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.