Nerve

A progressively annoying thriller, Nerve follows straightlaced student Venus Delmonico (Emma Roberts) as she and a fellow player (Dave Franco’s Ian) are drawn into an online game involving a series of escalating dares. There’s never really a point at which Nerve manages to wholeheartedly capture the viewer’s interest, with the tedious, high-school-focused bent of the movie’s opening half hour giving way to a sporadically intriguing yet thoroughly repetitive midsection. And while some of the dares are admittedly kind of compelling – Venus and Ian are, for example, challenged to escape from a fancy department store wearing just their underwear – Nerve doesn’t seem to have anything of substance to say or do once its initial point has been made. This is especially obvious once the almost astonishingly interminable third act rolls around, with the misguided nature of this stretch certainly emblematic of the screenplay’s half-baked approach (ie there just doesn’t seem to be any real point to any of this). Roberts and Franco, at least, deliver strong work here and it’s worth noting that there’s a palpable sense of chemistry between the two, and it’s clear that Nerve is at its rare best when focused on the characters’ low-key, comparatively charming interplay together. Such positives are rendered moot in the face of a picture that is, for the most part, an utter slog to sit through, and it’s ultimately difficult to envision this thin story working as a short let alone a 96 minute feature.

*1/2 out of ****