No Filter review.
Tubi’s hot streak comes to an end with another kick at the influencer horror can.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
No Filter
Directed by Michael Dupret
Written by Michael Dupret
Starring Hannah Mciver, Jasmine Daoud, Samuel Van der Zwalmen, Reiky de Valk and Priya Blackburn
No Filter Review
Another week, another social media horror movie. The disdain that horror filmmakers have for social media influencers knows no bounds. And…if you’ve seen Deinfluencer…it also knows no bottom. There have been a few good entries in this very modern themed subgenre. But there have been enough bad ones to suggest the entire concept is already played out. No Filter (or #No_Filter just to be annoying) sits firmly among the latter.
Fair or not…you can’t really talk about No Filter without diving into the rise of the Social Media Horror subgenre. The constant release of these movies does no favors to each individual one. There are two main types of messages in Social Media Horror. The stories either push that people online are phony…or that social media itself is bad. These are simple concepts. It feels like they are ideas that are already generally accepted by people. That’s not to say there aren’t some interesting ideas or twists on the central concepts. There are plenty of decent choices among the growing throngs of similar low budget technology fueled horror movies. What’s missing is a new message.
No Filter posits that everyone in Gen Z wants to be a social media influencer. It doesn’t do this in an interesting or entertaining way like a Scream movie. Scream 4 blasted millennials for being fame hungry. It found better ways to push that message in one movie than the current landscape has done in years. Combined. No Filter chooses to give us a school full of annoying characters who talk about NOTHING but followers and likes. If this was done as satire, I would applaud the commitment to the bit. The movie isn’t that clever. Teens talk like this because this is the only depth the story is interested in giving them. Character traits need not apply. If you don’t have interesting characters…your story isn’t going to be very interesting.
Anna (Hannah Mciver) is our main character. Her main quality is that she has broken through as an influencer and is now internet famous. She is never without her phone to give updates to her followers or upload a video message about every step she takes. Again…this sounds like a pretty good satire on the surface. It’s amazing that it is being played straight. The hottest trend right now is “scare challenges”. Basically, uploading videos to frighten your audience.
Anna is going to be home alone for the weekend. When she finds someone dead in the trunk of their car…followers question if this is real or if she is the victim of the horror pranks going around. Anna is a strange character. She doesn’t seem to be phony…genuinely comes across like her internet persona and cares about her followers. But her only character trait is being obsessed with her influencer fame. Are we supposed to like her? Care about her? We don’t. When she has a falling out with her BFF you find yourself on neither person’s side. That’s hard to do. Kudos, I guess.
No Filter is all about strange choices. The first act of the movie happens in a bustling high school. Full classrooms and full hallways. Even Anna’s home seems too crowded with her anti-social media parents all over her. Then we spend the final two acts with Anna on screen alone almost the entire time. It would be an effective switch if No Filter was able to capitalize on any of the solitude to build tension. Instead, you find yourself wondering if the movie just ran out of budget. Or, perhaps started filming pre-Covid and finished within strict guidelines.
The attempts at horror in No Filter center around the merger of the real world and the virtual one. I’m not going to promise you that I understood what was happening here the whole time. What I think it’s trying to say doesn’t really fit the presentation of Anna’s character. Something about creating a fake you online…and that thing coming alive. But…Anna isn’t a phony. So…maybe it was about stealing your soul or something. The truth is it doesn’t matter. By the time the explanation is presented you’re not invested in Anna or her story. It takes a wild swing. I’ll give it that. There are also some cool camera tricks to show the switch between reality and the virtual world.
I do want to give credit to Mciver’s performance. She has some empty material and must deliver almost all of it to no one. Strange things on the phone, glitches in audio, photos and video appearing on her phone…McIver reacts to ridiculous things all by herself for an hour. As a performer, she comes out of the movie unscathed. Which is better than most people could do. Speaking of which…this was shot in Belgium. That means that almost every other character is trying (and failing) to hide an accent. So that’s entertaining at least.
No Filter is no good. Mciver is good. The movie makes a few interesting moves. Overall, however, it adds up to a story we’ve seen before even if we haven’t seen it quite like this. No Filter is looser than most of its peers. It feels like it doesn’t need to justify its odder choices…and honestly, that’s probably the best decision it makes.
Scare Value
No Filter makes a lot of odd choices. That doesn’t have to be a negative…but in this case it is. After watching it I’m not sure I can even tell you what it was trying to say about social media. I guess it steals your soul. It feels like there were better ways to tell that story. So, yes…we see again that social media is bad. I look forward to this subgenre coming to an end.
1.5/5
No Filter Link
Streaming on Tubi
