Sometimes good movies go unnoticed. It’s always disappointing to see a movie that looks and feels like a theatrical release, only to end up going straight to DVD.With Unfriended coming out this weekend, I thought it might be nice to take a look at a film with a similar concept that didn’t get a wide release. That movie is The Den.
The Den follows Elizabeth (Melanie Papilia), a social media studies grad student (which is apparently a thing now) who creates The Den, a website that is basically a ripoff of Chatroulette for her thesis. After witnessing what she believes to be a murder in one of the chats, things in her life begin to go awry. To say any more would spoil the fun of The Den.
Like Unfriended, the entirety of The Den takes place on Elizabeth’s laptop. We only see what is being shown on Elizabeth’s Den screen. At first it feel a little gimmicky, but by the film’s end you actually become immersed in the unique perspective the film is showing you. The whole concept has been done before in Joe Swanberg’s segment of V/H/S and last year’s Elijah Wood/Sasha Grey thriller Open Windows, but The Den handles the format better than both of those.
It’s is actually a pretty terrifying film. I’ve seen some reviews criticizing the film for being too gimmicky or even inauthentic, but I disagree. I think the “gimmick” works for, rather than against The Den. My main gripe with the film would be that no one seems to believe Elizabeth when she begins to tell people about what she has seen (this is yet another film where the police force is completely inept), but any other flaws the film has are forgivable.
This is a brief post, but that’s because I don’t want to give anything away for what is actually a pretty amazing film. I know movies with lower budgets sometimes get limited releases for financial reasons, but it bums me out that a studio didn’t see the potential that The Den had. It could have proved to be quite profitable.
By the way, I didn’t realize Netflix already had a “Hidden Gems” section before I wrote this. That being said, The Den definitely deserves a spot on that list.