ÔÇ£Are you a watcher or a player?ÔÇØ is the hook for the new 2016 film, Nerve, starring Emma Roberts and Dave Franco. In this mind-twisting, edge-of-your-seat thriller, a shy high school teen, Vee (Emma Roberts) finds herself playing an online game of truth or dare without the truth. The game has the audience pulled in with what seems like an innocent dare -Vee has to go to a diner and kiss a random stranger. Here, we meet Ian (Dave Franco) who catches her eye, sitting reading one of VeeÔÇÖs favourite classics, To The Lighthouse┬áby Virignia Woolf. She then proceeds to pick him for her dare – the kiss turning out to be more than the dareÔÇÖs ‘5 second rule’. Turns out that Ian is also playing the game because he receives a dare to serenade Vee with the classic, ‘You Got It’. The anonymous community of ‘watchers’ then want Vee and Ian to team up in the game, participating in numerous dares which include trying on expensive clothes at a high end department store and Vee getting a tattoo, to more dangerous ones like driving a motorcycle 60 miles per hour with Ian as the driver, blindfolded, and Vee guiding him. However, what may initially seem like an innocent game of dare, turns into a Hunger Games-esque grand finale where only one player can be left standing, literally.

The film is highly climactic and does a good job of looking into the dark side of social media and the ÔÇÿdark webÔÇÖ, where an innocent game turns dangerous and where people hiding behind a computer screen manipulate the playersÔÇÖ every move. Moreover, Emma and Dave have perfect chemistry together that is to be tested at the very, ‘thrilling’ end. Both have their own individual story to tell – Emma as Vee being a shy, unadventurous teen who lives in the shadow of her adrenaline junkie best friend, Sydney, and Dave as Ian hiding a┬ádark secret. The film echoes others but still retains enough of its own originality to be considered unique and to keep the audience gripping their seats, waiting for the next scene. That being said, Nerve deserves an overall eight out of ten stars.

Sanja Dragojlov