2010
M
Contains sexual violence, violence and offensive language.
What took her family years to build, a stranger stole in an instant.
After curious and vulnerable teenager Annie (Liana Liberato) falls into a trap set by an online sexual predator, her family begins to disintegrate, uncertain how to cope with such a devastating tragedy. Utterly consumed by rage, her father (Clive Owen) sets out seeking vengeance.
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Reviewer: Aaron Yap
Date Added: 6 Nov 2011
Aaron's Rating:2.0
David Schwimmer’s second feature is a screamingly unsubtle screed, hammering out its potentially provocative, socially relevant digital-age themes - internet predators and their victims - into a sophomoric, TV-movie-ish melodrama that looks like misguided Lifetime channel slop. The film’s saving grace is Liana Liberato’s compelling performance as Annie, the 14-year-old school girl, whom, unbeknownst to her parents, has been secretly chatting to a creep who’s 20 years older than her. There’s a naturally crushing power to her portrayal of her character’s naivete and confusion, that makes her adult, more experienced counterparts Clive Owen and Catherine Keener look histrionic and hysterical in comparison. Schwimmer’s visual choices are occasionally laughable: the garish, truly lame chat text that pops up on the screen, the depictions of Owen’s paranoia that goes into exploitative territory with its feverish flashbacks of his daughter getting raped. The film wraps without much of a consequence, its ill-fitting coda aiming to pack some kind of revelatory wallop but will probably only make you go ‘... and yeah?’. Well-intentioned, no doubt, but muddled execution.