I grew up as a gay teen in a generation of pre-skype/fb/even before livejournal. aol chat was the most popular, and like any young guy of course i talked to a few guys, even had up my (own) picture since I was 14. In retrospect, my parents should have probably been more aware and involved as I met most of these potential acquaintances at the mall or movie theatre, places that were crowded enough that i would feel safe and not isolated. It would be hard not to notice a 6'3 blond male being chloroformed and dragged into a van, so in that sense i suppose i'd have had the upperhand. Then again, I do live in New Jersey and wouldn't be surprised at all if a huge group of people did in fact see that but were just too uninterested to do anything!
I wanted to open this one up funny, because this movie is a huge bummer. it leaves you with that pitted stomach, eyes wide open, forehead wrinkled feeling. Not because it's a bad movie but because it makes a very bold statement about what can and (still does) happen involving internet predators. Now we hear that term so much that I think we're desensitized to it. We've had 'To Catch a Predator' which seem like mostly creepers but probably just more your 'rape and run' types. You even have your more violent types that may end up murdering the child victim in a more MERCIFUL way. Those types of rapists and killers generally still have some level of consciousness that if they were to 'accidentally overharm' and then resort to snuffing out the victim, they would hopefully do so in a way that was quick for both the attacker and the victim's sake. These are I guess what you could call the 'more desirable' types of predators out there (i know this may sound audacious.) The antagonist here is not like any of the aforementioned, he's an S&M obsessed, torturous predator that's honed his abilities to seek out the underage, naive, boy crazy types. And the rest is just really dark and does not need explanation.
One of the more poignant things to take away from this film is that in the midst of crucial time that should have been utilized to do things like, I don't know, check the girls computer considering it's 2007? Nope, no proper leads are followed up on, and then there's always the initiative of 'a town banding together to find ...' Which, no offense to any of you who devoted time to causes you believe in, But I think the sort of cliché 'we're all looking for...' phenomenon that always happens is perhaps an OMEN of a bad result. People are busy typing ribbons to trees and reenacting and sensationalizing the 'story' and police probably figure that "Eh, Town'll find em."
Scary in a real sense. I would like to think that the sequences and events that unfold after the first half were 'sensationalized' or took a lot of creative license to make the movie have more of an impact, but the scary thing is that what we see in the film is probably not even scratching the surface of what those girls went through during those (days/weeks) and that you can't rely on law enforcement to keep kids safe. The internet is not an evil place, but it's a portal through which one can be linked to human beings who are, in fact, evil.
see it.
I wanted to open this one up funny, because this movie is a huge bummer. it leaves you with that pitted stomach, eyes wide open, forehead wrinkled feeling. Not because it's a bad movie but because it makes a very bold statement about what can and (still does) happen involving internet predators. Now we hear that term so much that I think we're desensitized to it. We've had 'To Catch a Predator' which seem like mostly creepers but probably just more your 'rape and run' types. You even have your more violent types that may end up murdering the child victim in a more MERCIFUL way. Those types of rapists and killers generally still have some level of consciousness that if they were to 'accidentally overharm' and then resort to snuffing out the victim, they would hopefully do so in a way that was quick for both the attacker and the victim's sake. These are I guess what you could call the 'more desirable' types of predators out there (i know this may sound audacious.) The antagonist here is not like any of the aforementioned, he's an S&M obsessed, torturous predator that's honed his abilities to seek out the underage, naive, boy crazy types. And the rest is just really dark and does not need explanation.
One of the more poignant things to take away from this film is that in the midst of crucial time that should have been utilized to do things like, I don't know, check the girls computer considering it's 2007? Nope, no proper leads are followed up on, and then there's always the initiative of 'a town banding together to find ...' Which, no offense to any of you who devoted time to causes you believe in, But I think the sort of cliché 'we're all looking for...' phenomenon that always happens is perhaps an OMEN of a bad result. People are busy typing ribbons to trees and reenacting and sensationalizing the 'story' and police probably figure that "Eh, Town'll find em."
Scary in a real sense. I would like to think that the sequences and events that unfold after the first half were 'sensationalized' or took a lot of creative license to make the movie have more of an impact, but the scary thing is that what we see in the film is probably not even scratching the surface of what those girls went through during those (days/weeks) and that you can't rely on law enforcement to keep kids safe. The internet is not an evil place, but it's a portal through which one can be linked to human beings who are, in fact, evil.
see it.