‘Assassination Nation’: Social Media Satire Misses The Mark [Sundance Review]

“Assassination Nation” starts off in deliciously horrific fashion, with a warning about the “sensory assault” that’s about to happen onscreen. “Fragile male egos” are told to brace themselves for murder, bullying, and torture, and a kinetic montage follows teasing all the mayhem that’s about to ensue. If only the film were that exciting.

Writer-director Sam Levinson’s film sold for $10 million, a record at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. That’s all fine and dandy and not surprising considering the rambunctious audience reaction it garnered earlier in the week at the Midnight screening premiere. But after the dust has settled, this satirical riff on the dangers of social media feels like a non-starter for the horror genre.

Set in Salem, Massachusetts, home to, of course, the infamous witch trials of the 19th century, “Assassination Nation” tries to use that historic event, where a small American town lost its mind, to make parallels to contemporary American life. Revolving around four high school girls and best friends — Lilly (Odessa Young), Bex (transgender actress Hari Nef), Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), and Em (Abra) — the film takes pride in being feminist but veers a little too much towards the male gaze of its male director. Encompassing erotically charged shots of the female protagonists, while at the same time trying to empower them, Levinson gives us a confusing thematic core to work with despite his seemingly good intentions.

Lily is the lead, and just like any high schooler her age, she’s confused about who she is. She starts a sexting friendship with an older man named Nick (Joel McHale), but also has a bumbling jock of a boyfriend (Bill Skarsgard) who doesn’t know a thing about the sexually charged communication between Lily and the man she’s nicknamed “Daddy” on her phone.

Things change when the private digital lives of Salem residents start leaking online. The mayor’s cross dressing photos lead him to suicide and the high school principal is accused of pedophilia for photos showing him taking a bath with his three-year-old son. This witch hunt continues as texts, emails, photos, and messages reveal secrets that many never wanted to be divulged in public, and that’s when the townspeople rebel and start attacking each other.

The identity of the leaker is unknown but a high school student, known to like and support hacking entities such as “Anonymous,” is blamed, but he quickly deflects the attention to Lilly whom he claims shares the same IP address as the source of the hack. Lilly and her friends become targets for the town’s rage, and masked-mobs armed with guns, machetes, swords and much more try to track them down.

The first hour is overwhelmingly exciting as Levinson uses split screens and more stylistic techniques to make his story pop. The dialogue is also delivered in impressively natural fashion, with the leading quartet discussing subjects that capture the zeitgeist. However, the ultra-violent finale goes over the top, lacking the pizzaz and inventiveness of the film’s earlier stages. Levinson resorts to familiar horror movie tropes, and what initially feels like a film about feminist millennial angst quickly devolves into a slasher flick that tries to make an overtly obvious statement about the dangers of social media.

The climax, which has Levinson framing his “badass” sword-wielding girls walking in slow-motion down the streets of their suburban neighbourhood, looking to exact their revenge, is ridiculously overwrought and on the nose, but maybe that’s the point. This is Levinson’s ode to American excess, where nothing comes simply and the potential for society to crumble into chaos is just a mouse click away. [C+]

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