Chatroom (2010)

Critic Reviews

• Philip French, Guardian [UK]

  Unfortunately the scenes set in the real world (the locations include Camden Lock and the London Zoo) are stilted and unconvincing, while those in the chatrooms become increasingly tedious.

• Alistair Harkness, Scotsman

  Nakata - here making his English language debut - fails to drum up much in the way of tension from the plot's hoky attempt to exploit fears about the existence of online suicide clubs.

• Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph

  Pantomimic dialogue, stagey sets and underwritten characters render this instantly obsolescent.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  A movie of utter, unspeakable, hideous awfulness. A movie that makes you want to prise open your brain and scoop out all memory of having watched it.

• Charlotte O'Sullivan, This is London

  Director Hideo "The Ring" Nakata never connects with the script (by Enda Walsh, adapting from his own play).

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  The film finally fizzles into feeble melodrama, with all the power of an old episode of Grange Hill.

• Damon Wise, Radio Times

  Plausible chills are offset by the film's clumsy youth-movie trimmings, which, through lurid visuals and ripe overacting by its largely unknown cast, drain most of the suspense and interest...

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  There's a great idea here, but this awkward and dated film struggles to bring the cyberspace experience to life in the form of a gritty teen thriller.

• Leo Robson, Financial Times

  The gimmick is so poorly conceived that we spend most of the film converting what we are being shown into what is actually going on. It isn't worth the effort.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Poorly written and badly acted, Chatroom squanders its only decent idea early on and rapidly descends into a shallow-minded, lifeless thriller that fails to engage on any level whatsoever.

• Graham Young, Birmingham Post

  There are times when Nakata skilfully blends the real world with cyber unreality to illustrate how impressionable youngsters can end up wondering just which world they are in at any time.

• Josh Winning, Little White Lies

  In the end, Nakata's notion of a web gone wild has moments of visual merit, but is a little too clinical and coldly cynical.

• Rob Daniel, Sky Movies

  A film that never approaches the real-life terror of discovering your broadband's down.

• Simon Crook, Empire Magazine

  Definitely zeigeisty but short on thrills.

• Dave Calhoun, Time Out

  'The Social Network' and 'Catfish' prove there are ripe films to be made on the dark side of web connectivity, but this is the rotten apple of the bunch.

• , Daily Express

  Nakata skilfully takes us into the real and virtual lives of a group of London teenagers and shows us, with terrifying consequences, the power and ability to manipulate reality in a virtual world.

• Philip Kemp, Total Film

  A plodder that prefers to explain (and then repeat the explanation) rather than let the audience use their imagination.

Read all 17 critic reviews