A film like this wouldn’t have existed ten years ago. Not so much because Facebook wasn’t around then, but more the fact that film makers seemed less likely to risk basing something around a commodity that may come across as dated in twenty years’ time. It must say a lot about Facebook as a social historical document that after a mere seven years we have one of Hollywood’s top directors making a film about its origins. And of course the film in question, Catfish, a documentary that tells a slightly more modest tale about the budding relationship of two people who meet through the site.
It all starts innocently enough; photographer Nev Schulman starts a friendship online with a young girl who painted one of his photos that she saw in a magazine. The two swap messages and she sends packages, pretty soon Nev is getting to know the whole family, including, most importantly, the oldest daughter Megan. It’s at this point Nev’s brother Ariel and his friend Henry decide to document their relationship as it develops romantically. It’s as the two swap more messages and phone calls that cracks start to appear in Megan’s story, and the more Nev unravels, the more things don’t add up. What culminates is a trip from New York to Michigan to find out, in person, the truth about Megan and her family. The results of which are astonishing.
The three men behind this film have been accused of fabricating its entire events. The reason being that they are so enthralling, that it seems to convenient that they would stumble upon them just through the guise of what starts out as a mundane story about online dating. Although I hope its real, either way it doesn’t make a great deal of difference. This is a film that will keep you glued as one fascinating revelation leads to another.
4/5
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