Nerve stars young talent Emma Roberts (Venus “Vee” Delmonic) as a high-school senior who struggles to tell her mother Nancy (Juliette Lewis) about her acceptance into the prestigious and expensive California Institute of the Arts, because of their financial situation and the clinginess of Nancy due to a death in the family. It offers the sort of characterisation found in works such as The Hunger Games, appealing to young adults interested in the character growth of young women. 

This is because the film is also based on a young adult book targeted at teenage girls, and happens to be written by newcomer Jeanne Ryan. The novel wasn’t particularly well-received [averages 3.4 on goodreads] but clearly carried the right ingredients for a timely film in the eyes of a producer.

When one of Vee’s friends, Sydney (Emily Meade), tells her crush J.P. (Brian Marc) about Vee’s feelings for him, he rejects her, leaving Vee upset. Until then Vee has been needled by her friends for being a bit boring, and avoiding an online video game called Nerve. After the incident, Vee decides it’s time for a new attitude and digs into Nerve head-on.


With mediocre pickings such as Suicide Squad and Jason Bourne hogging the local box office, a film such as Nerve is a welcome home video distraction


In the world of Nerve, this video game is a cult sensation. Think Pokémon GO but illegal, occasionally dangerous, involving money, crazy stunts and more. Okay, so it’s nothing like Pokémon GO. Essentially, Nerve is a truth-or-dare game where gamers are challenged to perform dares as watchers observe on their devices. These watchers can increase the stakes of the dare by offering money.

Here, we are presented with the film’s biggest plot hole. When Vee signs up for the game, she is asked to meet several conditions, including promising not to report the game to law enforcement. But it is impossible to imagine law enforcement not being aware of the game with its vast following. In fact, there is no plausible reason why they haven’t brought it down yet.

Vee’s dares begin innocently enough. She is asked to kiss a stranger and she picks a guy named Ian (Dave Franco) as she sees him reading a book she likes. As fate would have it, he is also a player of Nerve. Next, Ian is dared to take Vee out to the city because the watchers feel they have chemistry. Soon, the couple takes on riskier dares, boosting their popularity. This leads to friction, jealousy and other bad consequences with their competitors and friends.

For the first two-thirds of the film, Nerve offers a tense, fun, entertaining piece of cinema backed by some clever camera work and editing, and an emotive soundtrack. There are some exciting plot twists as well, which I won’t give away, but they add to the thrill. Directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost prove highly competent at putting together an exciting film as long as viewers hit the pause buttons on their brains.

Unfortunately, Nerve loses its nerve by the final act where the storytelling grows so preposterous that your brain can’t take any more, and the film’s core story is overridden by needlessly over-the-top stakes. Like some of the film’s characters, it seems the two film-makers didn’t know when to stop.

Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving dangerous and risky behavior, carnal content, language, drug content, drinking and nudity involving teens

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 28th, 2016

Opinion

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