Cyberbully Film Review

Film: Cyberbully (2011) 
Genre: Drama, TV Movie. 

Click the poster if you would like to watch the trailer! :) 

Cyberbully Film Review

I watched Cyberbully the other night simply because I like to have something on or something to read while I straighten my hair at night! I found this film on YouTube and knew exactly what I was expecting.

For those of you who don’t know, Cyberbully is an abc family movie which in my mind usually registers – a bit shit. But actually, these are the kinds of films that I like. I like to watch a good Lifetime movie to chill out to. (Odd Girl Out, To Be Fat Like Me and Teen Spirit to name a few.) I don’t expect anything ground breaking when I watch them but nine times out of ten, I usually find myself pleasantly surprised.

The film stars Emily Osment, most famous for being Hannah Montana/Miley Stewarts best friend. Since Hannah Montana ended it seems that Emily Osment hasn’t done all that much since – I know some Osment followers are probably flaming me here right now. I know she dropped an album, I actually have the EP she released a while before that, on CD and liked it but I never got around to checking the album out after I heard that it was a lot different to the EP. Maybe I’ll get around to it one day.

She's looking happy here, wait for it...

But yeah, the film also stars Kay Panabaker, an actress I feel that I couldn't really tell you anything she’s been in and yet I’m sure I've seen loads she’s been in. Weird. The film is about Taylor (Osment) whose mom’s a little strict and crazy about internet access. Top note, her mom is played by Kelly Rowan who was in The O.C. AKA, my all-time favourite TV show.

She's still pissed about that cancellation.

The movie begins with Taylor going on about how this girl Lindsay (the crazy bitch of the story basically) seems to have taken a disliking to her though her friends seem to be ignoring this really. For her birthday, her mom gives her a new laptop and shock! She’s allowed regular access to the internet. She immediately joins this social networking website which I think is meant to be some rip off of Facebook but this site has a group specially for her school or something like that.

The story really starts when her brother hacks her Facebook account and creates a status about how she’s a ‘naughty girl’ and ‘needs to be spanked’. Okay, one if my brother made that status about me, my first response would be ‘Perv’ and then maybe I’d call him a dick or something. I don’t think I would want to kill him for it but Taylor starts acting like it’s the worst thing in the world and she can’t possibly take it down because EVERYONE has seen it! I don’t really understand this logic since how many times do people get ‘fraped’ on Facebook? Laugh it off. It’s obvious it’s not you that wrote the status.

But moving on, this status apparently causes masses of drama and everyone in the whole school automatically now assumes that Taylor must be some huge slut. Okay then.Some random guy from another school starts popping up to talk to her and long story short, makes a horrible status later on about how Taylor slept with him and gave him an STD. Okay, now I’d be pissed and hunting that asshole down.

It's all shits and giggles until you give someone an STD.

This then sends the kids at Taylor’s high school into a bitchy frenzy, where they start sending her hate mail and start writing all over her wall what a nasty little slut she is and so on. A popular argument that I have seen on message boards about this movie (it’s my dorky thing that every time I see a new movie, I head over to IMDB and see what people are saying) is that Taylor should just delete the account and everything is done and dusted.

Whilst this does follow her to school and people are saying stuff to her in hallways so not technically dusted with, I slightly agree. Just delete the account or better yet delete and block the assholes who are writing this stuff. But the other side of me thinks, how many of us would still read it? Even when we know it’s going to hurt, we still read it. How many times have you asked your friends if so and so are bitching about you behind your back? You don’t really want to know what they have been saying but at the same time, you do.

The bullying continues and leads to Taylor making a video about how upset she is and then she tries to kill herself. My biggest problem with this film is that, that scene could have been so much more dramatic. Her mom and friend burst in as Taylor, clutching a bottle of pills screams “I CANT GET THE CAP OFF.” I know it probably sounds bad but I think it just would have worked so much better if they had found her passed out already from taking the pills. The soundtrack of ‘Breathe’ by Sia works well though. The scene nearly had me tearing up. Who knew I was so sentimental?

I CAN'T GET THE CAP OFF!

Another thing that annoyed me was that one of Taylor’s so called best friends, completely ditches her once the bullying starts because she doesn’t want it passed onto her. Nice. Real nice.

I’m going to get a little spoilery here, so if you don’t want to be spoiled I suggest you stop reading or skip to the last paragraph.

Remember the guy who made the STD status? The girls figure out that he is a fake profile and must have been created by Lindsay. I realise that I called her crazy bitch and yet haven’t actually said anything about her at all. All I can say is really she seems to get off on Taylor’s torment and to just watch the movie to see why I call her a bitch.

The guy who made the status was in fact a fake but it wasn’t Lindsay who created the profile. I guessed this little twist about fifteen minutes before it is revealed – I have a problem with doing this – it is in fact one of her best friends who created the profile. I think it’s through jealousy or to teach her a lesson about boys, I honestly can’t remember, all I know is that I would have probably been the one called a crazy bitch if my friend did that to me because I would have punched her. 

Call yourself a bestie!

The film concludes with Taylor and her mom trying to get a law passed so that people can face the consequences of cyberbullying people and Taylor chooses to go to the local newspaper to get the story out, this is of course how our protagonist and her best friend semi-rekindle their friendship. Lindsay also gets her comeuppance as she also moved onto make Kay Panabaker’s character’s life a misery and is made a ‘fool’ in front of the whole school. Though really her storming off is a poor effort as a comeuppance.

Overall, I have to say I actually did enjoy this film. This review probably makes it sound like I didn’t but hey ho. The film is very similar to a film I have seen before called Odd Girl Out starring Alexa Vega and I have to say I do prefer that one. But this one does a good job at showing the effects of cyberbullying, it has a few tense scenes and I did feel sorry for Taylor a lot throughout the film though she was a little over the top at the start of the film. Osment, I thought did a good job in conveying the emotions of a desperate girl in a desperate situation. If the film ever plans on coming to DVD here in the UK, I would consider buying it and I would definitely watch it again.

I give it a 6/10 and I would buy the DVD for chill out/sick days. :)