Is Sam Esmail’s new film inconclusive? Or did it get to the point?
The new apocalyptic film on Netflix has been a topic of conversation in the past few weeks. Though some like it, others might hack the Internet and cause the same chaos as the movie in indignation. It is necessary to break down the different themes director Sam Esmail wanted to project in his new film.
A Clever Casting
Let’s start with his casting choices that didn’t make sense. Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts have zero chemistry. Nevertheless, Julia Roberts sucks, and she doesn’t have chemistry with anyone. Though her acting usually annoys me, her character annoyed me even more. She’s the ultimate white actress playing the white bitch. And that suddenly made sense.
That’s when we can figure out is about a white family going on vacation. That’s substantiated in the dialogue details, the white bitch wants coffee from Starbucks, the frustrated husband talks about what he reads in The Atlantic, the girl is binge-watching Friends and the boy, he’s just a horny dude. We don’t see their vacations impacted by the hacking yet. The tension starts when they have an unexpected visit from Mahershala Ali and his daughter, played by Myha’la Herrold.
The Racial Tension
Unsurprisingly, Julia Roberts’s impersonation of a Karen starts the conflicts between both parties. She couldn’t assimilate that a black man could be wealthy enough to have a big house in Long Island, and she could believe the emergency even though her cell phone was not working either. On the other hand, the black Zoomer isn’t willing to take any micro-aggression and racist comments from the old white woman to the point of striking back with aggressive and sarcastic remarks.
In a country separated by beliefs, generations, and race, it is no surprise that Esmeil wanted to make things clear by the movie’s first act. We are a conflicting society that still to this day suffers from bigotry, and younger generations are not taking it anymore. Being a divided society would make us an easy target for whoever hacked our telecommunications systems.
The Digital Dependency
Not only are we divided, but we’re also codependent on the Internet. Without the Internet, we would be clueless, and perhaps a bunch of Tesla cars would drive themselves and kill us all. So what are we going to do in a world without the Internet? Are we going to settle our differences? Would we stop prejudicing and discriminating against people around us?
In conclusion, this movie doesn’t need to explain everything cause the point is not who attacked us and why. It is more about what we would do in a situation like this. Would we survive together as a society under attack and without technology? Better yet, do we have physical media for our entertainment?
This is not a perfect movie. But at least we can take its inconclusiveness to think about and open a dialogue about the social themes at play.
Spoiler Alert!
I can write about another article about this movie and its ending. But to keep things simple, everyone who lives anywhere impacted by a hurricane knows how it is to not have electricity and Internet for a long time. That’s where physical media comes in handy. We need to rethink whether we want to live in a world without films or TV shows that a streaming service can’t touch after this last scene reminded us of DVDs.
I wasted 500 words if the whole point was physical media. But that girl has all the right in the world to sit down and watch the last episode of Friends. She deserves to know what happened to Rachel and Ross. And anyone else would’ve done the same.
