Review of Assassination Nation (2018) by Chris O — 21 Jan 2019

A weird, definitely different, and socially motivated ride.

High school senior Lily and her group of friends live in a haze of texts, posts, selfies and chats just like the rest of the world. So, when an anonymous hacker starts posting details from the private lives of everyone in their small town, the result is absolute madness leaving Lily and her friends questioning whether they'll live through the night.

So the trailers to this film absolutely fascinated me. I thought they were interesting, weird, and really captivating. I thought, maybe this film will stretch some boundaries in a good way? Maybe shed some light on some social issues but when I actually watched this film, it wasn't really any of that. In fact, it was a pretty big disappointment. Oh well.

Alright, one thing I didn't love about this film was the characters, or even the actors for that matter. It's not to say the acting was bad, because it wasn't - but it wasn't great at all. I felt like the performances were underwhelming, almost forced at times. The characters had no depth to them, nor did we care about any of them. So as a result, neither aspects are strong and neither make the movie any better.

This is a weird, different kind of movie. It almost feels experimental in a sorts. However, I guess I never really understood the purpose to this film. I felt like they were trying to touch on a bunch of subjects but never really narrowed their view toward one. The film essentially built toward some grand, bad-ass finale but fell short and never really built toward anything.

In the end, "Assassination Nation" was an okay film. It had some interesting concepts in it, but it never really came together.