Emma Roberts is Venus Delmonico, known as Vee to her friends who seem to be an everyday (if a little old looking) high school senior who’s talent for photography has earned her a place in a Californian college but who’s mother Nancy (Juliette Lewis) expects Vee to attend a local college near her Staten Island home as she does not want to be left alone since the death of Vee’s brother and this sets up the character very well. A nice girl but a bit of a wall flower who allows others to control her life, none more so that her outgoing, center of attention friend, Sydney (Emily Meade).

Sydney is currently engaged in an online game called Nerve where she is a Player and must act out dares as dictated by the people viewing the game, called Watchers. After one such dare Sydney begins to tease Vee about how she needs to let go a little and take a chance in life. When this leads to an incident where Sydney embarrasses her in front of a guy that she is attracted to Vee takes off and in a moment of rebellion decides to become a Player where her first dare is to kiss a stranger which co-incidentally leads her into the path of Ian (Dave Franco) who turns out to be a fellow player and so the Watchers turn them into a partnership as they are given dares which require them to work together to succeed.

As Vee becomes deeper and deeper involved she loses her shackles and begins to embrace the limelight however the dares get closer to the point where they become life threatening and when one particular dare almost causes the death of one of her friends she decides to pull the plug and report the game to the authorities, an act which brands her a snitch and thus puts her completed at the mercy of the game organisers. So with the help of her friends she must try and escape from the clutches of the unseen coordinators of Nerve.

As a concept the movie works very well, it hits the points of the all seeing, data heavy, social media world we live in where all information is, supposedly, accessible to anybody with the sufficient skills and equipment. The element of peer pressure worked well and the concept of instantaneous Internet celebrity stardom worked to bring a sense of reality to the situation. The chemistry between Roberts and Franco is good and the dares themselves are interesting and, while the motivation may have seemed a little far fetched to me, given the content on the Internet it never gets to a stage where it becomes implausible to believe anybody would go so far so when the dares are taking place there is a nice element of tension.

There were a couple of points which didn’t work for me, the nerdy friend Tommy (Miles Heizer) who is obviously in love with Vee and follows her everywhere but as usual she is oblivious to the fact that he doesn’t just want to be her friend felt a little tacked on just to serve a purpose. Nothing to do with the acting, but it was the one character in the movie who felt like and outsider trying desperately to fit in. Juliet Lewis as the mother was a waste of talent, with the exception of the opening scenes where she is shown as a smothering character which helps to build Vee’s submissive character she really doesn’t contribute a lot to the movie. One thread that wasn’t touched upon was the fact that Vee is portrayed as this person who never takes acts on impulse or takes control of situations but in order to rectify this she signs up for a game where she is dictated to by anonymous people. For me it was a nice little plot point but it was never mentioned. However, the main issue I had with the movie is that it is a little predictable, I spotted the twists coming and then ending felt like a bit of a cop out so while it did not ruin the movie it took some of the suspense out of the situation.

There have seem some comparisons between this movie and the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez (a great read by the way) in the way a program seems to be operating autonomously but I personally didn’t see the comparison as for me the game never felt self controlling and always had a big brother is watching feel especially since the Watchers often had a hands on participation in the dares but overall it was an enjoyable film and I never found myself disengaged while watching which is more than I can say for a few of the more recent, supposed big budget movies, and that in itself says a lot.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out of 10