First of all I have to say that the performances of the young actors in this low budget production are pretty good, and they are absolutely capable of making you feel with them every step of the way.
Secondly the POV shots are a good idea regarding the topic, letting the audience experience the real terror of a bully.
Unfortunately that's about it for me when it comes to the positive things about this movie.
To me shooting it as a fake documentary didn't give it enough emotional depth, as the flow of the story line, and especially the victim's story was interrupted too much. This way the educational (or awareness) part was pretty dominant, which is my real problem with this movie, because it clearly fails in this category.
The movie portrays a stereotype of a bully that doesn't really reflect reality, but much more how bullying was received back in the day. Somenone from a troubled family, or with personal problems that copes with his or her frustration by bullying the victim. So kind of the classic "give me your lunch money", just on a higher level.
Not only is bullying clearly in most all of the cases a social behavior, that has a lot of group dynamics involved, which means a terror on the level that leads to suicide attempts is very often the result of active bullying from several people or a larger group. But bullying is not necessarily connected to personal problems of the bully himself.
I would even go as far as to say that the bully in the movie is not even a real bully, but would rather qualify as a psychopath, or someone with a personality disorder. She is almost obsessed with her victim, writing her hundreds of text massages online and via mobile, threatening to kill her, or suggesting her to kill herself multiple times, almost every day. That would be very unusual and alarming, and can never never be explained with some minor problems at home as in the movie, where the bully has a sudden crisis of conscience in the end, suggesting she is also just a troubled girl with the need for love.
Also they obviously throw in online bullying, but fail to really address the problem. Text massages or mails can be avoided, you can get a new phone number or mail address. What we didn't see was online shaming and harassment, often in connection with social media, almost always, again, a group thing. Often sexual orientation of the victim is involved, often pictures and videos of victims are used.
A whole movie from the perspective of the victim, no fake documentary, maybe with a lot of POV shots would have been better, showing how it comes to such a thing as a suicide attempt in more depth, in that case I wouldn't even have bothered so much with the educational part.
Secondly the POV shots are a good idea regarding the topic, letting the audience experience the real terror of a bully.
Unfortunately that's about it for me when it comes to the positive things about this movie.
To me shooting it as a fake documentary didn't give it enough emotional depth, as the flow of the story line, and especially the victim's story was interrupted too much. This way the educational (or awareness) part was pretty dominant, which is my real problem with this movie, because it clearly fails in this category.
The movie portrays a stereotype of a bully that doesn't really reflect reality, but much more how bullying was received back in the day. Somenone from a troubled family, or with personal problems that copes with his or her frustration by bullying the victim. So kind of the classic "give me your lunch money", just on a higher level.
Not only is bullying clearly in most all of the cases a social behavior, that has a lot of group dynamics involved, which means a terror on the level that leads to suicide attempts is very often the result of active bullying from several people or a larger group. But bullying is not necessarily connected to personal problems of the bully himself.
I would even go as far as to say that the bully in the movie is not even a real bully, but would rather qualify as a psychopath, or someone with a personality disorder. She is almost obsessed with her victim, writing her hundreds of text massages online and via mobile, threatening to kill her, or suggesting her to kill herself multiple times, almost every day. That would be very unusual and alarming, and can never never be explained with some minor problems at home as in the movie, where the bully has a sudden crisis of conscience in the end, suggesting she is also just a troubled girl with the need for love.
Also they obviously throw in online bullying, but fail to really address the problem. Text massages or mails can be avoided, you can get a new phone number or mail address. What we didn't see was online shaming and harassment, often in connection with social media, almost always, again, a group thing. Often sexual orientation of the victim is involved, often pictures and videos of victims are used.
A whole movie from the perspective of the victim, no fake documentary, maybe with a lot of POV shots would have been better, showing how it comes to such a thing as a suicide attempt in more depth, in that case I wouldn't even have bothered so much with the educational part.