AnitaSocial

IMDb
Five university friends gather at a house party to ring in the New Year. Unbeknownst to them, an epidemic has erupted outside, causing outbreaks around the world.



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MOVIE INFO

Five university friends gather at a house party to ring in the New Year. Unbeknownst to them, an epidemic has erupted outside, causing outbreaks around the world. With nowhere else to turn, they barricade themselves indoors with only their phones, laptops, and other tech devices. They use their devices to research the possible cause of this outbreak. Information and video footage over flow their computers as they descend further into the cause and the ensuing chaos. As the virus spreads, the mood in the house changes from fear to paranoia. Who is safe? Who can they trust? Reality becomes blurred as they slowly discover the source of the virus causing the sickness...and there is no going back.

Best-Horror-Movies

Antisocial made it’s debut at the end of July 2013 at Canada’s premier genre film festival Fantasia. where it caused a stir with its novel take on zombies, not to mention modern society’s dependence on “always on” technology and social networks. It’s like the best parts of Romero’s Diary of the Dead (the use of the internet for the dissemination of information), the remake of Pulse (not meant in a bad way, promise) with a dash of Pontypool. The result is a nifty little horror yarn that uses isolation, enclosed spaces and technology to build tension and atmosphere. There’s violence and scares to be had but they are used sparingly as the film builds menacingly towards one of the best endings to a horror movie all year.

After an awkward video conversation leading to her being dumped by her boyfriend via social network site The Social Redroom, Sam is hardly in the mood for a New Years Eve party. However when her friend Mark calls she is convinced to come over and enjoy some drinks with friends. One by one we are introduced to Mark, Chad, Jed, Steve and Kaitlin via their Social Redroom pages. Chad heads out to drum up interest in their party while the others begin the festivities. Unbeknownst to them however is that outside, things are starting to go very, very wrong. Jed first notices news reports on the TV telling people to stay indoors, then a video call to his friend increases his worries; his friend has been told to stay in his dorm and that nobody can leave the building. Reports start to leak through about rashes of attacks, cops having to shoot and kill what look like harmless young people. When someone comes banging at the door to the house, somebody punches through glass to try and grab at Sam. Meanwhile Steve and Kaitlin are upstairs in his bedroom when someone comes bursting through his balcony window. Steve briefly struggles with the unknown assailant until he pushes him back onto the balcony where the man falls to his death. People on the street casually walk up and take pictures of the dead attacker with their phones. As news of the outside world begins to suggest some sort of zombie plague is quickly spreading the friends decide to fortify the house Night of the Living Dead style. But is that all for nothing as the remaining few in the house try to piece together what is causing this incredibly sudden outbreak?

In a world where every other horror movie has zombies in it we are forever looking for the fresh take, the ones that give you a different perspective or some neat new concept for an overexposed genre. The trailer for Antisocial is quite misleading, in fact I would recommend not watching it at all if possible because it contains a good 50% of the scares and gore that’s in the movie. Where thePontypool comparison comes in as this is a movie that wants to diverge significantly from the usual zombie tropes. While it does not go quite as far into high concept weirdness as Pontypool,Antisocial wants you to keep the usual “rules” of zombie movies while itself is rewriting them. Indeed, even the characters in the movie treat the zombies (definitely more 28 Days Later rage monster than the “classic” shambling variety) adheres closely to how other movies treat zombies. They try to avoid the blood of the infected, wearing rubber gloves and washing their hands with bleach while the movie quietly snickers to itself about how little they understand about what is going on. It’s the Internet and how we use it to communicate with and inform each other that both what helps the characters piece things together but simultaneously is sowing the seeds for their demise.

Whatever the makers of the truly awful remake of Pulse were attempting to convey in their story informs some of what we see in Antisocial only to much greater effect. The story gets decidedly less and less subtle as the film goes on but it’s the small touches in the first two acts that really make things interesting. Notice which social groups appear to be infected first, which demographics are the first to start losing themselves to violent rage and murder. Then later the occupants of the house start to see social media being used not just to show us clues as to what’s going on but also announcements that they are sick, or that their friends are disappearing or dying around them. Characters know something is wrong but can’t put their cellphones down, can’t resist answering that call from a restricted number. It’s a chilling use of the “always on” tech culture where we can use Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to communicate, read and watch whatever we want pretty much whenever we want. It’s a great twist, building on the tension and relating a sense of unease to those smartphones and computers that we use on a daily basis, that many of us trust perhaps a lot more than they should. They could very well simultaneously be our undoing and yet also the only lasting record of what has happened to us. Adding to the dread is the electronic score, completely cold and grim it shrouds the film in its artificial gloom.

Then, the third act throws much of that subtlety out of the window and becomes extremely silly. For the less patient this may come as a relief as this is when most of the violence and gore takes place. The film completely lays out the reasons for everything almost as if the writers themselves got impatient and wanted to get to the red stuff too. The movie does also feature a young and inexperienced cast. Michelle Mylett is the standout but at times she is given some really forced faux-angst dialog that quickly becomes cringeworthy. The rest of the cast is solid but is never really padded out to any great degree, it’s clear you’re really in it for the novel concept and the eventual payoff. Silly as it may be, it’s fair to say that the film more than earns its right to push you towards an explanation and conclusion after so much build and yes, the ending is what great zombie movies are made of.

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