Written for RAF News November 2018

When an anonymous hacker starts leaking information about the people of Salem, a clash between the corrupt elite and sensitive youth quickly escalates into a violent witch hunt.

What begins as a highly stylised teen movie about boy troubles descends into something a lot darker and more surreal. Character assassinations turn into lynchings and soon the town are wearing masks to protect themselves from mobs in search of social justice – afraid of what people might find out about them.

This doesn’t happen for some time though as first we meet 18 year old Lilly (Odessa Young) and her cohorts, learn about her recent ex-boyfriend and the new sexting affair that she is having with a mysterious older man known as ‘Daddy’. Told from the point-of-view of a group of high-school girls, teenage dramas are elevated to scandals and political misconduct is reduced to a Twitterstorm.

Self-assured with a dose of arrogance, we are aligned with the Mean Girls of the film purely because there are meaner people out there: slimy peadophiles, homophobic jocks and riot-inciting police.

Although there is some political commentary among the silliness, Assassination Nation is a tonal mess and suitably ridiculous. There is a prologue that lists hash-tagged trigger warnings to set the perspective of young impudent progressives, smart and self-aware but naive and narcissistic. Ultimately, this becomes hard to distinguish this from the film itself.

Pink light chases the girls through scenes, while the soundtrack changes and drops constantly as if controlled by an impatient DJ with a short attention span. The film definitely thinks it’s cool but it has the sensibility of a music video and the personality of a precocious teenager. It is funniest when it makes fun out of itself but this happens so scarcely that it is lost to self-importance.

When AN finally decides to pick a lane it becomes a Purge-style horror but by this point you’re quietly hoping that everyone dies.