The Netflix Horror Movie That’s Become More Terrifying Thanks To AI
While we love very ambitiously crazy horror movies (we’re looking at you here, Nope), we think that horror is at its best when it has something we can easily relate to. And as global anxiety over AI and deepfakes has grown, the Netflix horror film Cam seems more relevant (and definitely spookier) than ever before. You can stream the film today to see what the hype is all about, but just be warned: this one is even spookier to watch when you’re home alone.
When a mysterious camgirl pops up on FGL who looks exactly like Brewer, her character must get to the bottom of who is wearing her face and just how the hell any of this is happening.
By the standards of most Netflix horror films, Cam starts simply enough: we are following the misadventures of a camgirl character played by Madeline Brewer. This character is a rising star on the fictional FreeGirlsLive website, and it looks like she won’t have any trouble rising in the ranks…
Until she ends up facing competition from the last person she’d expect. When a mysterious camgirl pops up on FGL who looks exactly like Brewer, her character must get to the bottom of who is wearing her face and just how the hell any of this is happening.
What makes this Netflix horror production so spooky is that the very idea of this kind of digital identity theft is much more believable now than when Cam came out in 2018. Everyone from famous politicians to spurned lovers now has to worry about weird deepfakes of themselves (often in compromising positions) ending up on the internet.
Combine that with the growing potential of artificial intelligence and the likelihood of you encountering an intelligent doppelganger of yourself online just went way up.
And as much as we love this Netflix movie, Cam is one of the rare films where the story of how it was made is just as interesting as the narrative itself. The script was written by Isa Mazzei, and many of the moments inside of it are surprisingly authentic because she was drawing on her own previous experiences as a camgirl.
And originally, she wanted to transform those experiences into more of a camgirl documentary than a horror film before realizing this story would be better as a spooky thriller.
While Mazzei mercifully didn’t have to deal with any AI duplicates of herself, the Netflix horror film Cam effectively dramatizes one nightmare she did have to deal with: stolen videos.
The script was written by Isa Mazzei, and many of the moments inside of it are surprisingly authentic because she was drawing on her own previous experiences as a camgirl.
She constantly had to worry about others stealing the videos she posted for their own profit, and she couldn’t get much help from law enforcement because she alleged that the police were very indifferent to the plight of sex workers.
This is why the police are portrayed as unhelpful in the film, and for extra “ick” factor, some of the police dialogue is taken from skeezy questions Hollywood execs asked Mazzei when they discovered she was a camgirl.
Before Netflix bought the film for distribution, Cam premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival, and it made an immediate splash. At the festival, the movie was nominated for and won two awards: the New Flesh Award for Best Feature Film and the Cheval Noir Award for Best Screenplay. It also went on to win three different awards from the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, including a Best Actress award for Madeline Brewer.
And unlike many horror films, Netflix’s Cam proved to be a major hit with critics when it was released. The movie currently has a 93 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics praising Madeline Brewer’s powerful performance. Other critics praised how effectively the film utilizes modern technology in order to create a new kind of thriller.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this Netflix horror thriller is that Cam had a budget of only one million dollars. In an age when $200 million films like The Flash end up being box office bombs, it’s reassuring to know that creative directors like Daniel Goldhaber can still create an engaging and critically-acclaimed film for less than one percent of that blockbuster’s budget.
You can check out Cam, the overlooked horror film on Netflix right now.
And as studios reel from one expensive loss after another, expect to see smaller to mid-budget movies make a splash in theaters and especially on streaming.
Ultimately, Netflix is a good place to find some otherwise-hidden horror gems, and Cam is definitely one that you should stream today. It has great performances, tight direction, and a story about stolen identity guaranteed to keep you up at night. Basically, it’s like an extended episode of Black Mirror, and we loved it from beginning to end.
