Editorial Note: **MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**
I'm going to be honest, I initially saw "Nerve" because I knew Dave Franco was in it. No shame, I'm that girl who would see any movie with him in it. While the plot looked super interesting and even relevant, I'm not a huge action movie person. I did find myself to thoroughly enjoy it, but I couldn't help but notice the painfully obvious message behind the movie.
While I have not read the book this movie was based of off, to me, it portrayed an accurate representation of how we use the internet and social media today. It starts off with a girl named Vee, short for Venus, being pressured into playing an online Truth or Dare game, where people in your city watch you perform the dares for money, each dare getting slightly more risky, and for more money. Vee is quickly teamed up with a boy Ian by request of the watchers. They both travel through New York while living out their dares. When Vee's friend, Sydney, finds out about Vee becoming a more popular player than herself, she attempts to walk across a ladder suspended by being pulled through two windows in a tall apartment building in order to gain more watchers than Vee. Sydney drops her phone through the ladder, resulting in her being eliminated from the game due to the fact that she can't record her dare. Vee joins the party and has a huge fight with Sydney, resulting in Vee successfully finishing Sydney's dare to prove to everyone that Vee can be adventurous. After realizing how she treated Sydney, and how the game's changed her, Vee tries to tell a cop about the game, resulting in Vee being kidnapped by watchers. When she escapes, Ian reveals he is also prisoner to the game, and the only way to be free now, is to win. Now that the only two players are Vee and Ian, their final dare is to shoot the other person. Meanwhile, Vee's friend is trying to shut down the game after realizing what the final dare is. In the final showdown, Ian refuses to shoot Vee and so a previous player volunteers. He then asks the watchers to vote whether or not he should shoot her, with the majority saying yes. As soon as he shoots Vee, Vee's friend hacks the game, revealing every watchers identity, and the ones who voted yes to the shooting are now accessories to Vee's murder.
This movie was really eye opening, because with technology progressing at almost alarming rates, this scenario isn't so far fetched. Teenagers today are always trying to open up each other on social media, like Vee and Sydney. They try to get the most followers, and will even put their lives at risk taking pictures for Instagram, I've seen videos of people literally somersaulting on walls of skyscrapers and then hanging off the edge. We all get so hung up on the glitz and glamor of social media and technology, that we forget the risks they pose. People film videos of fights and post them, thinking it's funny. People pressure others into doing dangerous things, much like the watchers in Nerve, forgetting that their could be serious repercussions if something were to happen to the person they pressured. Being constantly connected to the internet on our phones makes us prone to due reckless things in order to impress their followers. If something doesn't change or gets addressed, this movie can definitely become a real life thing.
Fun fact: Vee lives.