Despite how great this movie is, this can't be properly marketed without getting spoilt So, Don't watch the trailer or anything.

It's a documentary about finding a relationship online. However, there's a few twists and turns when they start to find out that this person is not who they claim to be. Now there's a lot of people on the internet screaming "Fake, this whole thing is fake!" And here's what I have to say about this: you weren't there, neither was I. I wouldn't be surprised if it was fake or true. But so far, every single piece of so-called evidence that I've seen against this film's legitimacy, has been refuted. Just enjoy the story being told, it's a great character study.

I'm inclined to believe that the filmmakers had an idea of what they were getting into before they decide to make a movie out it, but that doesn't mean the whole thing was fake and didn't happen. For documentaries, you don't always have cameras rolling everywhere, and you have to recreate small details. Just like the close ups of the screen in Catfish were done in post-production. You'd be surprised at how many documentaries do this, but that doesn't mean they're fake. And again, I'm not saying this movie is undoubtedly true, but if you're calling it fake, then it's just as much of a hunch as someone calling it legitimate, so just enjoy this entertaining movie.

It's hard to imagine films not giving you 80% plot in their trailers but there was a time when movies like Catfish, The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, The Matrix, even Super8 to an extent were advertised based on their mystery. These were films that you didn't talk about until your friends had seen it. Sort of a pre-"spoiler culture" spoiler. Of course in 2010 while social media was around it was a different beast than it is today.

If you're familiar with Catfishing, and it's 2020 now so it'd been about 10 years since this movie popularized the term so you probably are, then you can guess the outline of this movie. It might even seem ridiculous now to make a whole documentary-style film about it when it's now the storyline of b-lines in animated sitcoms or the backstory of a character in a reality show about love.

But while [spoiler]misrepresenting yourself online[/spoiler] wasn't new in 2010. Catfish represented a sort of inflection point the basic understanding of how far someone would be willing to go both to engage with someone and to find out who they are, really.

The movie was compelling at the time. Both in ways that probably hold up and in ways that would probably be offensive now. Which isn't to say the movie itself is offensive. It's always hard to remember the details that far back but the things you enjoyed about watching this salacious story aren't necessarily the things you would enjoy in a more modern setting.