Review: Catfish (2010)

It's funny how certain years bring about trends in the industry - like the outburst of female-directed films last year and the subject of the Iraq War in 2007 - and this year, it's all about social media, or in particular, Facebook. 
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David Fincher's The Social Network, released three weeks ago, is a minor masterwork about a social outcast who invents his own form of communication and socialization to the point where he, quite ironically, cuts himself off from the only true friendship he ever had. 
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In Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost's Catfish, a supposed documentary examining the hazardous pitfalls of online identity, the cautionary mood of a culture devolving towards keypad communication and startling cyberspace reinvention continues further into the realm of psychological splintering and vicarious fantasy. 
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To the film's credit (and ultimate disbelief), it's an oddly spooky backwoods mystery that molds and reveals itself to be a story of a tragic love unfulfilled and unfounded and a deeply complex study of preservation through virtual escape.
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In fact, the film's final fifteen minutes are so staggeringly (and surprisingly) affecting that questions of its authenticity are completely viable, given the poetic punctuations and the goldmine of cinematic exploitation that Angela, the mysterious online contact, provides.
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The filmmakers may refute any accusations of falsehood they want, but the validity of the work is ultimately irrelevant as - either truth or fiction - this is a scary, timely tale of 21st century miscommunication that, like its title implies, is meant to preserve our instincts and sensory antennae. [B+]