Antisocial, 2013
Directed by Cody Calahan
Starring Michelle Mylett, Cody Ray Thompson, Adam Christie, Ana Alic, Romaine White and Ry Barrett
SYNOPSIS:
Five university friends gather at a house party to ring in the New Year. Unbeknownst to them, an epidemic has erupted outside, causing outbreaks around the world.
Antisocial plays like your average paint-by-numbers teen horror movie but it does try to make a satirical statement about how we live our lives through social media. Imagine it like 28 Days Later if the virus was spread through Facebook rather than monkeys – and this is one of many reasons why the film doesn’t work.
Director Cody Calahan asks a lot of his audience to buy into this pretty asinine plot in which a virus spreads through social media website The Social Red Room, turning its users into a crazy mob. As the plot progresses and you discover more about the virus, the funnier and more implausible it becomes turning the whole thing into a joke. Had the movie been played for laughs, it might have got away with it. But it stares you in the face with a stern expression like it’s making an important statement about social media usage. All of this adds up to a idiotic plot that you can’t get invested in, which in turn means the satire it’s trying to get across fails.
But even with its lame plot and far fetched reasoning, its satirical nature falls flat because a lot the points it makes are undone by the character choices. They try to make a statement about how people obsess with their social media accounts and how they live their lives by it, and the ones who don’t are seen as awkward outcasts. By the movie’s logic, constantly checking your account puts you in more danger – so you’d think the people who don’t have accounts would be the ones to walk out unscathed. Right?
Aside from that, the acting is pretty bad for the most part with Calahan using a lot of first time actors. However the script presented to them, co-written by Chad Archibald, features zero character and dialogue that serves only to move plot forward. The movie’s pacing just repeats its simple formula by seeing one cardboard cut out character get infected, go through the symptoms and get killed – and then it’s on to the next one to do the exact same thing. Conversations between characters happen, but they never amount to anything.
Antisocial is not the worst Internet based horror movie (that still belongs to Smiley), but it’s an incredibly weak film that could have had a lot of promise. If the idea had been fleshed out a little more and given some semblance of reality, the film would have benefited. As it stands, it’s just a by the numbers teen horror movie with a ridiculous set-up that tries to be satirical but fails at every turn.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Originally published August 28, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
