E.L. Katz
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Connections, in both directions
This is familiar territory for anyone who has seen 13 Beloved, its American remake 13 Sins, or E.L. Katz’s spectacular 2013 debut, Cheap Thrills, though comparing Nerve to any of these is unfair because it is fundamentally different on a molecular level: It’s a post-Social Network movie combined with YA tropes, where everyone equipped with a smartphone is represented with graphic captions that jut into New York’s skyline like neon flagpoles.
That it's all been done before in films like "Series 7: The Contenders," "Cheap Thrills," "Would You Rather," "The Den" and "Unfriended" with a climax lifted from "The Hunger Games," makes it all the more difficult to find much of interest here.
Sort of a teen-friendly combination of Crank, The Game, Unfriended, The Running Man, and the highly underappreciated indie gut-punch Cheap Thrills, Nerve is about a high-tech internet game in which average Joes and Janes agree to do all sorts of crazy “dares” in return for an escalating series of bank deposits.
It’s basically a four-hand midnight movie in a ‘70s-‘80s grindhouse vein, halfway between Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and an off-off-Broadway play.
Katz also works in shades of Gareth Evans' Apostle and Mike P. Nelson's Wrong Turn remake, albeit much vaguer.
Craig seems like a pretty decent guy at first (at least compared to the rougher edged Vince, who used to break arms for debt collectors), even if there is something of a Falling Down vibe about the guy.
The “worst day of your life” premise is a well-worn one (Falling Down, Groundhog Day), but seldom has it plumbed the depths of desperation and sadism the way Cheap Thrills does.
Some viewers may think the messages are there to be analyzed in the same way that Ari Aster's Midsommar invites one to do if they so choose.
That said, Azrael does suffer from its ambitions at some point. While Rob Savage's Host is hardly a thematic or storytelling comparison, the filmmaker's approach to miniaturized concepts relates to Katz's gritty-as-sin tale. Host clocks in at 54 minutes, running leaner and nastier than if it had…
Ready or Not is also distinguished by its ravening enthusiasm to make good on its R rating, without resorting to the sort of pugnacious, boundary-pushing cruelty that characterizes many contemporary horror films, even satires like Cheap Thrills (2014).
The most obvious example is John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place,” where the lack of sound and dialogue is a creative challenge. Katz does not quite manage to sustain the same level of suspense, and much feels lost in the lack of dialogue or any semblance of communication.
It fits neatly into a recent trend of low-budget thrillers that use the civility of a house party as the starting point for a descent into carefully controlled chaos: See also 2013’s Cheap Thrills and Coherence.
Yet there are enough laughs to avoid completely feeling like “Game Night” is playing with spare parts, not just from vastly superior David Fincher material but also the underrated “Date Night” and the underseen “Cheap Thrills.”
From Michael Douglas's The Game to Cheap Thrills to newcomers like Nerve , gaming enthusiasts in TV and movies rarely have an easy time of it.