NERVE REVIEW: It takes ‘Nerve’ to be on the cool list…

In “Nerve,” a dark-heart-of-the-Internet thriller, Vee (Emma Roberts), a high school senior is unsure if she should follow her passions and attend an art school in California or continue to live at home in Staten Island with her single and clingy mother (Juliette Lewis). She’s also the straightest girl in her group of so-called friends (though she’s cool enough to know her Wu-Tang by heart). Venus’s best pal, Sydney (Emily Meade), is a bit of a firecracker who sucks Venus up into a sinister competition that emerges out of the deep web.

The game in question; it’s a game called Nerve, and it operates through a smartphone app, where they are gifted deposits directly to their bank accounts (once someone signs up for Nerve, their entire digital footprint is swallowed into its scattered servers) and gains prestige through fans and followers.

In the movie, anyone who makes the perilous click to play Nerve chooses to be in one of two groups: players or watchers.

Yes, two groups!

The players are the bold ones who act out a series of dares, which start off as innocuous (jumping onto a motorcycle with a leader-of-the-pack stranger) and then head toward the dangerous (don’t-look-down heights are a favorite motif).

The players receive money for each dare, but more than that, they rack up followers. They get to know that they’re loved.

On the other hand, The watchers, by contrast, are the passive drone/fans sitting on the sidelines. But they’re also the ones controlling the whole thing. They think up the dares and become a live audience for them on their phones and computers, choosing to follow this or that player.

Are we not entertained?

Sydney and Venus have a fight and, in an effort to prove she isn’t a stick-in-the-mud, Venus decides to play the game herself. At first, it is innocuous. Her first challenge is to go to a diner and kiss a stranger. Turns out the (very cute!) boy she picks, Ian (Dave Franco), is a player himself, and he ends up serenading the outer-borough rubes with a Roy Orbison tune.

Their first stop is Bergdorf Goodman, in which the pair must try on expensive clothes, and then get dared to steal the clothes, somewhat managing to skirt around the rules and the two eventually leave the fancy shop almost naked.

Throughout the night, the dares become more insane, right to the end where we find that ‘Death’ literally awaits the loser of the highest two contesters.

FINAL VERDICT:

The teen thriller from the directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman is a pulsating clique of fears and dares, culminating in a nervous game of online activity that anyone around the world can play, resulting in deaths. This is a smart and visually sizzling movie about a live-streamed game with sinister consequences. The directors bring quite a bit of cinematic sparkle to what could have been a dull story, and a rollicking soundtrack too. Culturedemandsgeeks were surprised at how well the film flowed, right up until the final act.

4/5 STARS