My screen is too bright. It's 1:48 AM and my laptop is basically a flashlight in my face and I feel like I need to turn it off and just sit in the dark for a while. I just finished C U Soon on Netflix and I feel… violated. Like I just spent an hour and a half hacking into someone's life and now I'm an accomplice. My fingers feel grimy. I keep looking at my own desktop, my own little folders, and wondering what secrets they'd tell if someone just… knew where to look.
It’s all just screens. That’s the whole movie. A computer desktop, a phone screen, a FaceTime call. And I’m watching it on my screen, in my dark room, and the lines just… blurred. I wasn't watching a movie. I was hovering over Jimmy’s shoulder while he tore his girlfriend’s digital life apart, piece by piece. I was right there with him, leaning so close to my laptop screen at one point that I could see the individual pixels. My heart was pounding. Literally pounding. When he was frantically typing in that password, trying to get into her secret folder, I was holding my breath. I think I forgot to breathe for a solid thirty seconds. It was just a password field. A blinking cursor. But it felt like the most important thing in the world.
There's this one moment. It's stuck in my head. He's scrolling through her hard drive, just endless files and folders. And the mouse cursor is just… there. Blinking. Taunting him. It’s this tiny, insignificant thing, but it felt like a bomb ticking. The sound of the clicks, the soft *thunk* as he opens a folder, the whir of the digital fan… it was all so quiet but so loud. And then he finds it. That one video file. He double-clicks. And the screen goes black for a second before the video loads. I physically recoiled. I leaned back in my bed, hitting my head on the wall behind me. I didn't even feel it. I just knew I didn't want to see what was on that file. But I couldn't look away. It's the same morbid curiosity that makes you stare at a car crash. You know you shouldn't, but you can't help it.
It reminds me of this girl I used to talk to online. We played some stupid MMORPG together for like, a year. We never video called, ever. She said her webcam was broken. I believed her. Why wouldn't I? She sent me pictures. She was beautiful. We'd talk for hours, just typing. Our entire relationship was just text on a screen. Then one day, I don't know why, I got this weird feeling. I took one of her pictures and did a reverse image search. (I know, I know, it's a creepy thing to do, don't judge me). And there it was. Her face. On some random lifestyle blog from Poland. She was a stock photo model. I felt so incredibly stupid. And also, weirdly, like a genius detective for a second. I felt like Jimmy in the movie, piecing together a digital puzzle. I never spoke to her again. Just logged off and never went back. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is the movie made me feel that same gut-wrenching blend of betrayal and discovery all over again.
I watched it on Netflix, of course. Where else would you watch a movie that *is* a computer screen? It felt right. I was curled up in bed, the duvet pulled up to my chin, the world outside my window completely gone. It was just me and this glowing rectangle of anxiety. The at-home experience was crucial. If I'd seen this in a cinema, with a giant screen and surround sound, it would have been a movie. But on my laptop, it felt real. The scale was perfect. It felt like I was the one on the laptop, the one getting the frantic WhatsApp messages from my cousin in Dubai. At one point, my phone buzzed with a real notification and I nearly jumped out of my skin. For a split second, I thought it was part of the movie. The meta-experience was just… a lot.
I thought I loved the format. I really did. I thought it was this brilliant, innovative way to tell a story. So intimate, so immediate. But now that I'm typing this… was it actually kind of a gimmick? A clever way to make a movie on a low budget without ever having to leave a room? I don't know. Right now, in this post-movie haze, it feels like genius. The way the tension builds from nothing but a loading bar or a "typing..." indicator is masterful. But ask me tomorrow and I might just say I watched someone else use Google for 90 minutes. My brain is still trying to categorize it. Was it a film? A found footage thing? A really long tech support ad?
And the characters. Jimmy. God, what a frustrating guy. He's trying so hard to be this cool, capable dude, but you can see the panic underneath. He's just a guy in a t-shirt, trying to fix an impossible problem with a keyboard. And Anu. We never really meet her, do we? We just see her through these digital echoes. Through photos and video clips and old chats. It’s like trying to assemble a ghost from a handful of scattered memories. The movie does such a good job of making you feel like you know her, and then you realize you know nothing at all. It's a total magic trick.
So yeah. I feel weird. Unsettled. I keep glancing at my phone, half-expecting a message from a number I don't know. I feel like I should delete my social media. Go live in the woods. The movie is a horror story, but not with ghosts or monsters. The monster is the internet. The monster is the trail of data we all leave behind us, a story that can be read by anyone who knows how. I feel so exposed. And I didn't even do anything.
Okay, I can't look at this screen anymore. I need to lie down and stare at the ceiling. My head is spinning.
8/10. - solid
-Ishaan