Previously posted on blog and written by B. Demeter
Antisocial is a movie about a social networking site turning people in zombies and may very well be the worst movie I’ve seen all year.
It’s New Year’s Eve and a bunch of college students are partying it up. Unfortunately this is the night that the social network site RedRoom’s subliminal social engineering program turns everyone into zombies. Why? Who knows?
The film takes place in a house with five friends/eventual victims. The story is supplemented by video-chats with other people dealing with the pandemic in other places. Video-chats and posted videos is also how the movie provides a lot of exposition.
According to one of the websites engineers, RedRoom was running the program to track the users and increase site visits. Unbeknownst to them, the program was causing the users to develop a brain tumor. When they tried to stop the program, it went viral and continued to affect the users. Eventually the tumor causes the person to become a “zombie” before the tumor bursts and kills the host.
I’m using quotes around “zombie” because in this movie they make no sense. As nothing more than social network automatons they shouldn’t have any real desire to kill. The movie shows that when the infection takes over the “zombie” becomes part of a collective hive mind. There is no reason why a hive mind of social network addicts would do anything but surf the internet and e-stalk ex-boyfriend/girlfriends. However, the infected become vicious murder machines. Why? Again, who knows?
Also, all of the “zombies” that attack the group are fast moving horror zombies; shaved heads, ripped clothing, and blood spattered. The attacks are happening on a college campus from people who regularly visit social networking sites. The villains should all have hipster haircuts and tight fitting jeans. There is no reason this sort of goomba zombie should be attacking anybody.
If all this weren’t dumb enough, the film posits that when one of the infected dies the dead person’s eyes become web cams and post streams to Redroom. While this might have been slightly interesting, the movie uses this aspect for absolutely nothing other than a cheap parlor trick.
I didn’t notice until it was too late that Antisocial is filmed in the same style as David Fincher’s The Social Network. Antisocial uses similar color schemes and shot compositions; they even use a knock off Trent Reznor-esque soundtrack. I think if I had noticed this from the beginning it would have made the movie more interesting to watch purely for comparative reasons.
In the end, the movie has the heroine drill a hole into her skull to remove the black vein that is supplying the brain tumor. Then she heroically walks out of the house while a voice-over news report tells us that the infected dead are reanimating and becoming murderous monsters (Now THAT’S a zombie). It’s so fucking stupid.
This could have been a stupid little movie that is the horror version of The Social Network. However, I just noticed on IMDb that there is a sequel in the works and it just made me really sad. I’d definitely log out of this one.
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