The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Please don't read this review if you want to avoid a spoiler.Documentaries like this are what make Netflix more than worth the money. This is an interesting exposé of David D'Amato, an obese, troubled and wealthy American gay man who has built up what can only be described as an international tickling-porn exploitation ring. For many years, his network has found and paid indigent young men to do these videos.The videos are not done naked, so somehow this gay man has (with bizarre homophobic logic) convinced himself that it is not gay. If a young man crosses him at some point (e.g. by stopping), he retaliates by doxing and humiliating the hapless young man all over the internet and by sending revealing, hateful and lurid correspondence to everyone in the young man's life, including his parents, his employers, and so on.The porn producers and tickle-porn actors are understandably terrified of him. In carrying out these activities, he has (apparently and allegedly) committed several crimes, including identity theft, impersonating a lawyer, extortion, visa fraud and so on.Our stalwart filmmakers include David Farrier, a New Zealand reporter quite similar to Louis Theroux, who stumbles onto all this and documents what he finds. He faces a shitstorm of rather intimidating legal action from this guy and his minions. However, he pursues it diligently, and with one or two really lucky breaks he succeeds in exposing the whole exploitation ring to the world and identifying this horrible man.At some point, this movie changed direction: what happens when a lowly and unresourced investigative journalist, taking on the role that should really be carried out by police and prosecutors, decides to expose the malevolent and possibly criminal practices of a wealthy scumbag to the world? David and Dylan turn out to have huge balls, because once the sh*t starts flying they just go after him even more.It really is a remarkable movie and a decent bit of investigative journalism. We should support David Farrier and Dylan Reeve for their bravery and professionalism, as they battle lawsuits initiated by this nutcase even as you're reading this. Fortunately, HBO and Magnolia picked up the movie and hopefully made it worthwhile.

There won't be spoilers until after the third paragraph, so read the first two if you haven't seen the film yet."Tickled" is funny, weird, depressing, uncomfortable, intense, and one of the most unbelievable true stories I have ever seen. After seeing it, I just honestly don't know what to say.To start, the score is fantastic and heightens every moment of the film. Whether it be absolutely hilarious, or incredibly harrowing, each scene wouldn't be the same without the score. While the subject of a documentary is probably the most important part - and, believe me, this is a fantastic subject - I believe the editing is the second most important, because while they don't have time to stage scenes or dialogue, the editing is always deliberate, and in this case, the film is wonderfully edited and never stops moving.Now, the rest of this film is hard to talk about without sort of ruining it for those who haven't seen it, so I'm gonna put a big SPOILER WARNING! right about here.David Farrier is a popular journalist in New Zealand that specializes in quirky, strange stories. After seeing a montage of some of his other stories towards the beginning, it seems a competitive tickling competition would fit right in. However, suddenly, David is being attacked by the supposed owner of this organization. What he begins to uncover is surprising revelation after surprising revelation, which slowly unravels until an entire underground, almost fight club-esque circuit of tickling fetishism is revealed, all run by a single man on a massive power trip with nothing to stop him. It is absolutely incredible journalism that digs deeper and deeper until a small, insecure human is revealed behind endless layers of lies and deceit. This is one of the best films of 2016.

New Zealand journalist David Farrier came upon the strange phenomena of competitive endurance tickling when searching online for new avenues to write articles on. He duly contacted the group who organised it, Jane O'Brien Media, but was met with a volley of abuse. After some to-ing and fro-ing they sent over representatives to Auckland to meet Farrier and his fellow film-maker, which only led to further threats. This bullying encouraged the two film-makers to go to the United States to try and find out more about what dark forces were behind this seemingly innocuous, if somewhat bizarre, online activity.Tickled has been described as the new Catfish (2010) and not entirely without justification. It shares the concept of a documentary following a mystery route where strange secrets are uncovered. In this one an enigmatic empire seems to lie behind the world of tickling, which is really not a competitive endurance based activity at all but an odd sexual fetish. It turns out it is harmless enough to get many young men involved when there is a cash incentive but embarrassing enough to cause them many problems when these tickle videos begin to be posted everywhere online by the media group who own them. The videos are used in this way as a means of ensuring the men comply with the demands of the mysterious leader Jane O'Brien, if the boys refuse to do more work then the videos are posted everywhere with their real names attached to them. The film-makers soon discovered that most of these young men were consequently too afraid to speak out but one or two individuals do talk and detail the levels of blackmail, bullying and exploitation they have had to endure. There group behind it seem to be as much interested in power and control, as they are in their sexual fetish. The investigation begins in the earliest days of the internet and continues to the present day. There is a big reveal late on but it's best not to say too much about it.It could probably be argued that, while this one has a very interesting premise, it doesn't necessarily wrap things up as strongly as it might. By the end it feels like there are still more questions than answers. Still, this is an interesting and strange story and despite one or two flaws, it's one that makes for fascinating viewing.

I arrived at the local art house cinema expecting to see Weiner only to find that it played at 4:30 and 9:30. Tickled, a film I hadn't heard of was just about to start at 7:00 so there I was. I have seen tickle videos on YouTube and elsewhere and always wondered about the economics behind these strange, professional looking videos. They weren't advertisements for subscription pay sites so what gives...Tickled sheds some light on the economics and motivation behind them. Without giving anything away, I'd suggest that it is as creepy and malevolent a story as Foxcatcher. The head games played by Mr. DuPont and 'Teri Tickle' are frighteningly similar even if the results were very different.Talking about the film with strangers as I left the theater: I thought my 'creepy' was better than any of the other adjectives mentioned. But when I talked about tickle videos being everywhere on the Internet, they might of thought that was creepy.Too often in documentaries, the person with the microphone can be overbearing to irritation. The low key approach in Tickled makes the journey more interesting. It only heightens what unfolds on the screen.