Review: “Cyberbully”, a fear to lose secrecy
“Cyberbully”, A British TV film that had been launched on Channel 4 on January 2015, the DVD version of this tele-film was released yesterday 8 February 2016. Famous “Game of Thrones” girl ‘Arya Stark’ Maisie Williams stars as a usual young girl who love to be online and apparently suspected as a victim of cyberbullying by an unspecified criminal. This film was directed by Ben Chanan and written by Ben Chanan and David Lobatto.
A 62 minute thriller film casts Maisie Williams as Casey Jacobs, Ella Purnell as Megan, Haruka Abe as Jennifer Li, Jake Davies as Alex, Daisy Waterstones as Tamara, Wilson Hagans as Hacker, Anthony Shuster as Dad. The flick is totally based on real experience, the script certifies the exact depiction of modern-day youngster’s life. Maisie Williams who is playing the central role of Casey Jacob also noted that she has been a victim of cyberbully after she was cast as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones. The messages she received was calling her “stuck up”, and telling her that she thought was “too good for everyone else.” Same as in the film character Williams self-confessed that replying to the bullying in kind, saying “when you’re 13 and someone says something nasty you don’t want to ignore them. You want to hurt them like they’ve hurt you. You get into this bitchy cycle.”
The movie starts in the bedroom of Casey Jacobs when she is Skyping with her best friend, Megan, and she hears that her ex-boyfriend, Nathan, has posted a harsh comment on Twitter of anti-depressants which Casey uses. Megan discloses that for her all the nasty comments are posted by their friend, Alex, and advocates that Alex must hacked Nathan’s account as revenge. But later she grasps that the messenger is a mysterious hacker. The hacker describes as a “fan”, and shows Casey a series of videos of her previous activity across the internet and later she discovered that she is being the “victim of cyberbullying” she gets frightened. The hacker controls Casey’s computer and starts communicating with her by a computer generated voice. The cyber-criminal than expose a series of nude photographs that Casey took of herself, and threatens to post them online if either she leaves the room leaving her stuck and secluded in her room. The hacker then uploads a video that she and Megan recorded revealing the homosexuality of their friend, Tamara, on Casey’s Twitter account, effectively outing her, and provoking a series of angry texts from Tamara. By a chain of videos and screen-shots, the hacker describes Casey the story of Jennifer Li, a singer who’s Vine had suffered a deluge of abuse and trolling as a result of a single, cruel comment that Casey had made about her singing. Casey started thinking that the hacker is Jennifer’s mother or father, but she guessed wrong. In frustration and fear Casey tried to commit suicide, but then she realizes the fact that the hacker doesn’t care about her life, then why she is killing herself for unknown privacy invader, she daringly shut down her computer by saying that she doesn’t care nor her friends and family what the hacker is uploading.
Some critics pointed that the cyberbully depicted in the film is not realistic, it seems a visionary ghost which invades your machine, but the topic outstretched in the film is socially useful because it guides our teens that we should be careful in regards to the technology which is growing faster and faster. Using Internet, Smartphones, Laptops, and Social Media Websites are not bad if we use it in a proper way. One in three children or 34% of 5–15 years old children in the UK are having their own Smart phones and tablets, while 88% of kids are online from their laptops and PC where they spend more time rather than watching cartoons on TV. Now here our society is lacking, we are introducing our future generation with latest technology but we never have time to guide them how to do safe surfing on internet, serious digital-parenting is needed today. We should use monitoring applications for our adolescents to measure their security concerns. A monitoring application TheOneSpy is one of my recommendation in spy software these software’s satisfy the parents about their teens online and offline engagement. Using such application is not about damaging or raiding your kids’ privacy, rather than such applications are good in terms of online safety.
Film like Cyberbully is useful for our teens, parents should include movies like this in the weekend family playlist because children can take a good moral from such movie.
