Disconnect (Henry Alex Rubin,2012):USA

Reviewed by Jian Gedrick at Arlington Theater, Santa Barbara CA

“Disconnect” was the opening film at the Santa Barbara Film festival. Presenting the film was the director and cast informing the theatre this was the first showing of the film to an audience. With this in mind I was very excited with what the film was going to turn out to be. Watching the opening scene: a continuous shot of a young man walking through a messy house passing by young people who are half naked. I was assuming this was taking place at some orgy-filled fraternity house. Cut to the next scene, a woman on an adult chat site watching a much younger man in his underwear over a webcam. Unable to see her he assumes it’s a man interested in watching him put on a sex show, before she reveals she’s ‘a chick’ just wanting to have a normal chat.

It took me awhile to connect those two scenes together, because I was stirred by the films introduction: a shot through a camera attached to the trucks of a moving skateboard accompanied by AWOLNATION’s “Sail”. The rapidity of the movement mixed with the rhythm of the song and skateboard was a zestful approach that drew me into the film. With my full attention, the plot began unfolding. “Disconnect” depicts three examples of what can go wrong online and the turn of events that follow. The examples are told through a couple (Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton) grieving over the death of their baby son and become the victims of online theft, two punk teenagers (Aviad Bernstein,Colin Ford)  abuse an unpopular boy (Jonah Bobo) through a fake Facebook profile, and a news journalist (Hope Davis) trying to uncover a business, where teens are being pimped into performing live webcam sex shows, by interacting with one of the older workers (Max Thieriot).

Alexander Skarsgard (tallest one) on the set of “Disconnect”.

The characters from each of these events are empty in their lives and try to seek salvation by connecting to others online. One scene clearly observing this is a family dinner scene, the family of the boy who gets targeted on Facebook, where everyone at the dinner table are checking their own personal things online, interacting with their electronics more than their family. Feeling distant in the real world and trying to connect outside in the cyber world draws a turn of events resulting in severe consequences. The climax of the film shows the absolute low point of each of the characters deceived online in slow-motion.

This is Henry Alex Rubin’s (director of the Oscar nominated “Murderball”) narrative, directorial debut. While I appreciated the film’s approach of trying to deliver a story drawing a picture about the potential harm of the Internet, I disliked a lot of the film’s characters who are all deeply flawed. The father of one the cyber bullies (Frank Grillo) ends up protecting his son by erasing the evidence of his son’s share of responsibility in another boy’s attempted suicide.The Boyd family have no real interaction with each other until after the son puts himself in a severe medical condition. The journalist’s intentions towards the young man are exploitative.  She is just uncovering his story to boost her career. Meanwhile he’s pressuring her to be in an intimate relationship with him, and won’t accept her discomfort  with the idea. Patton and Skasgard’s characters are detached from one another due to being numbed by depression, until they’re ultimately robbed and act insanely in a vengeance for being violated online.

Even though I found the characters  unappealing I thought  the actors played them with an effort that kept me drawn to the story. The only actors I was disappointed with were Patton and Skaarsgard. I found that the dramatic intensity they displayed after going through all these traumatic events was overwrought, and I lost interest in their storyline.

Ultimately “Disconnect” is predictable in its overall plot, but has a few surprises and  tun of events. We never know the fate of the characters, but the open-endedness is ultimately what’s one of the strong points in the movie. The film has a few techniques uncommon in films. Such as displaying the online conversation on the screen while the actors are typing it, which never lasts too long to be considered tedious. The film is decent viewing with a few unconventional moments that save it from being hokey.