Catfish (2010) – A Movie Worth Not Seeing

Yell! Magazine review:

The tagline for this faux doc is “Don’t tell anyone what it is.” Which is code for: “Don’t tell anyone what a shitty movie it is.” When I sat down to write this, I knew I wanted to open with the tagline bit, but I was thinking that the tagline for Catfish was “The real Facebook movie,” from which I was going to say that there was an editorial mistake made in the final proof and that it should have read “The real shitty Facebook movie.” I guess both work effectively to convey my utter distaste for this Henry Joost/Ariel Schulman-directed film.

I hate it so much, in fact, that I’m going to throw caution to the wind and disregard any Internet conventions about SPOILERS. So, if you continue reading, be warned. If you choose not to continue because you plan to view Catfish, I implore you not to.

First of all, we here at Yell! Magazine like horror films, so when a trailer comes out and midway through they drive up to a barn in Michigan in the middle of the night, we expect something terrific. Then our expectations get amplified like boys at a strip joint for the first time when catchy quips are splashed across the screen proclaiming that the film is or has one of the following: “The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won’t be able to shake for days” and “A bizarre and completely unpredictable mystery” and “A shattering conclusion” and “The best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed.”

Here, take a look at the trailer, and then continue to read and then tell us your opinion in the comment section below.

After some discussions with friends, there’s more reasons to why Catfish sucks than just the misleading trailer – because it’s one thing to expect pizza and be served fillet mignon, but Catfish truly is a bottom dweller. Here’s why. The premise of someone meeting someone else on Facebook and having friends want to make a documentary out of such a mundane and common occurrence is unbelievable – especially at such an early stage of the FB friendship. Now, if something significant happened, even as simple as her having just one friend (you) after six months or a year into the relationship, I could buy it as a documentary.

Basically, we follow Nev (all while being the subject of his brother and friend’s documentary), a photographer living in New York, who meets Abby, a prepubescent artist living in Michigan. Abby caught one of Nev’s photos in a news paper, painted it, and sent it to him. Their Facebook relationship blossomed and Nev eventually befriended Abby’s mother and older sister, Megan, among others in their “Facebook family.”

Nev and Megan develop a flirtatious and somewhat sexual relationship, which eventually leads to telephone conversations. At the impetus of the filmmakers, Nev is persuaded to go to Michigan to meet Megan. Once there, we meet Abby and her mother, and learn that Megan is in rehab. Sad story: Abby’s mother has married a man (not Abby or Megan’s dad) who has two retarded and grown boys. The man isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer and Abby’s mom isn’t quite as hot as Abby’s painting made her out to be — in fact, she’s not even the same person. Abby’s mom is homely, pasty, and sad.

Now for the shocking Hitchcockian twist: Abby’s mom is the artist and she runs something like 15 Facebook pages, including Abby’s and rehab Megan’s. So, Nev was having an erotic relationship with Abby’s mom. So, everyone exists, but Abby’s mom is their Facebook personas.

No blood. No murders. No abductions. No imprisonments. No nothing. Just an audience taken for fools.

Yeah, normally we at Yell! Magazine don’t cover movies like this, but since we were duped, we figured we’d help you out of falling victim to the victimless Catfish.