Cam
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Writer: Isa Mazzei
Cast: Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters, Devin Druid, Imani Hakim, Michael Dempsey, Flora Diaz, Samantha Robinson, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Quei Tann, Linda Griffin
Seen on: 23.6.2019

Plot:
Alice (Madeline Brewer) works as a camgirl. She is pretty good at it and hopes to reach the Top 50 of the site she is on soon. She is not beyond some tricks, one involving one of her fans, Tinker (Patch Darragh) and she climbs the ranks pretty quickly. But the site is competitive and it’s not easy. The one day, Alice finds that somebody else is running her account. Someone who looks just like her and moves like her – but definitely isn’t her. Now Alice has more to fight for than just her space at the top.

Cam is a decent thriller with a very good main actor. It nicely builds tension and, even if you shouldn’t think about it too hard, it works very well.

Movies that deal with sex work are dangerous – more often than not, their portrayal of sex work just sucks very, very hard. In this case, there was some sexualization of sex workers and some exoticization, but also a lot of normalization. Sex work is just another job, but a job that tends to leave sex workers vulnerable to, for example, impertinent questions from police officers, or overzealous customers.

It was a rather good balance, especially since the film quickly focuses on Alice rather than her work. And since Brewer is really strong in the role and Alice is a good character, this focus works very much in the film’s favor.

And I will say that I definitely did not expect the solution that they gave us – and that was pretty interesting. Still, there were quite a few things that were left open for me, and some parts of it only works if you don’t think about it too hard. But then, I didn’t expect it to be more than an entertaining film – I don’t see the need to think about it that hard. So in the end, it works out for both the film and me.

Summarizing: pretty good.