Forget Pokémon: This online-game tale dares to be different
‘NERVE” is the story of the hot new online craze that all the young ones are into: “This game is sick,” says a teen — but the adjective is not meant as praise.
The sharpest, wildest and most unpredictable thriller I’ve seen this year, “Nerve” begins at the desk of a shy Staten Island high schooler, Vee (Emma Roberts), who, feeling caged by her own personality, joins an online game in which young players accept increasingly outrageous dares in exchange for money from thousands of watchers.
Dared to kiss a stranger, Vee selects Ian (Dave Franco), who turns out to be a fellow player in the game. So off they bolt together into the night, into Manhattan, into . . . what? “Nerve” conceals its cards beautifully.
Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman wring Jessica Sharzer’s cunning script for everything it’s worth. There are two diabolically suspenseful scenes as the youths accept life-threatening dares, filmed at every stop by legions of pervy watchers who are silent and hungry for mayhem.
In the early going, the film seems like a ploy to sell wish fulfillment to a narcissistic young audience: What would it be like if you could have tons of fun while racking up thousands of online fans?
Stealthily, though, “Nerve” explores the moral rot of famecraving and the complicity of an audience baying for evermore-extreme entertainment. The climactic scene combines inescapable pressure with confusing social codes and the ruthlessness of peers: Not a bad metaphor for youth itself. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated PG-13 (dangerous behavior, sexual content, profanity, drug content, nudity and drinking, all involving teens). Now playing.