I'm a bit suspicious of the number of decent reviews of this on here, glossing over the major shortcomings of this film.
Although the depiction of the chat-room as physical space is mildly clever (and it definitely feels as if the whole story was built to use this gimmick), the reactions of the characters to their space is completely unconvincing. The obvious lack of conviction and personality coming from any of the cast is almost forgivable given the atrocious script and pointless motivations.
One of Chatroom's strangest failures is that it doesn't seem able to integrate and weave together main-plots with sub-plots and character development, instead assigning blocks of time and space to deal with each separately. It makes unsatisfying story-telling; not all that much interaction takes place between the main characters, their lives mostly just play out independently, without much consequence except to show how inexplicably malicious the main character is. As sub-plots, we are treated to a cringeworthily over-acted memory of the main character's past, and at least two COMPLETELY unresolved sub-plots of other characters, one's disagreement with her parents, and another's obscure and pointless love for his friend's much younger sister. How can they open that can of worms and forget about it?! It's just bad story telling.
Also, maybe a minor point compared to the rest, but it's a bugbear of mine. The presentation of the chat-room and the use of the internet is unsophisticated in its depiction; both simplistic and unrealistic. If it was meant to be a close-to-the-bone comment of the dangers of the internet, why of all things use the outmoded chat-room? It doesn't work.
Although the depiction of the chat-room as physical space is mildly clever (and it definitely feels as if the whole story was built to use this gimmick), the reactions of the characters to their space is completely unconvincing. The obvious lack of conviction and personality coming from any of the cast is almost forgivable given the atrocious script and pointless motivations.
One of Chatroom's strangest failures is that it doesn't seem able to integrate and weave together main-plots with sub-plots and character development, instead assigning blocks of time and space to deal with each separately. It makes unsatisfying story-telling; not all that much interaction takes place between the main characters, their lives mostly just play out independently, without much consequence except to show how inexplicably malicious the main character is. As sub-plots, we are treated to a cringeworthily over-acted memory of the main character's past, and at least two COMPLETELY unresolved sub-plots of other characters, one's disagreement with her parents, and another's obscure and pointless love for his friend's much younger sister. How can they open that can of worms and forget about it?! It's just bad story telling.
Also, maybe a minor point compared to the rest, but it's a bugbear of mine. The presentation of the chat-room and the use of the internet is unsophisticated in its depiction; both simplistic and unrealistic. If it was meant to be a close-to-the-bone comment of the dangers of the internet, why of all things use the outmoded chat-room? It doesn't work.