister. Megan introduces herself to Nev and begins a relationship lasting for about eight months. Finally, Angela is Megan and Abby’s mother who starts talking to Nev on the phone. Her role drastically changes during the movie. Ariel and Melody were the co-producers for this movie, although Melody was on camera much less. Rel and Melody were responsible for getting all the footage to make the movie possible. They used alternate reasons to interview everyone. Rel was Nev’s brother who encouraged him to make this movie. He travels with Nev into Angela’s house and is with Nev when they discover all the discrepancies in Megan’s story. Catfish is a tangled web of relationships and lies that are unforeseen by the audience until the very end.
There’s a conversation between Nev and Angela that struck me as strange. When Nev confronts Angela on all the lies at the ranch, he is calm and non-accusatory. He had a surprising amount of patience and understanding of her situation. I would not be able to stay so civilized. Why wasn’t he angry? He said it was because she felt trapped in her own life, but that does not come close to rationalizing her actions. Granted, he may not have been so nice if he weren’t face to face, but his calmness helped her create even more lies because she didn’t feel threatened. I thought it sent a mixed message about the movie as well. It began to say to me “let’s try and understand why people are creeps on the internet”, rather than saying we should be careful with what we put out there before truly meeting someone.
This is a great movie for teens and young adults who use Facebook because it is incredibly relevant to our lives. The documentary aspect of the movie was great because it made the story real, instead of it coming from Hollywood and being over-dramaticised. It was well constructed, never got too boring. The story was fast paced and moved along smoothly.
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