by Jared Free

It’s easy nowadays to know too much about your neighbor. Thanks to the internet, our phones and computers connect us to each other in ways that our grandparents could never have imagined. Every click, like, watch, and swipe that make up our virtual identity are held within these plastic boxes – making them the keepers of our most private secrets. Assassination Nation, the latest from director Sam Levinson, asks what would happen if we found out exactly what our friends, coworkers and neighbors were doing with their phones. The movie, set in Salem, Massachusetts (an apt if sophomoric choice), follows a group of teenage girls as their town is attacked by a series of hacks that expose everyone’s secrets. When the townspeople’s social positions are confronted with their online activity, the town falls into chaos. The conservative mayor’s queer sexual fetishes are revealed, leading to his suicide, and the high school principal is made out to be a pervert for having a video of his young daughter taking a bath. As the hacks continue, our four central girls are forced to fight their townspeople for their lives.

The film’s descent into violent mayhem affords it a special kind of catharsis reserved for revenge fantasies. The girls get their decadent revenge, and the audience gets the satisfaction of knowing that every shot of a bullet or slice of a katana is fully deserved. But the film’s political utility is impacted because of the violence. The message of the movie – which seemed to me to be a call for empathy in an age of online witch hunts – is developed and discussed with intelligence and emotion throughout the first part of the movie. But, as the fated night begins, the priorities of the movie shift away from placing characters in emotional or philosophical crisis, and towards placing the characters under attack. And while the first scene of violence, an amazing long take reminiscent of the jewel box shot from Sophia Copula’s The Bling Ring, racks up the stakes, the violence eventually becomes banal. Without any fresh cinematic perspective on the violence, Assassination Nation ends up losing the specificity of its characters in references.

Assassination Nation’s energy carries it through to the end, but I can’t help but wish that the second half of the movie had been better executed. But thanks to excellent performances from its starring cast and heapings of visual flair, it ends up a success in any case.

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