Before watching "Shook", by chance, we just saw HBO's "Fake Famous", so we were pretty deep into the dark and gritty hidden world of social media influencers. While "Fake Famous" was based in real-life, "Shook" spins a horrific twist into the concept, a fantastical one at best, which we found to be extremely interesting on the onset. Unfortunately, "Shook" lacked consistency and kept us frustrated instead with its flawed and barebones approach.
After the murder of one of their social media influencer friends, Mia (Daisye Tutor) decides to forego the parties and the limelight even for just one night. She instead volunteers to "dogsit" her sister Nicole's (Emily Goss) dog Chico since a serial dog killer is out on the loose around California. But when Chico goes missing, Mia is suddenly hounded by a person who introduces himself as her sister's neighbor Kellan (Grant Rosenmeyer). Soon he reveals his true nature to Mia and forces her to play games and solve puzzles with him instead and whenever she makes a mistakes, Kellan threatens to kill one of her influencer friends in return.
If we could judge "Shook" by atmosphere and tension alone then it would get an extremely high rating in our books. The acting in particular was the film's strongest point and the creative ways Director Jennifer Harrington used projectors was amusing. But the huge red flags with its writing was just too much of a distraction throughout its runtime that whatever great strides Director Jennifer Harrington made with her technical prowess simply goes to waste. The biggest grievance we had for "Shook" was its core concept of revolving around social media influencers. The topic isn't really new and the pitfalls it presented were all tackled in better ways already but we just couldn't find any reason why the film needed to revolve around it in the first place. The story could have been the same even without its influencer spin and whatever was presented on-screen was either weak, late, or even fleeting when it was finally making a point. Additionally, there were just too many head-scratchers littered throughout its narrative that kept us from being immersed in its world and the final reveal was too conventional and predictable. Overall, "Shook" had a lazy approach and feel to its writing that limited its capacity to be something greater.
Rating: 1 and a half reels
Why you should watch it:
- Director Jennifer Harrington at least knew how to keep the tension consistent throughout the film's runtime
Why you shouldn't watch it:
- had a lot of loopholes and head-scratching moments
- the writing was pretty basic and yet still flawed in a lot of ways
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