Greetings,
Back in July, I did a week's worth of documentary reviews. One of them was on a movie called Catfish. Now that is a film you can only say so much about before you reveal the twist of the story, so I was kind enough to only say enough to be informative but not enough to ruin it for anyone. However, I've been meaning to do a follow up wherein I could discuss the "after twist" section. It certainly did spark some debate between critics and viewers alike, mostly concerning the validity of what may or may not have actually happened. Plus, there's much to be said about what the "characters" go through as the story progresses. And this seems like as good a time as any to do this.
You see, MTV will soon be premiering a series based on the film, and it will be about people going to meet other people with whom they've had internet relationships. And yes, I am way more interested in the incidents where they will catch the people who have been lying. Of course, a nice happy ending might not be so bad either.
Okay, before I begin, I must say something, and I can't stress it enough, so I will be using caps to emphasize. DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE! Yeah, I had to yell, I'm sorry. Look, I do not want to ruin this film for anyone, because it's really good, and it should be seen. So, here's my advice. If you have not seen Catfish yet, check out my first review, then go see the movie, and finally, come back and read this. If you have seen it, keep reading and hopefully enjoy my synopsis of the second half. Okay, let's get started.
To recap what I went over in my first review, Catfish follows three guys from NYC. We've got 24 year-old Nev, a photographer, his brother, Rel, and their friend Henry. The two latter being filmmakers who are documenting Nev's interactions with an 8 year-old art prodigy named Abby, as well as her whole family. And her family includes mother, Angela, father, Vince, brother, Alex, and 19 year-old sister, Megan. Not to mention a load of family friends. Nev and Megan have developed a long distance romance, but he is beginning to discover that some things this family, including Megan, has been telling may not be completely true. So the boys head to Michigan to surprise them, and that is where I finished. Now it's time to get down and dirty.
I really did end my review when the boys decided to go to Michigan, but let me back up to the time they spent in Colorado, where they were attending a dance festival or something. It really was during this time that things started to unravel. So the boys are in their hotel room or whatever, "chatting" with Megan, asking her to sing songs for them. She sends them her version of "Tennessee Stud", which makes them reminisce about the other songs she has sent them. But while doing a search to find one of those songs, they discover a performance by someone else, and it is the exact one that Megan said she was singing herself. Yeah, so she kinda lied on that one. This begins to make the boys, especially Nev, a little curious and even uneasy. So they continue with their detective work.
Heading to the Google. they come to discover that a lot of what they've been told about little artist Abby was completely untrue. She hasn't been having shows at her own gallery in the building that they bought, because they never bought said building. And they also hit a dead end trying to find articles that would most likely be written about an 8 year-old artistic genius. So. though Nev is really wanting just to end this whole thing and go home, Rel and Henry convince him to go to Michigan to get the whole story.
First, they reach the farm that Megan said she bought for herself. Yes, she is 19 and said she bought her own farm. Hey, remember that episode of The Cosby Show where Theo bought a $90 shirt and Cliff said that the only time a 14 year-old boy should have $90 shirt is if he is onstage with his four brothers? Yeah, well, the only time a 19 year-old should own a huge farm is if she's been on a show called Hannah Montana. Maybe that should have been a clue that things weren't on the up and up, but Angela did claim that they were making quite a bit of money from Abby's paintings, so maybe that's where they said the farm money came from. Who knows? Needless to say, when they got there, in the middle of the night for some reason, Megan was nowhere to be found and neither were her horses.
After that fun night of trespassing, the boys headed to the home of Angela, Vince and Abby, along the way, passing the "gallery" of Abby's, which was clearly just an abandoned building. So when they reached the house, Nev and Rel approached the front door, leaving Henry in the getaway car. No, seriously, they were being very cautious about these people and prepared for, if needed, a quick escape. I can see why they felt this way, all things considered.
So they knock on the door and out comes . . . Angela? Yes, you can tell, even from a distance that THIS Angela is certainly not the Angela that they've been seeing in pictures and paintings over the past several months. Then, Vince walks up, and guess what? He's not Picture Vince either. Now you'd think, at this point, Angela would just give it up and say, "Okay, you caught me", but no. No, she tries to keep the charade going, even telling them that Megan is not there, but out at her farm. Apparently, she didn't know that they had been there and found bupkis. But the boys carefully play along, taking things one step at a time.
After we see the reality of the appearances of these people, we then are exposed to the reality of Angela's life, and it is far different from what she purported it to be. We find out that she has two stepsons from Vince's first marriage, who are severely handicapped. She also tells them that she has been diagnosed with cancer. And when we meet Abby, who surprisingly does exist, we discover that it is not she who paints but her mother, and that Abby never sees her sister, Megan. Doesn't even remember what she looks like, actually. Oh, it's just getting better and better, isn't it, boys?
So after spending some time with the family and making plans to meet them again for dinner, Nev, Rel and Henry, safe and alone, driving away in their car, begin to have their first deep discussion about just what in all heck is happening. The first words we hear spoken are Henry saying to Nev, "Angela's in love with you" to which Nev replies "Angela is in love with me" And as they peel away each layer of this internet onion, they come to fully realize the depths of the deception. It hits Nev that the person he's been having this online and over the phone relationship with was not the hot, model looking girl, Megan, but forty-something Angela. And when we recall the, let's say, intimate texts between Nev and Megan that he shared with us, we understand why big brother Rel was desperately trying to contain his laughter. Look, he has to make fun of his little brother. It's his job. Moving on. They begin to figure out that not only was Angela pretending to be Megan, but she was most likely behind every single person that the boys knew through her on Facebook. And there were more than a dozen people. Just think about that. She created all these Facebook accounts and kept them active just to keep this whole thing going. Why is this woman not a novelist? Clearly, she knows how to work with characters she has created. Anyway, they decide, very sympathetically, I might add, to confront Angela about the whole thing, in a way as to not embarrass her, making it clear that they didn't want to hurt the family. I actually found that quite endearing.
And so the next day, after getting messages from "Megan" explaining why she's not there, Nev tells Angela that they basically know everything and want to give her a chance to explain. It's then that pretty much everything comes out. Angela says that she does have a daughter named Megan, who has some issues of her own, but Nev has never spoken to her, and the girl in the pictures is just a friend of the family. Later, as Nev sits for Angela while she sketches his face, they begin to finally talk in depth about the whole ordeal. Nev even asks Angela to talk in the voice she did while pretending to be Megan. This scene caused a bit of controversy, but we'll get to that later. So they give Angela her time to explain herself and why she did what she did. I couldn't help but feel a bit of sympathy for her as well. After everything we find out about her real life, I could certainly see why she would be desperate for some kind of escape, not to mention that she really wanted someone to appreciate her art. And when Nev and the boys did so, she didn't want to lose that or the friendship she had developed with them, especially Nev.
As the movie ends, we follow the boys back to New York, where Nev has clearly been deeply affected by the whole situation. We also get some captioning that contains a bit of follow up info about Angela, including the fact that she doesn't have cancer and that one of her stepsons passed away. We also learn the identity of picture Megan, and that she is actually a 30 year-old photographer and model who is married and a mother of two named Aimee Gonzales. And Angela does not know her. Plus, we get some footage of Angela's husband, Vince, telling a story about how when they ship codfish from Alaska to China they put in a few catfish to keep the cod agile, so that they won't become basically useless on the way. And he says that there are people in life like that, who keep us alert and thinking and fresh. I actually thought that was a pretty clever metaphor and appropriate. It's also where the title of the movie came from. And that is pretty much where we end.
I may as well also mention some things concerning the people who were inadvertently included in the film. First of all, there is Amy Kuney, whose performance of a song called "All Downhill From Here" was one of the ones that "Megan" said was her own recording. It's actually a good song, and I've come to discover in the aftermath that Amy Kuney is a really great musician. Also, if you go to You Tube and search "Catfish: Meeting the Girl in the Picture", you can see some deleted scenes of Nev, Rel and Henry meeting Aimee Gonzales and her husband (that was a little awkward) and telling them this whole crazy story. Turns out, she was really sweet about the whole thing. A little weirded out, too, naturally, but both she and her husband were sympathetic to what Nev had gone through. In fact, in an interview I saw with the boys, they said that Aimee had actually apologized to Nev for breaking his heart, even though she had nothing to do with it. That is one very nice and classy lady.
Now as I mentioned in my first review, I believe that this movie is actually a true story. As true as a movie can be anyway. There are, however, a lot of people, critics included, that do not agree. In fact, some people go so far as to say that they were using Angela, even exploiting this woman who clearly has a lot of problems. I could agree with that if they were the ones who sought her out, but she was the one who started this whole thing. She was the one who contacted Nev in the first place and got this all off and running. That brings us to the scene I mentioned where Nev asked Angela to talk in the Megan voice. One critic said something to the effect of, "Look at the smile on his face. He's obviously excited to get this scene for the movie." My response to that would be, yes, look at the smile, then look at his eyes. To me, he is giving the type of smile one does in order to keep from crying. You can very easily see tears in his eyes that he is refusing to let fall, because he has been very hurt by this person. When asked in an interview why he wanted her to speak to him in that voice, he said he wanted her to understand how uncomfortable she had made him by her actions. For her to truly feel the effect of what she had done to him. I don't necessarily think there is anything all that wrong with his doing that, especially since he gave her chance after chance to come clean, and it wasn't until he full on confronted her that the truth came out.
One of the main reasons why people think this is fake is because they can't imagine that three guys in their twenties from New York City could fall for this and not be able to figure it out. First of all, they DID figure it out. That was kind of the point of the second half of the movie. Maybe they didn't figure it out all at once, but they followed the clues, if you will, and solved the puzzle. And remember, this woman was really determined to deceive them. And why does their age and especially their location factor into whether or not they could get fooled by someone. Assuming they are smart because they come from New York is like assuming someone is dumb because they come from the South. Frankly, I do think these guys are smart, for no other reason than that . . . they are. And on top of it all, people just can't believe that anyone could be so trusting, as Nev and his friends seemed to be. Look, unless you're on high alert at all times, expecting to be scammed, you're not going to be dissecting every little thing a person does or says. When Nev did have questions and expressed them to Angela/Megan, she always came up with some kind of explanation, and he chose to give her the benefit of the doubt. I think it was because he had been lonely and was happy to have this young woman in his life who potentially could have been "the one". He really didn't want to lose that. That's what makes the whole thing bittersweet to me.
But you know what? I can admit that I might be wrong. Maybe I, myself, have gotten "catfished"! But I don't think I have been. I certainly hope not.
Look, the bottom line is that this movie is good. Whether you believe it's legit or not, it is certainly a conversation starter, and that is something that art should be, but rarely is these days. And I'm sure this new series based on the film should be thought provoking as well. I'm definitely going to check it out and maybe eventually give my reaction once I see how they handle all the different situations they'll probably encounter.
Like I said before, I highly recommend this movie. I know I went way in depth as far as the story goes for this review, but that's probably because I prohibited myself so much with the first one. I just hope I can get you all thinking and talking, as this film did for me. That would be a joy.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
