Catfished by "Catfish"

It's the 10th anniversary of the greatest and most frustrating fake out in my movie history, a film that bred a TV series and was credited with coining the word made popular by the rise of online dating: catfish. For young people, the idea of being "catfished" is well-known and it is likely difficult to remember a time before that term was being used. But I do. I was there when it all started. While doing research for a post that I'll hopefully finish soon, I was browsing through my movie history and came across a memory.

It was 2010 and the local independent theater I enjoyed to frequent had an intriguing poster for an upcoming movie. Always a sucker for a minimalist message, kept simple and unexplanatory, powered only by your imagination, curiosity got the best of me. Unfortunately, as the poster indicates, there wasn't much to find on the internet other than a trailer, a trailer that would become a bane of my existence. What's interesting is thinking if this came out 5, 6 years later, there would've been leaks all over the place and the contents of the film would not have been kept such a secret. Check out the trailer for the film below and try to imagine watching this before "catfishing" became a commonly used term.

Did you watch it? That shift in the tone around the 1:25 mark, the blurbs used on the screen, the nighttime shooting...genius. It presents something intriguing, something with potential, but it gives you so little that you're only hope for fulfilling those feelings is to go and experience it. Being a huge horror junkie, the anticipation for a little known, found footage type film was a bit of an adrenaline rush. I think I've always thought of it akin to discovering an old, unmarked tape hidden in an abandoned house and having to hunt down a VCR from a thrift store to watch it. A little too fantasized for a movie genre, sure, but makes it that much more exciting nonetheless. My friend, also a horror fan, joined in on my ill-advised hype for this movie.

The cool thing about this theater was the front row littered with lazy-boy recliners, but those, of course, were a first come/first serve luxury. My friend and I got there early, but missed out on the recliners, as it appeared we were not the only ones hyped for the mystery film. Also, because the guy that runs the theater was a one-man operation, getting snacks and drinks during the movie was based on the honor system: grab now, pay later. With M&Ms and an Abita Root Beer in hand, I entered the theater for my very first catfish experience.

The trailer includes the following blurb: "The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won't be able to shake for days." This wasn't a lie, per se, just a giant redirection like the rest of the trailer. I definitely went on an emotional roller coaster, mostly confused about what I had just watched. There was no horror, no thriller, no suspense at all. I'm not sure if I was more disappointed about the movie itself or that there was no cool conversation to be had afterwards, just...angst. The movie was a documentary about meeting this girl online and going to meet her and finding that it's not all that it seems. Sound familiar? Yeah, the movie was just an extended version of what would become the "Catfish" TV show on MTV.

Damn. They got me.