Nerve (2016 film)

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Nerve
Nerve 2016 poster.png
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Written byJessica Sharzer
Based onNerve
by Jeanne Ryan
Produced byAllison Shearmur
Anthony Katagas
Starring
CinematographyMichael Simmonds
Edited by
  • Madeleine Gavin
  • Jeff McEvoy
Music byRob Simonsen
Production
companies
  • Allison Shearmur Productions
  • Keep Your Head Productions
  • Supermarche
Distributed byLionsgate
Release dates
  • July 12, 2016 (2016-07-12) (SVA Theater)
  • July 27, 2016 (2016-07-27) (United States)
Running time
96 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$19 million[2]
Box office$85.3 million[2]

Nerve is a 2016 American techno-thriller adventure film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman and written by Jessica Sharzer, based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Jeanne Ryan. The film stars Emma Roberts, Dave Franco and Juliette Lewis, and revolves around an online truth or dare game, which allows people to enlist as "players" or "watchers" and as the game progresses further, the players are contacted and invited to participate in more dangerous and risky dares than their prior ones.

The film premiered at the SVA Theater on July 12, 2016[3] and was theatrically released on July 27, 2016, by Lionsgate. It received positive reviews from critics for its energy and the chemistry of its cast, and grossed over $85 million worldwide against a $19 million budget.[4]

Plot[]

High school senior Venus "Vee" Delmonico longs to leave Staten Island for college, but is avoiding telling her mother as they are still mourning the death of her older brother. Her friend Sydney becomes popular in Nerve: an online reality game where people either enlist as "players" or pay to watch as "watchers". Players accept dares voted on by watchers, try to become the winner of that day, and receive monetary rewards.

Sydney chastises Vee's unadventurous nature, so Vee signs up as a player. When she signs up, Vee learns about the game's three rules:

  1. all dares must be recorded on the player's phone
  2. any earned money will be revoked if a player fails or bails on a dare
  3. "snitches get stitches."

Vee's first dare is to kiss a stranger at a diner for five seconds. At the diner she meets and kisses Ian, who dances and sings to Vee, revealing he's another player on a dare. The watchers dare Ian to take her into Manhattan on his motorcycle. In Manhattan they are dared to try on expensive formal attire. Their street clothes are stolen and the watchers dare them to leave the store, so they flee in their undergarments. They return to Ian's motorbike where they find the expensive clothes paid for by the watchers.

Vee is dared to get a tattoo chosen by Ian, and Ian is dared to ride his motorbike through the city blindfolded at 60 mph, using Vee to steer his body; once completed, the two kiss. Vee and Ian become among Nerve's top players.

Jealous of Vee's popularity, an inebriated Sydney accepts a dare at a party to cross a ladder between two buildings, capitalizing on her biggest fear: heights. Midway through the cross, Sydney panics and bails, eliminating her from the game. Vee catches Sydney making out with J.P., a boy Vee likes. Vee and Sydney have a major argument. Tommy reveals that he was watching Ian's profile; Ian had accepted a dare to make Vee and Sydney fight. Vee completes the ladder dare herself. Realizing that game players could die, she reports the game to a policeman but he doesn't believe her as no crime has been committed. As punishment for "snitching", all the money in her family's bank account vanishes. Highly ranked player Ty accepts a dare to knock her unconscious.

Vee wakes up in a shipping container with "snitches get stitches" on the walls and has been declared a "prisoner" of Nerve. She escapes the container and finds Ian, who confesses that he and Ty were players whose friend was killed in a dare. When they tried to alert the authorities, their families' jobs, bank accounts, and identities were confiscated. Vee has now joined them in the secret third category of the game: "prisoners". If a "prisoner" can reach and win the day's final round, they regain everything.

Vee meets up with Tommy and Sydney, who reconciles with Vee, and asks them to help her take down Nerve. Vee, Tommy, and Sydney recruit Tommy's hacker friends to alter the game's online code, but it is impossible to simply shut down Nerve, as all the watchers' phones act as a distributed server.

Vee and Ian, who asks the players to give him a dare that would send him to the finals, earn the two spots in the final dare, which takes place at Battery Weed. The winner will be whoever shoots the other with the handguns they've been given. Ian offers her the win, but when she also refuses to shoot, Ty jumps from the audience to take Ian's place and shoots her, and she apparently dies in Ian's arms. Just then, Tommy and his hackers modify Nerve's source code to decrypt the watchers' code names and send them all a message: "You are an accessory to murder", causing all watchers to immediately log out, closing down the game's servers and effectively ending it. Ian aims his gun at Ty and Vee suddenly sits up, revealing that she and Ty had staged her murder to scare the watchers into disbanding Nerve. Tommy's hacker friends restore the stolen money and identities.

A few months later, it is revealed that Vee and Sydney have remained friends (with the latter presumably now based in New York City and has left Staten Island as well), Vee and Ian are a couple, and Vee is attending California Arts. Ian reveals his real name to be Sam whilst another person is secretly recording them on their phone.

Cast[]

  • Emma Roberts as Vee, a player of Nerve.
  • Dave Franco as Ian / Sam, Vee's fellow player.
  • Emily Meade as Sydney, Vee's best friend.
  • Miles Heizer as Tommy, one of Vee's friends who has an unrequited crush on her.
  • Juliette Lewis as Nancy, Vee's mother.
  • Kimiko Glenn as Liv, one of Vee's friends.
  • Marc John Jefferies as Wes, one of Vee's friends.
  • Colson Baker as Ty, Vee's main opponent in the game.
  • Brian Marc as J.P. Guerrero, Vee's high school crush.
  • Ed Squires as Chuck, J.P.'s varsity teammate.
  • Samira Wiley as Hacker Kween, one of Tommy’s hacker friends.
  • Casey Neistat as himself, another player.
  • Chloe Wise as herself, another player.

Production[]

Directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost had previously dealt with similar themes in their documentary Catfish.[5] On their attraction to a film based around the Internet, they stated, "Most things aren’t black and white. The Internet is neither good nor bad; it just depends on how you use it",[6] giving the example that the Nerve game could be both "a really empowering game, and it’s also the most awful thing that you can possibly imagine".[6] The directors strived for a PG-13 rating, with Schulman stating "we wanted to make sure that younger teenagers could see it. We think it has an important message and they’ll dig it", with Joost adding "We weren’t interested in making a gross torture movie".[6] In trying to keep the rating down, the directors axed a "sex dare" that "was ultimately just too dark and weird".[6] The film has also a lighter ending and theme than the book, as the novel deals with a much darker plot and ending. The team stated that the fast-changing nature of the Internet made it a tough subject to make a narrative feature about, with Joost noting that the app Periscope came out during the film development, which Joost called "like half-way to being Nerve".[5]

In January 2015, it was announced that Emma Roberts and Dave Franco were set to star in the film.[7] In April 2015, it was announced that Kimiko Glenn had joined the cast of the film, portraying the role of Emma Roberts' character's worried friend.[8] The same day, it was announced that rapper Colson "Machine Gun Kelly" Baker had also joined the cast.[9]

Filming[]

Principal photography on the film began in 2015, in New York City.[10][11] Production on the film concluded on June 5, 2015.[12][13]

Release[]

The film premiered at the School of Visual Arts in New York City on July 12, where the cast attended.[3] It was also screened on July 21 at Comic-Con.[14] The film was originally scheduled for September 16, 2016, but was eventually theatrically released on July 27, 2016.[15]

Reception[]

Box office[]

Nerve grossed $38.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $46.5 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $85.2 million, against a budget of $19 million.[2]

The film was projected to gross around $10 million in its opening weekend and $15 million over its first five days from 2,538 theaters.[16] The film grossed $3.7 million on its opening day[17] and ended up finishing 8th at the box office in its opening weekend, grossing $9.4 million (a five-day total of $15.5 million).[18]

Critical response[]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 67% based on 138 reviews, with an average rating of 5.78/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Nerve's fast pace and charming leads help overcome a number of fundamental flaws, adding up to a teen-friendly thriller with enough energy to occasionally offset its muddled execution."[19] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100 based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[20] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[18]

Scott Tobias of Uproxx wrote, "Though the ending surrenders to a tsk-tsk-ing morality play that turns on the mob the game (and the film) has so smartly orchestrated, Nerve is the rare virtual thriller that understands how social media actually works and the addictive little subcultures that can spin out of it."[21] Dave Palmer of The Reel Deal gave the film 7/10, saying, "It is a lot of fun, and not even in a turn-your-brain off kind of way. The film actually has some smart things to say about teenagers, their phones and what people will do to get internet famous and it is all delivered in a colorful little package."[22]

Accolades[]

The film was nominated at the People's Choice Awards in the category "Favorite Thriller Movie".[23]

Legacy[]

Nerve has been mentioned in relation to the real-life dare game called Blue Whale Challenge, which attracted media attention starting from 2016 and shares some similarities with what's depicted in the film.[24]

References[]

  1. ^ "Nerve (15)". British Board of Film Classification. July 18, 2016. Retrieved July 19, 2016.
  2. ^ a b c "Nerve (2016)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  3. ^ a b "'Nerve' premieres in New York City (NYC) - Photos". United Press International. July 13, 2016. Retrieved July 16, 2016.
  4. ^ "Jason Bourne Thrills but Lacks Identity". July 28, 2016. Retrieved December 27, 2017.
  5. ^ a b Puchko, Kristy (July 12, 2016). "Nerve Directors On Technology Advancements & Future Projects". Screenrant. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  6. ^ a b c d Bell, Crystal. "NERVE DIRECTORS REVEAL THE VOYEURISTIC DARE THAT WAS TOO 'GROSS' FOR PG-13". MTV. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  7. ^ Kroll, Justin (January 27, 2015). "Dave Franco and Emma Roberts to Star in YA Thriller 'Nerve'". Variety. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  8. ^ Pederson, Erik (April 17, 2015). "'Married's Kimiko Glenn Joins 'Nerve'; Kino Lorber Acquires 'Gueros'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  9. ^ Halperin, Shirley (April 17, 2015). "Machine Gun Kelly Joins Emma Roberts, Dave Franco In 'Nerve'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
  10. ^ "Emma Roberts and Dave Franco begin filming 'Nerve' in NYC on April 13". onlocationvacations.com. March 31, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
  11. ^ "Emma Roberts and Dave Franco spotted filming 'Nerve' in NYC". onlocationvacations.com. April 18, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
  12. ^ Joost, Henry (June 5, 2015). "Last day shooting #NerveNYC