This feels like a school project somehow ended up being made into a film. The acting is often over-the-top and uncomfortable to watch, and the characters felt cliché and two-dimensional. It is an attempt to deal with the topic of teen suicide, and yet fails at every turn. The dialogue is very stilted and the stories are unoriginal and stereotypical. I ended up skipping some of the slower parts, and I wish I had skipped the whole film.
Perhaps this film could have been better if it focussed on the story of just one character, because it tries to cover too many stories and ends up lacking depth. I think they were aiming to look at the different reasons that lead people to consider suicide, but these end up being far too simplistic: one character is transgender with unsupportive religious parents, another is a high-achieving student who is pressured to be 'perfect' by her mother, and another is a jock being bullied by his team. And there's one other character who has barely any screen time, apart from her death in a bathroom stall. These characters are only really seen through their social media presence and their deaths, all of which is overtly performative and disingenuous.
I appreciate the idea behind using vlog-style footage, but it is hard to do well and here it ends up feeling so amateur that it just adds to the failures of this movie. When this type of cinematography is combined with bad acting and a bad storyline, not even good intentions can save this film.
Another note I will add to this review: the general guidance for films (especially ones aimed at a younger audience, such as this one) is to avoid depicting suicide methods. This guidance is informed by a number of academic studies into the topic. This film shows a number of suicide methods, and although the intention is clearly intended to help people struggling with suicidal thoughts, it could easily have the opposite effect and trigger copycat suicides (known as the Werther effect). I am personally sick and tired of film makers not researching such sensitive topics and continuing to make garbage with a faux-positive message, lazily profiting off the ordeals faced by individuals suffering from poor mental health.
Perhaps this film could have been better if it focussed on the story of just one character, because it tries to cover too many stories and ends up lacking depth. I think they were aiming to look at the different reasons that lead people to consider suicide, but these end up being far too simplistic: one character is transgender with unsupportive religious parents, another is a high-achieving student who is pressured to be 'perfect' by her mother, and another is a jock being bullied by his team. And there's one other character who has barely any screen time, apart from her death in a bathroom stall. These characters are only really seen through their social media presence and their deaths, all of which is overtly performative and disingenuous.
I appreciate the idea behind using vlog-style footage, but it is hard to do well and here it ends up feeling so amateur that it just adds to the failures of this movie. When this type of cinematography is combined with bad acting and a bad storyline, not even good intentions can save this film.
Another note I will add to this review: the general guidance for films (especially ones aimed at a younger audience, such as this one) is to avoid depicting suicide methods. This guidance is informed by a number of academic studies into the topic. This film shows a number of suicide methods, and although the intention is clearly intended to help people struggling with suicidal thoughts, it could easily have the opposite effect and trigger copycat suicides (known as the Werther effect). I am personally sick and tired of film makers not researching such sensitive topics and continuing to make garbage with a faux-positive message, lazily profiting off the ordeals faced by individuals suffering from poor mental health.
