Hey, how about that poster?
And now that you’ve seen the best thing about director Joel Soisson’s 2014 indie horror Cam2Cam, we can probably just move on.
Okay, tell you what, I may be feeling lazy, but I’m not quite feeling that lazy. After all, I watched this thing on Netflix the other night (it’s also available on DVD — though not on Blu-ray — from IFC), and I started to write a review of it, so I may as well finish the job. And while it may not be a job that I’m actually getting paid for, warning well-intentioned horror fans away from this pile of shit will hopefully count as my good deed for the day and I can rack up a few cheap points on the ol’ karmic wheel.
So, to make a long story short, here’s why you don’t need to bother with this one : I figured a flick set in Bangkok about an American back-packer named Allie Westbrook (Tammin Sursok) looking to explore the city’s more salacious side by using the internet to get in with a kinky group of ex-pats would at least provide a few quick and sleazy thrills, but the simple fact of the matter is that Cam2Cam is waaaaaaayyy more tame than its subject matter — not to mention its poster — would suggest.
The deal here is that Allie meets a semi-charismatic stranger named Michael (Ben Wiggins), a seemingly “vanilla” individual who introduces her to his more — uhhhmmm — “adventurous” friend, Lucy (Jade Tailor), who in turn introduces her to the unofficial leader of their kinky little posse, Marit (Sarah Bonrepaux), and then it turns out that this whole little online fetish club has a lot more than sex on its collective mind and that their video-recorded wares are being marketed to the biggest sickos you can possibly imagine.
Obviously, none of this is terribly original. Nor is it terribly good. The key elements are all here for a memorably cheap-n’-seedy time, to be sure, but Soisson gives it all the Lifetime-movie-of-the-week treatment —and it really doesn’t help that only Bonrepaux seems to be approaching her task with any sort of relish. Everyone else just seems embarrassed to be here and planning ahead for how they’re going to save up enough money to hire a good lawyer who can scrub this thing off their IMDB CVs.
And you know what? I can’t say I blame them. Soisson could — and should — have gone the Vice Squad route here and played up the prurient elements in his film to the hilt, but instead he seems to be more concerned with making a Bangkok-sex-and-murder- flick that won’t offend delicate Midwestern sensibilities. Any filmmaker tackling material this potentially combustible should probably ask him or herself plenty of questions going in, but “how will it play in Peoria?” isn’t one of them. Leave that shit for the Hallmark Channel.
But hey — do go ahead and look at that poster one more time before you’re done here. Then remind yourself that you’ve seen all you need to of Cam2Cam and hey, you didn’t even need to waste any of your time actually watching it.
Trash Film Guru 