Josh and Zane are high-school friends turned college roommates. Josh is the more outgoing and popular, Zane the more reclusive and introverted. Zane also has somewhat of an unhealthy addiction to a ‘pornographic’ website named ‘Beat A Slut’. The website delights in inflicting actual bodily harm and pain onto its female captives. Curious about the depraved nature of the site, Josh sneaks a peak whilst Zane is out, at which point they find themselves transported to another plane where a spirit brandishes them with her form of punishment for their engagement.
Don’t Click attempts to combine torture porn with a vengeful spirit in the hope of making something unique. However, the popularity of torture porn has waned considerably over the years, and vengeful spirits have been out dated even longer. The tact of making it more modern by centralising the film around a computer element also fails to land, with films such as Feardotcom, W?Z, and Brainscan having already tackled the idea in some capacity. Each plot point comes with its own issues. The torture seems pointless, and has been seen before far too many times, as it sticks to the typical methods of pain infliction. For a film that appears to want to champion women’s rights (the vengeful spirit is female), there’s far too much violence inflicted upon them. Most of the violence against the men is perpetrated off screen. It confuses the message. Our vengeful spirit also isn’t very intimidating, appearing as a warped Corpse Bride cosplayer.
The computer dimension comes complete with a distracting jerky frame rate. It’s an ill-advised stylistic choice as all it does it make the viewer question if there’s something wrong with the content they’re watching, especially if you’re watching digitally. There’s no need for it. The decision has obviously been made as a way in which to differentiate between the room and the real world, but it’s already clear when they’re trapped in the torture room and when they’re in an ordinary college dorm room.
With Don’t Click, director G-Hey Kim extrapolates the idea for her original short, out to feature length. There’s been a long history of this, many filmmakers using the short film format as a proof of concept for their feature. Films that have manged to make the transition successfully include Light’s Out, Saw, and Mama. Unfortunately, Don’t Click fails to replicate the success and is just a long, drawn out, and confusing attempt at making the five minute short stretch to ninety minutes, seemingly without adapting or adding that much to the initial plot. There’s nothing worse than a dull movie, and unfortunately that’s all that Don’t Click manages to be.
Don’t Click was reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest 2020.
Don’t Click
Summary
A dull and pointless attempt at expanding an idea that was better off left in short form. Don’t Click is perfect proof that not every short needs to be stretched out to feature length.
