Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Nerve Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 27, 2016

Samuel Johnson may have once famously opined that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” but Johnson obviously made that pronouncement before the advent of the internet. Those of us who work for internet based sites, especially those with public feedback forums attached, can vouch for the fact that there are lots of folks out there who might be termed scoundrels (if not trolls) offering what they insist (often pretty viciously) is the “right” opinion about things, taking the site’s employees to task for offering their opinion, and doing so largely quasi-privately behind the cloak of an anonymizing screenname (while employees of sites generally don’t get that privilege). The internet has certain similarities at times to how people feel when they’re out in their cars and give in to either rude behavior (i.e., cutting people off) or alternatively road rage (if they’ve been cut off)—they feel they’re anonymous and able to act pretty much any way they want to, despite the fact that license plates at least can give some hint as to their identity. The internet is probably even more circumspect, with few savvy enough to ferret through IPs and service providers to actually get to someone’s real identity. Nerve, a fitfully engaging so-called “techno thriller”, gets into some of these issues, at least in passing, but instead of really investigating how entitled some people feel behind the mask of an internet avatar, it tries to create suspense around its focal idea of an online game of truth or dare (“without the truth part”, as the game’s robotic instructor announces). A high school senior named Vee (Emma Roberts) is dealing with a certain lack of nerve (in just one of this film’s too obvious plot points) as the film opens, attempting to find a way to tell her mother Nancy (Juliette Lewis) that she’s been accepted at Cal Arts, meaning she’ll need to leave her Staten Island home. Nancy is still in the throes of grief after having lost Vee’s older brother in an accident, with Vee her only “lifeline”, one she obviously doesn’t want to see take off for greener pastures thousands of miles away.

The game of Nerve is supposedly an underground internet sensation, and it’s already hooked Vee’s best friend Sydney (Emily Meade). Nerve requires folks to sign up as either “players” or “watchers”. Watchers pay for the privilege of viewing players accept risky propositions which, if they complete them successfully, result in sometimes rather huge paydays. All “dares” need to be memorialized by the players’ phone video apps, so that (not to state the obvious) watchers can watch them. Already Nerve struggles to find a reasonable way to depict the various levels of activity going on within the context of the game, and directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman resort to a number of by now pretty tired techniques of lo-fil “video feeds” and on screen data marching across the frame. It’s basically a gambit of bells and whistles meant to perhaps distract the viewer from a number of glaring lapses of logic as to how “secret” a game taking place out in the open with apparently thousands (if not more) of players can happen.

While the game aspect continues to unfold, “other” games, mostly having to do with contentious teen relationships, start cropping up, giving the film a kind of soap operatic edge at times. Vee has a thing for a guy named J.P. (Brian Marc), but Sydney’s exhortations to Vee to work up her courage to tell him end up backfiring. That in turn finally convinces Vee to start playing Nerve, as if to prove something to herself and the world. At this point, the film starts tipping over into more and more contrivance, with Vee ultimately partnering with another Nerve player named Ian (Dave Franco). WIthin seeming seconds (hey, it’s the internet, things go viral), Vee and Ian are “stars” of the game, completing some outrageous dares. While patently ludicrous, this element of the film at least offers a bit of suitable angst.

I couldn’t help but think of Hackers as I watched Nerve, wondering if in twenty years or so the shenanigans on display in this film are going to look as dated and quaint as some of the proceedings in the 1995 film look to us now. The actual “gameplay” in Nerve is probably too ridiculous to ever fully resonate, despite occasional moments of tension, and unfortunately the film doesn’t really want to explore some of its more interesting content, as with that aforementioned tendency of folks addicted to online experiences to think that they’re somehow sequestered from “real life”. Roberts makes for an appealing enough heroine, but by the time finally offers up a completely predictable “twist”, some viewers will have already come to the conclusion that this particular game is over.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf was evidently much less impressed with Nerve than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Nerve Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Nerve is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. While the IMDb is once again dataless on technical specs for the film, a bit of online sleuthing suggests that at least large parts of this feature were digitally captured with Arri cameras. There's an intentionally heterogeneous look to the film, though, with lots of supposed lo-fi video elements like phone cams or computer monitors regularly on display, as can easily be seen in many of the screenshots accompanying this review. Some of these elements are littered with noise or are otherwise splotchy and undetailed in appearance. As can also be seen in the screenshots and as was alluded to in the main body of the review above, the image has also been littered with text elements and other gizmos that attempt to give the "feel" of an online experience, to variable effectiveness. Color grading and/or lighting is also employed regularly to color either the whole frame or, in certain moments, individual elements, kind of like a 21st century version of the old Handschiegl Color Process. When not tweaked in any number of ways, the imagery here is often appealingly sharp and extremely well detailed, especially in extreme close-ups (see screenshot 4 for one good example).

Nerve Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Nerve features a great sounding DTS:X track (with a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 core), one which provides consistent immersion through a glut of sound effects that give the sonics of this film as busy an aspect as the visuals. As the camera darts and swoops through various online elements, the soundtrack follows suit, with a variety of panning noises and other "high tech" effects that are meant to add some kind of verisimilitude to the inherently whimsical imagery. As might be expected, the soundtrack is also stuffed full of source cues, and many of them spread through the surrounds quite convincingly as well as providing bursts of low frequency energy. LFE is used rather sparingly, at least for an FX heavy film, though it's forceful when it is utilized. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly and is always well prioritized on this problem free track.

Nerve Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

In what some curmudgeons may say is an approach at least as innovative as anything in the film, after the previews the disc boots to the menu seen in screenshot 20. Instead of a Special Features menu selection, it's possible to click on the "Watcher" and "Player" buttons to get to the following supplemental content:

Watcher

The submenu offers a slew of @ handles, which then provide featurettes about various characters and sequences with interviews and behind the scenes footage. (I'm no expert, but shouldn't some of these be hashtags instead?) The list is as follows:


• @_IAN_ (1080p 2:10)
• @Flyin_Blind (1080p; 1:48)
• @SYD_BABY_XO (1080p; 1:40)
• @WhiteKnuckles (1080p; 1:40)
• @Made_U_Look (1080p; 2:39)
• @ILoveNYC (1080p; 1:19)
• @Vee_99 (1080p; 2:09)
• @TYdontDY (1080p; 1:54)
• @Tha_High_Life (1080p; 1:58)
• @darkweb_whiteknight (1080p; 1:48)
• @MicDrop (1080p; 1:47)
• @TimesSquareTakeover (1080p; 1:20)
• @squadGOALS (1080p; 1:49)
• @Seymour_Butts (1080p; 1:21)
• @dropping_beats (1080p; 1:17)
• @govball_prankin (1080i; 2:45)
• @Tattewish (1080p; 2:48)

Player

• The Players (1080p) provides text biographies of the main characters with photographic sidebars.


• Do You Have the Nerve? (1080p) is a virtual game of Nerve that asks the player to complete a series of dares.


• Are You a Watcher or a Player? (1080p) is a quiz that seeks to determine which category you fall into.

Nerve Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Nerve has an appealing premise, but it doesn't ever have the mojo to really delve into some of the more troubling aspects of the internet's tendency to make everyone think they're immune from repercussions springing from their own actions. Instead, Nerve too often settles for high school histrionics and a kind of science fiction hyperbole. The film is visually and sonically interesting, if awfully "busy" a lot of the time. I wasn't completely won over by the film, and found the ending patently silly, but I was never bored. Technical merits are strong (especially the audio), and with caveats noted, Nerve comes Recommended.