Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Catfish.

Catfish
I watched this today and it was amazing, sad and scary all at the same time. It's about a young New York photographer Nev Schulman lives with his brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost in New York. Abby Pierce, an eight-year-old artist in rural Michigan, sends him a painting of one of his photographs. They become Facebook friends in a network that broadens to Abby's family, including her mother, Angela; Angela's husband; and Abby's attractive older half-sister Megan, a songwriter. For a documentary, Ariel and Henry film Nev as he begins a long distance relationship with Megan, conducted over the internet and phone calls, and they discuss meeting in person. She sends him MP3's of her songs, but Nev discovers that they are all taken from performances by other people on YouTube. He later finds evidence that Megan and Abby have made other false claims. Ariel urges his upset brother to continue the relationship for the documentary. The siblings and Henry eventually travel to Michigan to make an impromptu appearance at the Pierces' house and confront Megan. They discover that the person behind all these Facebook personae is Angela, in reality a housewife who cares for two disabled stepsons in addition to Abby. Although Angela's husband Vince exists, the real life Megan has no contact with the family and was not the person talking to Nev. The trio also finds out that Abby is not a child prodigy, and she cares little for painting or drawing altogether. Angela is the artist behind the paintings. Angela also used fake photographs for herself, Vince and Megan and her fake friends.
It is explained that Angela seems to have fabricated these fictional people on Facebook as a way to escape the regrets that came with sacrifices she had to make in order to have a family and a stable life. As the film progresses towards the end, Angela's life around the house and interactions with her family are shown.

The reason I said this was scary was because I'm sure this happens all the time or at least there are people out there trying to make this happen, it's also sad because while watching it you can tell this lady is probably lonely or isn't happy with her life. So she gets online to make up a new life. I definitely suggest everyone watch this because it's really eye opening.

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