(SPOILER WARNING!!! This article does contain spoilers, if you haven’t seen the movie, just see the first paragraph to be informed without spoilers!!!)

Nerve is an interesting movie, yes it may have some story flaws and teenage movie clichés, but it was entertaining with a message for us to think about!!!

Rating: 4 Stars

It isn’t the summer without a movie that is really created for teens in our society today. The good old teen movies are becoming really cliché and annoying. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the first teen movie was The Breakfast Club. Movies about different types of students coming together in a Saturday detention and learning more about themselves and tolerating each other and dealing with relevant issues at the time. Year after year these movies came out, some good, some horrifically bad. The ones I do enjoy tend to have a good message for the youth of that time. The ones I hate are the cliché so called teen romance with a very thin story line. Lately, it has been famous books for teens that are turned into movies. Once again, some good, some bad (unfortunately the bad ones make the most money). As for the movie Nerve which is from a teen novel, I found the premise intriguing, but thought that the story’s payoff will be rushed and bad. It looked like it headed to that direction, but the way it twisted it made it not so bad. I’ll explain.

What I Liked: The premise of this story is very intriguing and interesting. It’s about a website called Nerve that makes people do dares and people watch them do some of the craziest things no matter how dangerous they are, and get paid for it. As you can tell a lot of teens join, and do it not only for the money, but for the fame it brings them on this website. Emma Roberts plays Vee, a usually shy girl that decides to be a player to give her some spunk in her life. During her escapade she teams up with another player named Ian, and do some of the craziest things. Some stunts got me on the edge of my seat. Like the dare of riding a motorcycle to 60mph blindfolded, crossing to another building with a ladder, and put yourself flat on the ground while a train runs over you. The train one gave me chills cuz they were showing people who failed on their dares and then showed the train dare where the great editing makes you think something really bad is going to happen. Last thing, the story does bring a great message not only for teens, but for people obsessed with reality and web shows where people get hurt and don’t care about the damage to those people’s lives. In the final scene where people watching live were voting whether the player should shoot Vee with a gun, and actually voted yes, shows how naïve, stupid and disconnected from reality people can be. I like the fact that they managed to hack into Nerve’s site, and tell all the people that voted yes that they were accomplices of murder, making a lot of them feel guilty and causing the website to crash. Sometimes we’re so caught up with our own fantasy world and entertainment and don’t care about the reality of what people go through, even if it kills them.

The So So: The movie does have their teen movie clichés. The stereotypes of characters like the jock, the popular girl, the tech weirdo, the shy girl, and the handsome guy who somehow gets into the story even if he is not a student. (Creepy huh?) Of course the story is about turning the shy girl into an internet celebrity overnight, and actually hooks up with the unknown handsome guy. The love scenes were eye rolling. However their relationship pertains to the story. Also, it is not a teen movie without best friends getting into a big fight where it seems their friendship is over, but somehow they squash the beef and become besties again. Once again, eye rolling cliché, but it moves the story forward. The transitions really made this flow well to keep me engaged.

What I Didn’t Like: Some of the acting was horrific. Especially Machine Gun Kelly playing Ty. He needs to stick with rapping (on second thought, he just needs to disappear from the entertainment industry). Some nitpicky things like how the players go through the night and not end up with dead batteries; some great battery life on those phones. The way how everything is back to normal when the website stole their identity was pretty dumb and lazy writing. Also seeing Emma Roberts rapping to Wu Tang Clan really made my ears hurt.

Overall: I thought the movie was entertaining despite its flaws. I believe the underlying message can make people think, especially teens and young adults. It did make me think, and it is a teen movie that is appropriate for our teens today who are obsessed with technology. Hopefully they get the message and it doesn’t go in one ear and out the other!!!

Rating: 4 Stars

(Sidenote: Midnight Special- This was a sci-fi movie about a young boy with special powers and their parents are trying to save him from the government. It was interesting at first to see where this story will go, and little by little revealing what the boy can do. Then it got really weird. You have some good actors like Michael Shannon, Joel Egerton, Kirsten Dunst, and Adam Driver. If you’re into sci-fi you will probably enjoy it. For me, it wasn’t my cup of tea!!!
Rating: 3 Stars)