CAM. The Lost Episode of Black Mirror Exists!

It’s a disquieting situation when cinema uses the thriller or horror genre to analyze the condition and problems of contemporary humanity. However, using genres that send chills down the spine allows for the most precise commentary on humanity’s confrontation with new technologies, which have become an inseparable part of our lives. A perfect example of this is the series Black Mirror, whose rights were acquired by Netflix in 2015. The American streaming platform clearly feels at home in cyberpunk climates. It was on this popular service that the film Cam premiered—a dark story about a girl from an erotic chat site. I mention Black Mirror in the context of Daniel Goldhaber’s narrative debut for a reason.

Cam could easily function as an episode in the third or fourth season of that popular series. This is clear from the film’s description alone. A young woman, who earns a living by displaying her charms in front of a sex webcam, loses her account to a doppelgänger. It seems the creators of Black Mirror might be tearing their hair out in frustration and regret that they weren’t the first to come up with a story like this. But they didn’t have Isa Mazzei, the screenwriter of Cam, who reportedly once worked as a camgirl and thus knows the subject inside out. Thanks to Mazzei’s experience, the viewer is transported into kitschy, pastel-pink rooms hidden behind curtains, filled with gadgets designed to arouse voyeurs who express their excitement through crude emojis and comments flashing on the screen in front of the camgirl.

The leading role in Cam is played by Madeline Brewer, best known to audiences as Janine in The Handmaid’s Tale. The young American actress is exceptionally talented and versatile. In Goldhaber’s debut, she essentially plays three roles. One is the main character offline—Alice, who loves oversized sweaters, wears subtle makeup, and bites her nails. After logging on, Alice becomes Lola, a girl teetering on the edge of her principles in her pursuit of climbing the popularity rankings.

Brewer also portrays Lola’s doppelgänger—a dark, perverse reflection that “activates” after a certain scene reminiscent of Cronenberg’s films. Although Brewer dominates the screen, effectively filling most of the film’s runtime, it’s worth noting that all the actors in Cam deserve recognition. They are all nuanced and natural. Cinephiles will likely notice the character PrincessX—a vampiric, dominant, and intelligent camgirl among the site’s top five performers. She is played by Samantha Robinson, who has recently been in high demand in the film industry. After a stellar performance in The Love Witch and an intriguing role in Cam, she also appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. On one hand, Goldhaber’s film is not a praise hymn for the online sex industry, but on the other, Cam does not offer a clear-cut critique either. The director presents real dangers that arise from the uninhibited exposure of the body online but only lightly touches on them. In Goldhaber’s vision, camgirls feel no guilt—strip shows are simply a normal way to earn money. So, if a chat user, in a moment of ecstasy, manages to type one-handed that he wants the girl to slit her throat, she’ll come up with a fake but dramatic suicide performance that brings him satisfaction and earns her a higher ranking.

Moments involving real-life meetings with users from adult sites (brilliantly portrayed by Patch Darragh and Michael Dempsey) or the scene in which the protagonist’s mother discovers the source of her income deserve a deeper and broader exploration in the context of the basic dangers of the online sex industry. At the same time, Cam avoids becoming a typical horror story about women exploited by sexually frustrated men. The plot twist that pushes the young director’s debut toward its central theme comes quickly.

The filmmakers downplay the issue of women’s dehumanization on the Internet and the dangerous shifting of boundaries of what is acceptable, in favor of focusing on the problem of identity theft online. The way Goldhaber presents this main idea is quite compelling. There are many possibilities for solving the mystery of the protagonist’s virtual double, especially in the context of the growing popularity of apps that allow virtual face-swapping. This process, known as deepfake, is most commonly used on pornographic sites to portray celebrities or former lovers in compromising situations. Cam doesn’t rely on clichés or predictable scares. The introduction of surreal elements and the unique approach to a difficult and previously unexplored topic may not appeal to fans of conventional horror. However, the film’s ambiguity, naturalism, and freshness make it exceptional. Goldhaber’s debut is a skillfully crafted, imaginative, gripping, and terrifying technothriller.