“Cyberbully," or “CyberBu//y” if you go by the cool Internety spelling on the poster, is set out to “delete digital drama” but just ended up flat-out confusing me. Due to its sheer ridiculousness, “Cyberbully” rises above its peers like the Hindenburg, then crashes just as spectacularly. It is an honest-to-god dumpster fire of a movie.
The plot is fairly simple: Taylor, our protagonist, gets a laptop for her birthday and immediately registers a profile on Cliquesters, which is described by one character as a “more raw” facebook (I swear to God). Basically, the site is identical to facebook in every way except for a few additional pointless graphics and everything typed in Courier New, the edgiest font.
The action kicks off when Taylor’s younger brother hacks her account and posts “I’m a bad girl someone should spank me." Honestly it seems pretty tame to me, seeing as every account I’ve seen hacked ended up with statuses that read like a cross between a Dear Penthouse letter and “American Psycho." Apparently it’s enough for the sociopaths on Cliquesters who rapidly descend on Taylor’s page and call her a “smelly skank." Things only get worse when one of Taylor’s friends registers an account pretending to be a boy who slept with her and got “the clap”, which is something I am absolutely positive no one under sixty actually says.
Things finally come to a head with a shockingly bad suicide attempt and then the movie just kind of meanders for like thirty minutes before a vaguely happy ending. Therein lies the biggest problem: we really don’t care what happens to Taylor. Throughout the film, she is shown to be thoroughly unlikeable. She treats her genuinely caring mother like crap, neglects her friends (though they sort of suck too) and tells the abused gay student who tries to share his bullying experiences that because he actually is gay, the insults directed his way apply. “Cyberbully” attempts to capitalize on the recent string of facebook abuse incidents but ends up being so sensationalist that a good point is ultimately lost, and that is the biggest tragedy of all.
