Assassination Nation (Review)
Assassination Nation is a Walking Trigger Warning.
Assassination Nation manages to capture both the best and the worst qualities of millennials. Before you start getting angry at another baby boomer, I’m not some angry old man yelling at kids to stay off my lawn, I’m a millennial. However, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a movie that’s really hard to watch. That doesn’t mean it isn’t absolutely brilliant at times, but you really need to take the trigger warning Assassination Nation gives in the opening credits seriously.
Basically, Assassination Nation is the story of a town that goes absolutely insane after it’s citizens are hacked and all their secrets are leaked. Every affair, every dirty text, ever piece of browsing history, all of it. Needless to say, a lot of lives are destroyed when this information comes to light and the town is desperate to blame someone. That’s where our heroes come in, they consist of Hari Nef, Suki Waterhouse, Abra, and Odessa Young, who are absolutely spectacular. While they might not give performances with a tremendous amount of depth (save for Young as the true heroine), but they manage to paint their characters in shades of gray. It’s hard not to hate these girls at certain points because they’re incredibly cruel and snarky. That doesn’t mean you don’t sympathize with them, because Assassination Nation is a film about the good and the bad inside everyone. No one is perfect and deep down we’re all capable of being bad people.
The film is an odd blend of social justice and exploitation creating a maelstrom of PC culture with a dash of chaos. The film is very open-minded when it comes to a lot of the characters, but it also makes sure that all of them are insufferable. A perfect summation of this is when a character ruins a relationship and follows up by saying, “I’m not a bitch. I’m a feminist.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for feminism and consider myself one, and I also consider Assassination Nation a triumph of feminism in a number of different ways. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have an open mind when it comes to LGBTQ rights, feminism, etc, and still be an absolute prick. This is what makes Assassination Nation so good though. Sam Levinson realizes that no one is all good or all bad and he sets out to prove that with this film. Our heroes have a lot of wonderful qualities that make them strong women, but they are also angsty and filled with inner anger that they misdirect at certain people or things. They’re not perfect, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they are just as much victims as the rest of the town in all this.
Assassination Nation is a good movie, but it’s not one that I’m going to go racing off to see again in theaters (or any time soon). It’s hard to watch because it stirs up so many emotions. I was angry, laughing, disturbed, relieved, and pretty much every other feeling possible over the nearly 2 hours run time. It’s an exhausting film that’s also highly stylized with brilliant visual storytelling. Levinson pulls social media into the visual landscape of the film in a number of different ways and it never feels like a gimmick. Instead, it’s just a natural way of telling a story about how our society is so obsessed with the lies we use when we present ourselves. That we’re all slaves to the new expectations that come with broadcasting every aspect of our lives on 4 or 5 different apps or websites.
We live in a chaotic time and I feel like this movie does a wonderful job of capturing it. There’s a lot of anger out there and it’s poisoning our society, both the anger that is justified and the anger that is completely ridiculous. At its heart, Assassination Nation is a feminist film and feminists have a lot of (rightly deserved) anger over the way that so many marginalized people have been treated over the… Ever. It’s because it has such a firm grasp on this anger that it’s so hard to watch. I felt angry for the characters and how they were treated. I was angry that so many of them then used this anger to justify their own malicious actions. It’s like when a kid is beaten by their parents and can’t fight back, so they instead take it out on someone else. Being a bully is never justified, but there’s a deeper cause to all of this. In the case of society, it’s toxic masculinity and fragile male egos. In Assassination Nation, it’s a hacker who is turning everyone against each other.
This is far from my favorite movie of the year, but I feel like it’s an important film because it manages to get a message across that so many other movies have struggled with. It’s not an easy message to swallow, because it’s one about how we’re all to blame for how messed up the world is. But sometimes the best medicine is the most difficult to swallow. I really did like Assassination Nation, but I have to warn you that it’s not a completely pleasant experience. In a way, I’m glad I went through it though because I feel like a better person because of it. Of course, that might just be because my eyes were already starting to open before I sat down in the theater. Those who still refuse to believe in inequality or the patriarchy probably won’t “get it.” There are plenty of mindless movies for them though. This is for the people that need it though. That need their feelings and anger to be justified. For them, Assassination Nation delivers, but it’s also preaching to the choir.
