CAM
Starring Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Micahel Dempsey. Written by Isa Mazzei. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber. (2018)
Ah, the world of adult entertainment. I have seen ads for Cam Girls on the web but never have gone into that world. Basically because I am a cheap bastard. But, this movie revolves around Alice (Madeline Brewer), a girl that makes her living by talking to her audience through a web cam who are giving her tokens as she does their bidding. She goes under the stage name of Lola, and she is obsessed with getting into the top 50 ranked cam girls out there, and there are thousands of them.
Alice takes her job seriously and works hard at setting up little scenarios in her little red room, reading the requests by her horny followers trying to give them what they want to make her money. She watches as her ratings rise, but although close, she can never seem to break that top 50 mark. In one strange show she pulls out a large knife, and through the coaxing from her delinquent followers she slits here throat and the blood pours. But fear not, it is only special effects and is only done so to watch her ratings climb. She talks to one of her big supporters Tinker (Patch Darragh) after the big show, who calls in for a private viewing where Alice is about to take a bath, they both relate their excitement of how close she is to that top ranking. Her phone call is interrupted by Barney (Michael Dempsey), the owner of the cam girl site, who says he is going to be in town in a few days and the two set up a meet. Things seem to be going Alice’s way.
Starring Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Micahel Dempsey. Written by Isa Mazzei. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber. (2018)
Ah, the world of adult entertainment. I have seen ads for Cam Girls on the web but never have gone into that world. Basically because I am a cheap bastard. But, this movie revolves around Alice (Madeline Brewer), a girl that makes her living by talking to her audience through a web cam who are giving her tokens as she does their bidding. She goes under the stage name of Lola, and she is obsessed with getting into the top 50 ranked cam girls out there, and there are thousands of them.
Alice takes her job seriously and works hard at setting up little scenarios in her little red room, reading the requests by her horny followers trying to give them what they want to make her money. She watches as her ratings rise, but although close, she can never seem to break that top 50 mark. In one strange show she pulls out a large knife, and through the coaxing from her delinquent followers she slits here throat and the blood pours. But fear not, it is only special effects and is only done so to watch her ratings climb. She talks to one of her big supporters Tinker (Patch Darragh) after the big show, who calls in for a private viewing where Alice is about to take a bath, they both relate their excitement of how close she is to that top ranking. Her phone call is interrupted by Barney (Michael Dempsey), the owner of the cam girl site, who says he is going to be in town in a few days and the two set up a meet. Things seem to be going Alice’s way.
Alice entices new viewers by slitting her throat.
Alice enjoys the money, but is a little embarrassed about telling people what she actually does for a living and tells her mom she is a web developer. But in reality she pushes the limit when she decides to join up with another cam girl, Princess, to ride some electronic machine while viewers pay tokens for Princess to keep turning up the juice on the vibrating monstrosity while Lola rides it to climax. This is pay dirt for Alice as her alter ego Lola finally achieves top 50… but unfortunately her newly found achievement is short lived.
The next day Alice runs into a perplexing situation. Seems her account is active and it shows that she is live on the net. When she attempts to log in she finds she is unable to get into her account and i locked out. She goes in under another name and sees her live show, yes it is her performing. She quickly calls the website and wonders why they are running old shows and they claim they do not have the ability to do that. This show is live. Unable to work things out with the website in reclaiming her account Alice finds that her doppelganger is achieving more than she ever could… but how. This person looks exactly like her, how can it be?
Things go from bad to worse when she shows up at her teenage brother’s birthday party where one of his friends is caught watching the live showing of Lola masturbating in a public library. Now her family knows, and Alice slowly becomes the number one cam girl without the benefits but all the shame.
Alice soons finds that Lola is supposed to do a girl-girl show with girl named Baby, so Alice looks to find Baby to catch her imposter. After a weird meeting with Barney, she is able to track down Baby, only to find she has died in a car crash a few months earlier. When she goes on line to see this supposed girl-girl meeting, she sees Baby and Lola together and walking to Alice’s bedroom. Alice quickly barricades the door, but to no avail, because even though they never walk through the door to her room, online the two girls are together in Alice’s room… what is going on?
Alice figures her only way to get to the truth is to talk the always creepy Tinker, who is staying at a seedy hotel in Alice’s town as he is always trying to take things with Alice to the next level. Tinker admits that he knows of this entity taking over the cam girls lives, but really has no explanation. Alice then finds Tinker in the bathroom masturbating to the live show of the fake Lola, in which Alice confronts Lola on screen, to which Lola refers to her as Tinker’s girlfriend, obviously not recognizing that the two girls are one and the same.
This chance meeting inspires Alice to set up an online meet with Lola, sitting in the identical room she is with a mirror set up behind her. She cons her into competing for the viewer’s attention and if she wins Lola will have to give her the username and password to her site.
SPOILER ALERT: This is a fun movie to watch but I was really put out by the ending. In that meeting between Alice and Lola, Alice smashes her face onto the table in front of her breaking her nose. Lola would do the same but nothing would register until blood started running down Alice’s face then suddenly Lola’s face would digitize for second and then blood would appear. This continued until Alice got the password, locked the fake Lola out of the account and then starts a new identity and starts all over again. So basically, we have no idea where this entity came from, why it came, and what was its purpose? With no mastermind behind it cashing in on this girl I guess we are just left with some horror aspect that really has no rhyme or reason. I believe this would have been much better had it been the website owner had some evil plan to digitally recreate the successful girls in order get all their money, or some other evil idea. One questions why she would start again if this could all so easily happen again without warning… and was it really necessary to fuck up her own face to make this happen?
The writer of the movie got the idea from her own experiences as a cam girl, supposedly she was originally going to do a documentary on cam girls but thought a horror movie would be more entertaining. Supposedly many things in the movie actually happened to her, her account being high jacked, cops would not take her seriously and only asking her “what is the weirdest thing you have ever done?” and then hitting on her. I actually think the documentary would have been a better idea.
The next day Alice runs into a perplexing situation. Seems her account is active and it shows that she is live on the net. When she attempts to log in she finds she is unable to get into her account and i locked out. She goes in under another name and sees her live show, yes it is her performing. She quickly calls the website and wonders why they are running old shows and they claim they do not have the ability to do that. This show is live. Unable to work things out with the website in reclaiming her account Alice finds that her doppelganger is achieving more than she ever could… but how. This person looks exactly like her, how can it be?
Things go from bad to worse when she shows up at her teenage brother’s birthday party where one of his friends is caught watching the live showing of Lola masturbating in a public library. Now her family knows, and Alice slowly becomes the number one cam girl without the benefits but all the shame.
Alice soons finds that Lola is supposed to do a girl-girl show with girl named Baby, so Alice looks to find Baby to catch her imposter. After a weird meeting with Barney, she is able to track down Baby, only to find she has died in a car crash a few months earlier. When she goes on line to see this supposed girl-girl meeting, she sees Baby and Lola together and walking to Alice’s bedroom. Alice quickly barricades the door, but to no avail, because even though they never walk through the door to her room, online the two girls are together in Alice’s room… what is going on?
Alice figures her only way to get to the truth is to talk the always creepy Tinker, who is staying at a seedy hotel in Alice’s town as he is always trying to take things with Alice to the next level. Tinker admits that he knows of this entity taking over the cam girls lives, but really has no explanation. Alice then finds Tinker in the bathroom masturbating to the live show of the fake Lola, in which Alice confronts Lola on screen, to which Lola refers to her as Tinker’s girlfriend, obviously not recognizing that the two girls are one and the same.
This chance meeting inspires Alice to set up an online meet with Lola, sitting in the identical room she is with a mirror set up behind her. She cons her into competing for the viewer’s attention and if she wins Lola will have to give her the username and password to her site.
SPOILER ALERT: This is a fun movie to watch but I was really put out by the ending. In that meeting between Alice and Lola, Alice smashes her face onto the table in front of her breaking her nose. Lola would do the same but nothing would register until blood started running down Alice’s face then suddenly Lola’s face would digitize for second and then blood would appear. This continued until Alice got the password, locked the fake Lola out of the account and then starts a new identity and starts all over again. So basically, we have no idea where this entity came from, why it came, and what was its purpose? With no mastermind behind it cashing in on this girl I guess we are just left with some horror aspect that really has no rhyme or reason. I believe this would have been much better had it been the website owner had some evil plan to digitally recreate the successful girls in order get all their money, or some other evil idea. One questions why she would start again if this could all so easily happen again without warning… and was it really necessary to fuck up her own face to make this happen?
The writer of the movie got the idea from her own experiences as a cam girl, supposedly she was originally going to do a documentary on cam girls but thought a horror movie would be more entertaining. Supposedly many things in the movie actually happened to her, her account being high jacked, cops would not take her seriously and only asking her “what is the weirdest thing you have ever done?” and then hitting on her. I actually think the documentary would have been a better idea.
Writer and former cam girl Isa Mazzei.
I’m sure a lot of us, me included, has to wonder why guys would throw money at an attractive girl just to do weird shit on your computer screen. It really reminds me of Draculina days when I would attend conventions and all of these Scream Queens would sell their photos, movies, and in some cases much stranger things. There was one that did personalized videos, I believe it started out at $250 and went up from there depending on what you asked her to do. I actually saw one of these from a guy that I know that paid for the service. She repeatedly said his name while she stripped down. These women really took advantage of these guys, selling them panties, offering them dates for compensation. Was sex involved, rarely, but I know of an incident where it did happen, but this guy was basically financially supporting her.
CAM is an entertaining ride, lots of weird stuff going on, some nudity, and some pretty good acting but at a million dollar budget one has to wonder where all the money went, as once again, this is just a B-movie with a more polished look. (I believe Netflix financed this with explains the big budget). Most may know Madeline Brewer more as Tricia Miller from season one of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, which amazingly was her first acting role, she’s gone on to do quite a bit on various shows and I wish she had been utilized a little better in this movie, but she did a good job. A different ending could have made this much more and added a deeper meaning to the whole story, could have also added some action and better suspense to the storyline. Nonetheless, it is it was still a fun ride and definitely worth a look but could only give it three coffins just because of the ending. Found it on Netflix.
CAM is an entertaining ride, lots of weird stuff going on, some nudity, and some pretty good acting but at a million dollar budget one has to wonder where all the money went, as once again, this is just a B-movie with a more polished look. (I believe Netflix financed this with explains the big budget). Most may know Madeline Brewer more as Tricia Miller from season one of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, which amazingly was her first acting role, she’s gone on to do quite a bit on various shows and I wish she had been utilized a little better in this movie, but she did a good job. A different ending could have made this much more and added a deeper meaning to the whole story, could have also added some action and better suspense to the storyline. Nonetheless, it is it was still a fun ride and definitely worth a look but could only give it three coffins just because of the ending. Found it on Netflix.
