Movie Review: ‘APP’

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TECHNOLOGY! IT’S A THING!

I genuinely wanted to approach this film with a positive mindset but I simply couldn’t concede an inch to the pessimism telling me that this film was going to be another disappointment in the vein of my previous cyber-horror experience, ‘Antisocial.’ Did my cynical attitude colour my experience of the film? You be the judge.

APP immediately upset my expectations by being a Dutch film. This significantly raised my prospects of maybe witnessing a good film because American cyber-horror has been a bust so far. The opening sequence establishes a strong atmosphere and the director immediately establishes that he can surprise even a jaded shockmeister like myself. However, it’s also a rather cliche way to open the film and nearly bludgeons the audience with the implications of the event.

The story then follows an “unrelated” girl, establishing her day to day life. It’s executed well, serving both to flesh her out while simultaneously grounding us in her smartphone-assisted routines. Other than being refreshingly independent, there’s nothing terribly interesting or unique about heroine Anna, who even attends one of those cliche crazy parties that always show up in these films. These are almost the exact same story beats that ‘Antisocial’ hit! Except instead of bloodthirsty infected showing up, it’s a mysterious app that immediately starts wreaking preposterously over-the-top havoc on her life for no apparent reason.

[toggle title=”Spoiler Section (Expand at Your Own Risk!)”] There is a reason, of course, which is that her ex-boyfriend, a malicious jerk whose intense jealousy is matched only by his genius-level tech skills, is using an app to ruin her life for rejecting him. Had it been properly executed, this concept might’ve actually gone places. But instead, the film utterly fails to maintain a suspension of disbelief, relying on increasingly absurd setpieces with completely predictable payoffs to give the ethereal threat some kind of menace, yet it’s painfully obvious how impossible each scenario is. Massively compounding the problem is the denouement, revealing that the app itself is somehow haunted by the dead girl of the film’s introduction. Turns out (get ready for this) it was his more recent ex-girlfriend who had an abortion, which he wasn’t too happy about, so he told everyone, and so we’re lead to believe that the trauma of this was what led her to kill herself.[/toggle]

What is that even supposed to mean? Is that supposed to be a criticism of how abortions are still stigmatized? More importantly, why did they feel the need to have her commit suicide when they could’ve easily just made the ex-boyfriend kill her outright because, as the film’s runtime illustrates, he’s not particularly squeamish about this. No, instead, it’s abortion, a subject that very few genre filmmakers have the chops to tackle thoughtfully, and these filmmakers using it as a throwaway plot point is aggravating.

Eventually, the ‘Final Destination’-lite carnage climaxes with a predictable twist, a tedious rooftop confrontation and a second twist that’s only slightly less predictable. The film doesn’t deliver much in the way of gore or suspense though being visually pleasing and bustling with above average performances goes a long way towards making up for that, and to the director’s credit, the evil app concept is translated better than I would’ve expected, incorporating technological advances in an interesting way, but that doesn’t make the overall experience any less disappointing.