Taglines: Are you a watcher or player?
High school senior Venus “Vee” Delmonico longs to leave her home in Staten Island for college, but is afraid to tell her mother about being admitted to the California Institute of the Arts, as she is still grieving from the death of her brother, who died before starting college. Her friend Sydney becomes popular in Nerve: an online reality game where people either enlist online as “players” or pay to watch as “watchers”. Players accept dares from watchers, receiving monetary rewards. Sydney and her other friends chastise Vee’s unadventurous nature. When Vee refuses to talk to her crush J.P., Sydney approaches J.P. herself and reveals that Vee is interested in him. J.P. rebuffs her, and Vee walks away embarrassed.
Furious, Venus signs up as a player on Nerve. The game collects her personal data and explains the three rules: all dares must be recorded on the player’s phone, earned money will be revoked if a player fails or “bails” a dare, and a player must not report the game to law enforcement. In addition, the top two most-watched players will compete in a highly sought-after final round. Her first dare is to kiss a stranger at a diner for five seconds. Vee kisses Ian, who is reading Vee’s favorite book To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. He starts dancing around the diner and sings to her on a dare, revealing that he’s another player. The watchers then dare Ian to take her into New York City, believing they make a good couple.
In the city, Vee is dared to try on an expensive dress. Ian is also dared to try on formal attire. Vee and Ian find that their clothes have been stolen, and are dared by the watchers to leave the store. They do so in their underwear. They return to Ian’s motorbike, where they find a bag of clothes paid for by watchers. Vee is then dared to get a tattoo chosen by Ian, who draws out a tattoo and refuses to show Vee. When Vee becomes impatient, he distracts her with Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” on the radio, one of her brother’s favorite songs. Vee raps along with the song until the finished tattoo is revealed to be a lighthouse. Ian’s next dare is to ride his motorbike through the city blindfolded at 60 mph, using Vee to steer his body; once completed, the two kiss. Vee and Ian soon become among Nerve’s top players.
Jealous at Vee’s rise of popularity, Sydney accepts a dare to walk across a ladder suspended between two buildings. Whilst performing the dare, she drops her phone and becomes terrified. Sydney bails out and loses the game. Ian takes Vee to Sydney’s party and Vee catches her in bed with J.P. After arguing with Sydney, Vee receives and completes the dare on which Sydney bailed. Vee’s friend Tommy reveals that he was watching Ian’s profile; Ian had accepted a dare to make Vee and Sydney fight. Vee realizes how dangerous Nerve is and reports the game to the police, but they do nothing. As punishment, all of the money is depleted from Vee and her mother’s bank accounts. She is then punched in the face by elite player Ty as a dare.
After waking up in an abandoned site, she finds Ian, who confesses that he and Ty were players whose friend, Robbie, was killed in a dare. When they tried to alert the authorities, their families’ jobs, bank accounts, and identities were confiscated, trapping them in the secret third category of the game: “prisoners”. Vee is now a prisoner too, and only the winner of the final round can regain their identity.
Vee, Tommy, and Sydney recruit Tommy’s hacker friends to alter the game’s online code, but it is impossible to shut down Nerve as all the watchers act as a server to the game. After hanging from a crane for five seconds – the same dare that killed Robbie – Ian earns a spot in the finals in order to protect Vee. During the finals, which take place at Battery Weed on Staten Island, Vee and Ian are each given a revolver: one must shoot the other to win. Ian offers to throw the competition, but Ty jumps from the audience and takes his place. Vee criticizes the watchers, whose identity are concealed behind masks and tells them to show “nerve” at who they are and reveal themselves. The watchers then cast a vote regarding if Ty should kill Vee. The majority vote is “yes”, and Ty shoots Vee.
Nerve is a 2016 American techno-thriller adventure film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman and written by Jessica Sharzer, based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Jeanne Ryan. The film stars Emma Roberts, Dave Franco and Juliette Lewis, and revolves around an online objective truth or dare video game, which allows people to enlist as “players” or “watchers” as the game intensifies. The film premiered at the SVA Theater on July 12, 2016 and was theatrically released on July 27, 2016, by Lionsgate. Nerve received praise for its energy and the chemistry of its cast, and grossed $85 million worldwide against its $19 million budget.
Nerve
Directed by: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Starring: Dave Franco, Emma Roberts, Juliette Lewis, Samira Wiley, Kimiko Glenn, Emily Meade, Arielle Vandenberg, Toshiko Onizawa, Danielle DeWulf
Screenplay by: Jessica Sharzer
Production Design by: Chris Trujillo
inematography by: Michael Simmonds
Film Editing by: Madeleine Gavin, Jeff McEvoy
Costume Design by: Melissa Vargas
Set Decoration by: Kara Zeigon
Music by: Rob Simonsen
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material involving dangerous and risky behavior, some sexual content, language, drug content, drinking and nudity-all involving teens.
Studio: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: September 16, 2016
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