Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Odessa Young, Hari Nef, Suki Waterhouse, Abra, Colman Domingo, Bill Skarsgard, Joel McHale, Anika Noni Rose, Bella Thorne, Maude Apatow, Cody Christian, Danny Ramirez, Susan Misner, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Noah Galvin, Lukas Gage, Jeff Pope, Joe Chrest, J.D. Evermore.
We have become, by design, busybodies, armed with the ability to record anything out of place, to show the world how important we are because we just happened to be in the right place, at the right time and with our heads dropped just enough that we have the camera phone ready to pick up the slightest gossip and edited story that will crank up our likes and views on social media. It is the modern witch hunt, relentless in its application, dangerous in its appeal, a hacker’s paradise and one in which can bring down an ordinary person to their knees, a camera flash to the head, a crumpled and torn body, assassinated by social media.
Assassination Nation might well walk the line between tasteless afterthought and soothsayer insightfulness, a rare commodity in which few dare to tread, but it was that perhaps suits, and reflects the times we live in, such is the severity of the message that it has no need to be subtle, no need to be faint or coy, it is in your face, loud, demanding, screaming till the allusion rings a large caustic bell and tears down the barely held together fabric of our society.
The very name of Salem is one that still brings shame to modern ears, and if it doesn’t that only proves the ignorance that we shelter, the 17th Century witch trials, the lies and falsehoods that caused many a death, presented perfectly by Arthur Miller in The Crucible, itself a damning indictment of McCarthy’s own hunting down of Communists in America. The fear of fear, of believing that a society is under attack by a cyber terrorist who finds joy in releasing other’s dark secrets, the name Salem once again holding sway over how other react when they suspect everyone but have no proof.
The way in which the writer and director take this crushing of the thin line that holds society together, the rule of law, the rumble of authority as it crumbles under the pressure of Mob Rule, it is in this that society becomes a danger, not through the imagined presence of witches and young adults exploring what it means to be human, but in the spectre and manifestation of the old ways being challenged, of privilege being held to account, a taken for granted supremacy being shown to be toxic, a contagion that sweeps across all and is lethal when aroused in numbers.
With fine performances from the likes of Hari Nef as Bex, Joel McHale as the epitome of male behaviour when a young woman takes his fancy and Colman Domingo as the Principal wrongly accused of immoral behaviour, Assassination Nation is a wake-up call to turn back from a route which sees accusations fly without a semblance of proof taken as gospel. Disturbing, unsettling, a genuine piece of modern horror with as many social punches to the imagination as you can want, a film of seamless endurance.
Ian D. Hall