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Review | Social Distancing movie review: mobile phone addiction inspires pandemic-set Hong Kong horror thriller that is let down by dreadful storytelling
- Social Distancing awkwardly imparts the problems of becoming too dependant on your phone while throwing in a supernatural element and a few jump scares
- While the Gilitte Leung-directed feature has some interesting ideas, the story is so badly written that the result is a forgettable mess
Reading Time:2 minutes
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1.5/5 stars
Do not get addicted to your phone. Pay attention to family. And do not allow a friend to be sexually assaulted for the sake of advancing her career - these are the life lessons awkwardly imparted by Social Distancing, a supernatural horror movie with a ludicrously preachy undertone.
Set in Hong Kong during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, this second feature by writer-director Gilitte Leung Pik-chi – a Cantopop composer who made her filmmaking debut with the promising 2012 indie Love Me Not – has a smattering of interesting ideas throughout.
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Ostensibly a metaphor for the self-imposed isolation of modern life, Social Distancing becomes distracted from that idea right at the start with a tone-deaf re-enactment of the Nth Room case – here renamed “Zth Room” - a horrifying series of online sex crimes against women that made headlines in South Korea in 2019.
Gladys Li Ching-kwan (You Are the One) is Cherry, a fledgling YouTuber who lived in Seoul for two years with her friend, K-pop trainee Lisa (Jeana Ho Pui-yu), until the latter had sexually exploitative videos taken of her and released online, was cyberbullied, and killed herself during a live stream.
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