Chatroom 2010, so uh what's that all about

So i stumbled across this movie while indulging in Aaron Taylor-Johnson edits (I’m sorry I’m no better than a man) and decided to give it shot because I wanted to watch a hour an a half long Aaron edit. They did him so dirty with that goatee but I can’t even complain because they nailed the early 2000's male manipulator look. 

Anyway, break down time! Chatroom is a British edgy teen thriller, adapted from the Irish play by the Japanese director Hideo Nakata. Which if you didn’t know, is the brilliant mind behind the Ring movies. But I gotta say, this movie is something else. I don’t think I could say enough that would fully encapsulate whatever the hell happened… and this isn’t a good type of speechless. Just putting a fair warning out here this movie touches on literally every “edgy” subject from pedophilia, red rooms, sh, suicide, etc. If these topics are triggering to you feel free to skip past this review, take care of yourself alrighty! 

Chatroom and their whopping 9% on rotten tomatoes starts out with our main character William who is portrayed to struggle with mental health. We watch as he opens up his own chatroom which leads to the rest of the main cast to join. Here we are introduced to Jim a depressed loner, Eva a popular yet bullied model, Emily who yearns for attention, and Mo who is attracted to his friend's prepubescent sister. 

After talking for a couple of days in this chatroom each person reveals more about their personal life resulting in William "helping" them. He and Eva convince Emily to act out to get her parents attention by splashing paint over her house. When Jim reveals that he hates himself William tells him to dump his medication. He advises Mo to tell his friend about his crush on his sister which results in a physical fight between the two. (Mo and his friend, not Mo and William) He also gets Eva into legal trouble after sending her photoshopped pictures of a coworker which Eva posts online. 

We also watch William grow darker while these events take place, he lashes out, starts to watch videos of people taking their life (we get verbal conformation from his parents that this has happened before), and decides to coerce Jim into doing the same. He tells Jim to meet him in person to do the deed but the main group figure out these plans and rush to intercept. The movie ends with this poorly rushed scene of William getting to Jim, Jim throwing the gun, the others arrive along with cops, William runs, gets corned, and falls in front of a moving train. And that's it, whole movie.

Safe to say it's a shitty movie. Which is really disappointing when looking at the director and casting. And I think the reason for this is because they tried making a horror movie out of a play that was supposed to raise awareness about serious topics and expose the dangerous nature of chatrooms. The whole movie is very tasteless and off-putting. It has some serious edgy Wattpad fanfic vibes, and it's just poorly fledged out. 

RATING: 3/10 

CLOSING NOTE: yeah this pretty much happened to me in my 2020 covid discord server