Catfish (2010)

“Don’t Let Anyone Tell You What It Is”

Because you might not want to watch it at all.

Catfish is the new drama documentary that follows a young man, Yaniv "Nev" Schulman, as he starts an online relationship with a young woman, Megan Faccio, on the social networking site Facebook. The film is an alleged documentary, which has raised some questions on its “reality” between its directors, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.

The film follows New York photographer Nev as he receives a painting on one of his pictures that was displayed on the newspaper. He contacts the artist, 9 year old Abby, and starts chatting with her online from Michigan. He then starts talking to her mother Angela Wesselman, and then meets Abby’s half-sister Megan Faccio. The two fall madly in love. However, Nev and the filmmakers, his brother and his best friend, start discovering some flaws in the Facebook family, which he nicknames Abby’s family. Nev, Ariel, and Henry finally decide to visit Megan in Michigan and are instead met with a bizarre first encounter.

Honestly, I stand by JoBlo.com’s Chris Bumbray’s review about the final forty minutes of this film. It seems a long way to go until the end, but it seriously does indeed shock you to the nth degree. So obviously you know something isn’t right, but you don’t know what. You start to gather information around the 30 minute mark and from there it’s just a downfall that is slowly riding back up.

Catfish does truly define a generation, as did The Social Network, however this film captures the everyday activities of probably a thousand people in the nation. Its supposed true events have actually garnered controversy. Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of the infamous Super Size Me has called it “the best fake documentary” he has ever seen. It seems that no matter how many times the filmmakers explain it, there are skeptics out there. In my opinion, I think it is true. In a way it is also satirical; it ridicules those who make up other identities on the internet to stop them. Whether or not it’s fake, that does not change the film’s tone and style to literally stop your heart.

Catfish is a truly gritty, awkward, and eventually, a bizarre film. Ultimately I give the film a 4 out of 5 and it is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.