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Henry (Dakota Shapiro) is grossly agoraphobic and socially awkward, and
he compensates for all of this by watching a bunch of women via their
webcams he has hacked into - not for sexual purposes, he even turns their
cams off when they undress, just as some ersatz social life - not that
that would make it right of course. Eventually, his roommate Eric (Luke
Cook), pretty much the only person Henry actually meets all day, stumbles
over Henry's secret, and while he's understandably shocked, he cares too
much for Henry to give away his secret, but tries to encourage him to have
social contacts again - to the point that he invites one girl whom Henry
watches, Ella (Sarah Marie), over for drinks - without her knowing that
she's rather literally on Henry's radar. That meeting doesn't go as well
though when Henry has a severe panic attack. Henry's favourite among the
women he watches is dark haired beauty Laura (Vlada Verevko) - up until he
thinks she has drugged one of her frequent male guests and fed his flesh
to her friends at a dinner party. When he tells Eric about this though,
Eric thinks he's crazy - that is until they watch her have another male
companion and put something in his drink. They text the police who arrive
just in time - only to find out Laura's secret ingredient is ginseng.
That's a relief on one hand, but on the other now Laura knows she's being
watched, and she threatens Henry directly via her camera. Things get worse
when first Ella, and later Tessa (Ashley Elyse Rogers), another girl on
Henry's "watchlist" are brutally murdered, and somehow Henry
gets videos of both murders. Of course his chief suspect is Laura - but
then Eric decides to pay Laura a visit in the flash, and the two really
hit it off, right in front of her camera. But why did she bring a knife to
the party? Even if the resolution of the piece might not come
as quite as much of a surprise as intended, overall this is a really cool
thriller, especially since it manages to make its rather far-fetched
premise 100% believable, and manages to make its deeply flawed protagonist
totally relatable, despite his at best questionable actions. And while a
very clever script sees to it that the tension remains high throughout, a
strong small ensemble cast keeps things grounded throughout, making this
pretty awesome genre entertainment.
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