And to make all kids say: “I told you so. Life is grim.”
Based loosely on Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible, it is set in Salem, an average US city — and like the play, is inspired by the city’s 17th-century witch trials, updated here for the smartphone era.
Lily (Odessa Young) and her clique of girls are just your average bunch of 18-year-old high-school pupils — y’know, constantly sexting, selfie-ing, judging, eye-rolling and holding a general disdain for life outside their bubble. Teenagers.
The city is thrown into chaos when a mysterious hacker starts publishing online data of prominent figures such as the local mayor, and school principal, for all to see and judge and vilify.
But the joke goes too far when the hacker ups the game and releases the data of half the city’s population, creating carnage as families are broken, relationships destroyed and lives put at risk. Lily is thrown into the middle of this, being slut-shamed for an ill-advised relationship. And when she is in the frame for devising the whole cyber attack, things take an extreme and violent turn.
From the opening montage where director Sam Levinson flashes up trigger-warning slogans such as Fragile Male Egos and Transphobia, to the final credits played out over the Salem marching band’s version of the Miley Cyrus song We Can’t Stop, you are left slack-jawed.
It is brutal, angry, abrasive, brash, sexy, grotesque and deeply troubling — perfectly judging the mood of young women around the world. Cinematically it is as inventive as you can get, and also incredibly adept — featuring as good a tracking shot as you will see — despite the temptation to veer into the cheap-trick style of The Purge horror films.
It also perfectly sums up the countless miserable ways teenage girls are pressured into online falsehood regarding their desires and bodies.
Addressing all our deep-seated fears over sex, privacy and celebrity, this should make parents of boys want to have a foreboding, stern word with them about their future treatment of girls — and parents of daughters want to lock them in a bunker until the world sorts its s**t.
Assassination Nation 108mins (18)
★★★★☆
Source: Read Full Article