Catfish (R) ★★★
If a film like Catfish was able to give me the creeps then I guess anybody can make a movie with their hand held camera and hope for the best- didn't The Blair Witch Project prove that? Then again, the filmmakers of this finely tuned documentary hit a kind of gold mine with their story of a buddy -Lev Schulman- adding a "friend" on Facebook and forming an unlikely online bond with the entire family, including a hot stepdaughter that he ends up having online hookups with.
This being the Internet, I suppose there is always a downside to a story such as this one and boy is it ever a downside as our boy Lev finds out as the story goes along.The first 2/3 of the movie have a Hitchockian vibe that literally had me hanging on every word, then of course...well I won't spoil it for you but suffice to say that they try to put a moral to their story at its conclusion, that the film ends up falling apart and dragging its ass down to the final credits. Too bad cause I kinda dug the buildup that director Ariel Schulman -Lev's brother- brought to the surroundings.
You can call this the other Facebook movie -along with The Social Network- and because we live in a Facebook dominated society, the relevance brought in is justifiably suited for our needs and wants of the moment. Will it be this gripping 10 years from now? I really don't know but for the time being, at its best Catfish gives the viewer a real treat in trying to figure out its mysterious ways.
However, don't think of it as high art or resonant stuff- on the contrary, it's a movie that doesn't have much of a face and rather focuses on its highly interesting concept. Unlike quite a few people out there in the blogosphere, I do believe this was pure fact and the filmmakers didn't make up any bit of it but if only they did- its conclusion would have been slightly more interesting to watch unravel.