There ’s so much nimiety on Netflix these mean solar day , it ’s near out of the question to find adiamond in the rough . Cam is one of them . It ’s a unequalled , tense , surprising , literary genre - liquidiser that does n’t quite stick the landing but make the misstep deserving it all the same .
Directed by Daniel Goldhaber and written by Isa Mazzei , Cam stars Madeline Brewer ( The Handmaid ’s Tale ) as Alice , a young woman who makes money as a cam young lady using the name “ Lola . ” And while the film has a inviolable sense of gender and is coiffe in that world , sexual practice is never the focus . Mazzei ’s script , inhale by her own time as a cam miss , very quickly announces to its audience this movie is about much more than that . River Cam twists your expectation in deliciously complex way and makes it obvious that nothing , from murder to suicide to alternate realities , is off the table .
Before matter get really weird , though , Cam takes things slow . First , it ’s about the dissimilar role masses have on the net and how that can bear on our everyday life . Then it ’s about what people are unforced to do for money and thedangers of on-line validation . Eventually , it becomes about an empowered woman deal charge of her living in shocking , creepy , and red ways to figure out an incredibly challenging mystery .
That whodunit is the dependable part of Cam , and it ’s the way a film that could have been simply a commentary oninternet culturebecomes something much more original and exciting . One daytime Alice / Lola come alive up to see that her cam canal is on-line , only she ’s not on-line . Instead , she finds herself watching a someone who looks exactly like her , talks exactly like her , and survive in a room precisely like hers , do on her line .
This fantabulous gimmick not only gives Cam its main narrative drive , it grabs our aid , spark our imagination , and simultaneously acts as a comment on everything Alice / Lola had been dispense with before . The different personas , the online validation , the power of money , all of it now becomes much more vital and difficult to justify as realise from an outsider ’s point of purview . It also sets her up for an almost plastic film noir quest to solve a whodunit , leave in several nail - biting sequences .
Throughout it all , a film place entirely in the sexual urge industriousness could have easy feel exploitative or uncomfortable , and yet , Goldhaber ’s direction in Cam never lets that happen . The sex is n’t so much in the nudity or language — both of which are prevalent — it ’s in the ignition , the sets , and the camera angles and movements . Everything we see has a very succulent , sensuous feel around it but the focus is always on the picture show ’s issues , character reference , and the whodunit at the nerve center . A lot of that can belinked to Brewer too , who makes Alice / Lola feel incredibly genuine and ground . Even in the face of all kinds of disgusting situations , she get the best of them and prevails by being witty and resourceful . She ’s a epic , uplift character in a earth that does n’t always feel that way .
Unfortunately , Cam suffers a bit as it get to the culmination of its story . Mazzei and Goldhaber have crafted such a masterful mystery story with such a neat character that by the sentence it provides answers , they did n’t come close to satisfying my crazy ideas of who , or what , copied Alice / Lola ’s biography . Nevertheless , they ’re delivered in a really acute , smart way and once the credit roll , Cam leaves us with much more good than bad . It ’s entertaining , it ’s super eldritch , and it ’s thought - provoking too , all of which are much good than 99 percent of the other stuff you scroll by on Netflix .
Cam River is now on , you guessed it , Netflix .
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