Chatroom

Directed by Hideo Nakata. Starring Aaron Johnson, Imogen Poots, Hannah Murray, Daniel Kaluuya 18 cert, gen release, 97 min

FEW FILMS at this year’s Cannes received quite such a vigorous pummelling as Hideo Nakata’s adaptation of Enda Walsh’s play concerning the dangers of internet overuse.

It’s not so bad. The contrast between the characters’ virtual lives, represented in a mess of seedy colours, their troubled, grey home existences – each centring on a Problem of the Week – is effectively handled, and the young actors chew their way vigorously through the spiky dialogue. It’s a bit schematic and (this is web-time, remember) enormously dated, but it’s still just about worth leaving the house for.

The titular on-line forum plays host to five particularly addled youths. Eva (Imogen Poots), a model, hates herself almost as much as she hates everyone else on the planet. Mo (Daniel Kaluuya) is paralysed by shameful passion for his best pal’s 11-year-old sister. Jim (Matthew Beard) can’t face the day without various pharmaceutical crutches.

William (Aaron Johnson), the supervisor of the chatroom, is the son of a children’s author – nods to the creator of a juvenile wizard abound – who, to his fury, based her hero on his over-achieving brother. It soon becomes clear that William is manipulating the other chatters towards traumatic meltdown.

Nakata, the distinguished Japanese director of Ringu, makes an impressively creepy alternative universe of the chatroom. When they log on, the actors are transported to a seedy but mildly hip hotel. Such techniques help layer the picture with just the right muggy, dubious ambience.

Unfortunately, the plot becomes increasingly melodramatic and muddled. Even if that weren’t the case, any even vaguely wired-in punter would still reel at the creakiness of the premise. In the age of social-networking, the chatroom feels as archaic a manner of communication as semaphore or the Aldis lamp. That’s where people go to discuss bird-watching or brass-rubbing. Right? LOL.

Opens December 26th