Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Writers: Isa Mazzei, Daniel Goldhaber
Starring: Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters
1 Hour, 34 Minutes
Watch now on Netflix
Alice is a cam girl, calling herself Lola and spanking herself on camera for tip money. She has a generous audience. She blocks an annoying user, but he won’t stay blocked. “Use a knife! I want you to bleed!” He says in the chat room. She pulls out a knife and threatens to kill herself, and the tip money goes way up. She cuts her own throat and lays there, dead. After a minute, then she gets back up; it was a trick.
Credits Roll.
She’s happy with the ratings, she’s up to number 53 on the site now. She talks to Tinker, her friend who helps her with technical stuff, but blows him off for a paying customer. Later, Tink hears her invite the girl from the Dollar Store to a birthday party that he wasn’t told about. Tink, who is infatuated with her, feels slighted. Barnacle Bob keeps calling her, and now he starts buying her real gifts. They start talking about meeting in real life when his wife comes home and the laptop gets shut off real quick. Meanwhile, Alice declines more of Tink’s calls.
Tonight, she and a friend are going to the Camgirl Club and “ride the Vibraton” on camera, and she expects it’ll draw a big crowd. They’re having a great show, and they pass 50 again! She nearly passes out from the action, but the ratings are worth it.
The next morning, she tries to log into her account, but can’t do it. She searches for her account and finds that she’s online… right now. Except she’s not. That sure looks like her on the camera. She goes into her studio and finds the video playing, but there’s no one in the actual room, even though it’s the same room on the video.
She calls tech support, and they see it too. The show is live and the person on the video matches her description, so they won’t remove it. She logs in under a different account, but she quickly gets banned. It quickly becomes obvious that the show is not a rerun— it’s live.
The next night, her doppelgänger is on again, but the new shows are way more popular and creative than the old ones. This happened after she performed at the Camgirl Club, but no one there takes credit for hacking her. Then she calls support again, and now her access code is invalid.
Tinker shows up and says Lola told him she loved him last night. Except she wasn’t really on last night. She goes to her brother’s birthday party, and a lot of the boys there are watching her show. Her mother finds a phone and now she knows what Alice does for a living. It’s a party stopper!
The Alice on the screen pulls out a gun and gets all sexy with it, and she starts getting big tips, and her ranking goes way up. Then she blows her head off. And gets back up again, just like the trick with the knife. Top 20!
She calls Barney, one of her biggest fans and supporters, and meets him. He seems to know all the girls, and he spends a lot of time with them. Alice goes to the restroom, and while she’s in there, Lola comes online and Barney gets a notification; Barney now knows she’s not the same person. Barney gets angry; he thinks she’s trying to scam him.
Lola does a pair-video with the number one girl on the site. Alice does research and tracks down Hannah, the #1 girl on the site, but she’s been dead for six months. Hannah’s done a lot of dual shows over the past six months. Many of these girls have Tinker as their number one friend. Is he behind all this?
Alice is cornered by her mother and her mother is actually jealous and supportive of the videos.
Alice tracks down Tink. He’s very understanding. He’ll do anything for her. Tinker/Arnold says he’ll track down whoever is behind this. She confronts him, and he says he can usually tell when girls are going to get copied, but he doesn’t know how it works. He insists that he wouldn’t do this.
Finally, she gets to talk to “Lola” on a face-to-face chat. The other Lola doesn’t recognize her at all and acts very innocent. Finally, Alice sets up a webcam and does a double-pair video with herself. With both of them onscreen at the same time, she hopes to expose the duplicate as what she is. As they play “Monkey see, monkey do,” Alice starts banging her face into the table and she finally hits number one.
After winning back and deleting her account, Alice has an ugly broken nose and a few scars. Now that she looks different, she starts a new account on the camgirl site and gets right back to work with her new fake identity.
Commentary
From the trailers, I expected that this movie was about YouTubers, not actual porno cam workers. Still, it’s a good view into what happens with identity theft and the frustrating way tech support actually works with online services. It could even be a look ahead into AI and algorithm-controlled content production.
There is a deleted scene where they explain that an AI algorithm has copied parts of her many previous videos and extrapolated new videos. I think that explains a lot, and they should have left the scene in. As it is, there’s no real on-screen explanation.
Overall, it’s a pretty good story. Maybe more sci-fi than horror, but it was worth the watch.