6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A high school senior finds herself immersed in an online game of truth or dare, where her every move starts to become manipulated by an anonymous community of "watchers."
Starring: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Juliette Lewis, Kimiko Glenn, Samira WileyTeen | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS:X
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS Headphone:X
Spanish: DTS 5.1
English: DTS 2.0
English, English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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