This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

I am not a big fan of movies about teen angst, but I'd heard some good things about Chatroom. I'm glad I gave it a try! It wasn't a brilliant movie by any means, but it characterized the Internet quite well. I think if anyone has been on the 'net long enough, they've run into manipulative people like William, so his character was believable. Even his ability to manipulate people was quickly as he did was quite believable, as lonely people on the 'net are apt to follow anyone with a good story.I would have scored it higher, except I did not care for the stop-action films within a film and I did not care for the "Jim's father" storyline being kept open-ended. In all, it was as good as I had expected, if not a bit better, based on what I had read. It was a bit better than I expected, based on my lack of fondness for teen angst stories. Definitely a solid 7, with a toehold in the 8 range if I'm feeling generous. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS I did find it a bit convenient that Mo's friend was willing to help him, even after he confessed to being interested in the friend's under-age sister. I think it wouldn't have taken the other long to realize that the story about the penguins was important to Jim and, if he wanted to make a statement with his death, that he would choose that place to die. It might have added a couple of lines of dialogue and a bit more tension to the scene.I also found William's death to be shocking, if not a bit expected. He was obviously disturbed from the beginning and at odds with himself. He was probably struggling with his own desire to kill himself (hence Jim being a hero to William, if Jim shot himself) and he probably would have taken his own life with the gun if he could not convince Jim to use it. His falling in front of the train was a nice change, rather than committing suicide by cop as I expected him to do. It was also nice seeing a hint of William's internal struggle, as he tries to work up the courage to kill himself earlier in the film and his thought to stop Jim's suicide, however briefly it lasted.

As soon as I finished watching this movie, I made an IMDb account so I could write this review. The movie Chatroom takes place almost entirely online, with the setting being shown in a very unique way on-screen. As the teens log in, we see the internet become personified as a hotel-like place, each door leading to a different room (some locked, some public). The hallways to the rooms are filled with a variety of people, including pedophiles, barely clothed women, men in suits, small children, teens, and every day normal people. The internet is a very diverse place and chatrooms are used by many. Luckily, not all are used in the way it was in this feature.The main character, Will (a seemingly normal, though troubled teen) creates a chatroom and allows only the 4 other characters in to talk to him. Towards the middle of the movie it begins to come to light that Will's intentions for the room are not positive at all. He aims to hurt some of the others, and attempts to convince another to commit suicide. Even though the ending was rather predictable for a movie of this type, I still enjoyed it very much. What made me want to write my ideas on the movie was a review I saw on Netflix about how terrible of a movie this was. I'll be honest, if you're looking for something to keep you on the edge of your seat, this may not be it. However, it's definitely honest. Between 12 and about 17, I frequented chatrooms nearly every night. This movie almost portrays my experience to a t. I was a lonely kid, and I found friends who I thought I could trust and confide in. I came across my fair share of pedophiles and generally bad people. I've seen people bully relentlessly and even tell people to kill themselves until they were forced to leave, hopefully unscathed emotionally. This movie brings to light a harsh reality that youth today are living. With technology so readily available- it is going to be abused. We need to be watching our connections and parental block is definitely your friend if you're a parent. Kids are looking for answers online, and it's not a safe place to be looking at all. Don't get me wrong, I have made lasting relationships through chatrooms. I even lived with a man who I met online, but it isn't worth the risk. I've also been black mailed similarly to how the character tried to black mail the other characters into keeping quiet, the only difference is that I got blackmailed into sending nude pictures while I was underage. These things are happening to teens way more than people realize, because no one is telling you. None of these kids told their parents about what was happening, and none of their parents took action because they didn't think anything was wrong. Chatroom can only be considered a horror if you realize the reality of it.I suppose what I'm really trying to say in this review is, if you watch this movie and read the reviews and read this one, take as much of this movie to heart as you can. It's a reality that you're going to probably have to handle with your kids when you have them, and if you have them now, they may already be involved. They may not be in as bad of a situation, or any situation at all, but stay in the know and keep connected. It's too risky not to. The technology may change, but with every good opportunity, there are just as many bad to counteract it.

While I admire the rationale behind CHATROOM, a would-be thriller that looks at the dark side of Internet-age communication, I have to say that it just doesn't work as an emotionally satisfying film. The film grabs the topic of Internet chat – and all the bullying, perversion and peer group pressure that goes with it – and explores it in an unusual way. The participants are shown meeting up in physical rooms and speaking face to face. The idea behind this, I guess, is that showing them sitting quietly and endlessly typing back and forth would have been boring, but that method was used in at least a couple of successful documentaries I've seen (TALLHOTBLOND and CATFISH) so I don't necessarily buy it.In any case, what follows is a psychological exploration of both the positive and negative sides of the experience. At first, speaking to fellow teens allows the participants freedom of expression and friendship, but that soon degenerates into violence. Sadly, there just isn't enough plot to sustain the hour and a half run time, so before long the pacing slows right down and we're left endlessly waiting for something to happen.The script, which is based on a stage play, feels staged and slightly pretentious; I can see how it would have worked better given the physical constraints of the theatre, but that format feels artificial here. There's a whole self-conscious feel to the proceedings. It's a shame, because the bright young cast certainly give it their all: Aaron Johnson is absolutely fiendish in the central role, Imogen Poots is lovely, and both Hannah Murray and Daniel Kaluuya give oddly touching turns.The real star, of course, is Hideo Nakata, weirdly imported in to direct a movie which he can't make any mark on whatsoever. A single, chilling scene of an Asian girl committing suicide on webcam is the only reminder that Nakata's a king in the J-horror genre.

Yes you can pick holes at this film until teatime and everybody assumes it is because the actors, director, and writers were not up to it, but I would like to put forward another theory.As with most British films (exceptions being Messrs Loach & Leigh) an audience has to be established before it will be backed. I'm afraid the days of just making a fine film and hoping people will appreciate it are long gone. In the case of this film they chose a young audience and that is the reason for most of the frustrating shortcomings. They figure, I guess with some reason that the film had to be dynamic, action packed and with not too much dialogue to prevent the little scamps getting bored and twittering their friends to tell everybody what a boring movie they were watching.Unfortunately with a film focusing on people chatting online this was always going to be a struggle. Turning the virtual world into a physical location was a nice idea, but it was overused and over expanded. I also agree with all of the other reviewers claiming the relationships weren't sufficiently developed and that too quickly the lead character had the others eating out of his hand, but as already mentioned this was not due to a lack of talent but a conscious choice to make the movie this way. I am sure the writers and the director were more than capable of doing this and if you look at the deleted scenes on the DVD a lot of good stuff is there doing the job.But alas no, we had to have that unnecessary climax and all those visual corridor scenes which did nothing for the narrative. An interesting comparison is with the film: 'Social Network', which is full of rapid quick fire dialogue and scenes cutting quickly between locations and times zones and you have to concentrate consistently to understand what is going on. Something the film makers of this film don't think young people are capable of. To my knowledge this film was popular with all age groups, but yes your right this film was about Facebook, an entity most young people have a stake in, but couldn't that be also said of chatrooms? In short the producers misunderstood their subject matter and their audience and in doing so have missed an opportunity to make a great film and have instead created another forgettable British flop. Shame.