Is there anything scarier than a social networking site’s chat room? There is? Well, don’t tell Hideo Nakata that. Per Variety, he’s just signed on to direct Chatroom, “a psychological thriller about teenagers who encourage each others destructive behavior.” Presumably this encouragement will take place online which promises lots of suspenseful and angst-ridden scenes of teenagers typing.
Chatroom will be Nakata’s third English language feature, after Dark Water and The Ring 2. It’s worth noting that both of those films sucked. Before coming to America, Nakata was at the forefront of the J-Horror phenomenon helming films like Chaos and the original Ringu and Ringu 2. WestEnd Films founder Eve Schoukroun says “Nakata has come up with something very visual, very conceptual, and situated somewhere between Disturbia and Cube.” Take that however you want, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Shia LaBeouf get sliced and diced with lasers.
The film is written by Enda Walsh from his own play, but it may be more than a little influenced by the recent headlines about cyber-bullying and suicide. Nakata is a master of the logical inconsistency, and the idea of kids berating and baiting each other into desperate acts against themselves or others sounds pretty boring so color me uninterested.
