Harry does enjoy a helping of CATFISH from time to time

The publicity for CATFISH would ask that you know nothing. They don't want you to know the genre or even really the style of the film. Instead, the marketing has created a poster that technically isn't overtly HORROR, but wink wink... A blood red Catfish on a field of black - the whiskers of the CATFISH look like trailing blood to the passive observer. Then the trailer, which doesn't give one much to go on... well, it is cut like a HORROR film trailer - and with the success of films like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and the smaller, but still significant success of THE LAST EXORCISM... Well, I get what they're trying to do with the marketing. Problem is - if you go to this movie thinking HORROR film, I'm not entirely sure you'll be satisfied going in with that kind of mindset. However, if you're fine with what you know thus far of CATFISH - just hit the back button, and enjoy the film.





If you are still with me, I'm going to take it that you want to know what you're getting into. This is a DOCUMENTARY film project that is edited more like a Feature Narrative Film. The film purports to be an honest telling of what happened to the lead character of Nev Schulman. A very real person, who is a photographer in New York City that has had many of his photos published. One day he gets contacted by a young girl that wants permission to do paintings based upon some of his photographs. He gets contacted by the girl's mother. The paintings are quite impressive - and definitely the sort of thing that could stroke one's ego a bit... To have your photographs turned into Oil Paintings by a Child Prodigy. She sends him prints of her work. He begins taking photographs specifically to send her. Soon, he's talking to her older sister, a real hottie, they have a farm, the little girl is having shows in her small town... He talks on the phone with the mother, the hot daughter, the father... on FACEBOOK - he meets other folks that interact with the family and thank him for his support of the lil girl. Meanwhile, he begins to have a long distance flirtatious relationship with the "Hot Daughter" - They send scandilous photos to each other, long talks on the phone, sexy texts, emails... you know the routine. The Hot Daughter is a singer and a musician - and they have chat sessions where she has him request that she sing various songs and send him MP3's of them. Amazingly, she's pretty damn good. Then... he happens to come across a youtube version of one of the songs she "recorded" for him, that sounds eerily dead on to what she sent. He begins researching - and finds that he can find almost every one of the "recordings" via something on YouTube. He confronts her, she denies it, but now he is suspicious. The doc is being filmed by Nev's older brother and another friend, they're aspiring filmmakers and thought the story of a young girl artist and his younger brother's photography would be a great little documentary. Never really dreaming that this would turn into a feature film that would get distribution. But once this twist with the music occurs - the spectre of... IS THIS REAL, begins to creep in. They start questioning everything about this phantom family. Nev begins to get irritated, you get the idea he just wants to drop the whole thing, but his brother keeps pushing him forward, "for the sake of the film" - and it's these interactions that cause some critics to doubt seriously the truthfulness of the "Documentary" nature of this film. And frankly, I'm not caught up in that - because that's missing the point of the film for me. CATFISH is a wonderful cautionary tale that everyone of the INTERNET generation should probably definitely see. I've been in some moderate low level spotlight for pretty much the last 14 years online - and in that time, I've seen all manners of undesirable sides of the internet. The ability to reach out and connect to another person that ordinarily we'd have no way of finding within our normal social parameters... well, it is the story of communications. Today, at our fingertips you can pretty much reach out and contact any name you can see in a magazine, newspaper, television credit, feature film... and obviously EVERYONE ONLINE... And we can all create fantasy names and guises and situations - and all of it is painfully simple to manipulate. None of these social networks require a source of identification beyond an email address. And for an email address, you need only fill out a form. This is nothing new, nothing shocking to most of us, but I haven't really seen a wonderful filmed story of that world turned upside down. That's CATFISH. I've had more than enough of these "CATFISH" in my life. There is no aspect of this film, that I haven't experienced without just a friend or two away from me. In otherwords, everything that happens in this film has happened to either me or somebody I know. Personally, if I were a parent, and had a family online - I'd take my family to see this movie and then have a dinner to have a frank conversation about the story and what you could take away from it. This isn't a movie about a supernatural force, an unstoppable killing machine, nor is it a story about death, but a story about life today. A story about how we can all be hurt by all our best intentions, hopes and dreams. I haven't fully pulled back the curtain on CATFISH, the film has a story to tell, and it isn't my place to fully tell it for them. For that, you'll have to go see. But I will tell you, there's things here that made me long for the days of meeting someone at an event, exchanging numbers and going from there. In this day & age - the possibilities for heartache and exploitation are seemingly endless. But then, so are the stories for success. It is just a medium we're all discovering and playing in. Some of us created websites, social identities and others... others had other needs. Some that never fully make sense to anyone save their own selfish needs. This is a damn fine story.