The nifty suspense thriller Nerve captures lightning in a bottle as it tells a cautionary tale about the role of social media in the lives of America’s teenagers. And though it was made to appeal to teenagers, I think Nerve will have the greatest emotional resonance with the parents of teens and near teens.
We live in a state of anxiety about the dual existences our kids lead as they walk and talk and move in the real world and yet fall constantly into the rabbit hole of an anarchic virtual world that has yet to establish any protective or defensive norms or codes of conduct. Nerve centers on a beautifully conceived metaphor for the psychic lure of Internet self-exposure—a lure that is both irresistibly tempting and profoundly dangerous for all of us but for teenagers especially.
This little picture, spectacularly well-directed by the team of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, is based on a young-adult novel by Jeanne Ryan that locates The Hunger Games in the present-day real world. Kids find themselves trapped in a game of Truth or Dare on the streets of New York City—a game that exists entirely within the world of social media and is invisible to the rest of us.
The game is called Nerve, and those who involve themselves in it are either Watchers or Players. The Watchers sign up for $20 apiece. The money they contribute goes into a giant pool. The Watchers think up dares for the Players they follow. The Players have to execute the dare in a matter of minutes. The Watchers observe the Players execute the dares in real time on their smartphones, which are broadcast by the Players through their smartphones. The more risky the dare, the more lucrative the dollar reward, which is instantly transferred to the Player’s bank account. But it’s not just about the money. The Players are also consumed with scoring as many followers as possible (in the manner of an Instagram account) so they will become famous inside the world of the game.
The movie follows Vee (Emma Roberts), a shy and bookish 18-year-old from Staten Island who is goaded into becoming a Player because her wild best friend Sydney is doing it. The dares start small. Vee is directed to kiss a guy at a diner for five seconds and ends up in a lip lock with Ian (Dave Franco), who turns out to be another Player. That earns her $100. The Watchers dare them to team up and ride into Manhattan together on Ian’s motorcycle.
And as they go through the night, the dares become more and more physically dangerous and emotionally bruising. Sydney is dared to walk between two fifth-story windows on a ladder laid out horizontally between them. And without Vee knowing, Ian is directed to provoke a fight between Vee and Sydney—an exact analogy to the way in which sadistic third parties use the Internet to cause friction among friends and wound them socially. Vee learns that the game has a terrifying enforcement mechanism; speak of its existence and you become a “snitch,” and the results are brutal. Like “Hotel California,” you may think you can check out any time you like, but snitch and you can never leave. Just like Twitter.
Up to this point, the movie is a marvel of storytelling; it starts like a freight train and never lets up, introduces multiple characters well, and shows us how integrated their lives are with the Internet by telling much of the tale through the devices they use. Nerve could have been a classic American thriller, the way last summer’s The Gift was, but it cheats in its final third. That’s unfortunate, but it’s very unusual to see a movie that works both as a supercharged thriller and as a potent metaphor. More important, Nerve never belabors the metaphor at the expense of the thriller. If it did, it would be thuddingly obvious and deeply uncool. And it is neither.
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard‘s movie critic.
