In 2017, a series of tweets published by the illustrator and cartoonist de BuzzFeed, Adam Ellis, He unleashed chaos on the Internet. What began as a disturbing anecdotate about strange dreams, cats that behaved unusually and a child figure with a deformed head, It ended up becoming a viral thread that many came to continue with the same devotion as a Netflix series. The title could not be easier or more effective: Dear David.
Years later, that story – Immad fiction, half supernatural daily in real time – becomes a film under the John McPhail’s addresswith script by Mike van Waes and starring Augustus Prew. The result: a kind of CRINGE CAPSULA on the horrors of online lifemillennial narcissism and digital traumas. An attempt at horror film that is not afraid, but that causes a couple of laughs … involuntary.
The real (or supposedly real) story narrated by Ellis starts with a phrase that is already part of Twitter’s mythology: “My apartment is currently being harassed by the ghost of a dead child and is trying to kill me ”. From there, each tweet added a new layer of mystery: lucid dreams, visions during sleep paralysis episodes, chairs that moved alone and cats that stare at the door at the same time every night.
The most disturbing detail was provided by a drawing that Ellis himself shared: The alleged David was a small child, with a gigantic headabolished on one side. Apparently, the spirit was harmless as long as more than two questions were asked in dreams. If you dared to make a third, you unleashed his fury. A simple and almost playful mechanics that fit perfectly with the Twitter thread narrative.
Becoming this story into a film was, theory, a great idea. The problem is how it has been done. Dear David, the film, is raised as a combination of supernatural horror and satire of the online culture of the mid -2010. The protagonist, played by PREW, is a hyperbolic and quite loading version of Ellis: a conceited cartoonist, addicted to networks, unable to maintain healthy relationships and who speaks as if each phrase were a meme (“I am relatable AF”, he literally says).
Instead of paying tribute to the playful spirit of that internet, which makes Dear David It is reminding us of the superficial, exhausting and sometimes ridiculous it was. The tape reaches Prime video on April 10. @Mundiario
