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The advent of the internet opened up a whole new world for entrepreneurs, opportunists, or people looking to make a quick buck. Our world became a much smaller place as we chatted live with some kid halfway around the world, and watched real-time video of events that we’d never have heard of otherwise. One of the most recent internet trends are video diaries – people will post daily video entries on their websites, essentially exposing their whole lives for anyone to see.
WebcamMurder.com is about several such people who live their lives in full view of the internet. Sondra – a tap dance instructor and former teacher – is the oldest of the group, who takes her webcam with her on walks, refuses to play music during her dancing classes because of copyrights, and even holds therapy sessions on her site. Jen lives by herself, refuses to leave her house for fear that her ratings will drop, and even has dates that consist of nothing but sitting in front of the camera with her significant other. There is also the newbie Robert, who sits on his floor, reading the newspaper, playing with his dog, and constantly weeping.
Everything is going well for these webcam masters, until they all drop in popularity and are in danger of losing sponsorship. They then concoct a scheme to boost their ratings by arguing amongst themselves and suggesting that someone will be murdered. But when a real murder actually occurs, they all turn against each other in order to find the killer.
Content
With WebcamMurder.com, the director actually created a new genre: “Film Sleepy,” the intent of which is actually to put the audience to sleep. This was done by including long shots of characters doing nothing but playing solitaire or reading books, extraneous scenes with little or no dialogue, and advancing the plot inch by painful inch. While I didn’t actually fall asleep in the watching of this film, there were times when I was tempted to just hit the fast-forward button or shut it off altogether. To its credit, there were a couple of moments that made me laugh, and I thought that the acting was quite good as well.
But, judging this film strictly from the content category, it was rather difficult to watch. If the intent is to put the audience to sleep, why is there a plot? Some people won’t turn a movie off unless they are absolutely disgusted or offended by it, and even a slow and somewhat sketchy plot will keep some awake long enough to at least figure out the resolution. However, they might then leave the movie wanting the past hour or so of their life back. In order to completely bore an audience, it might be better to simply eliminate the plot and just include random webcam shots of the characters talking about inconsequential activities, or simply sitting in front of the camera doing nothing. If that were all this film consisted of, it would probably match its genre a lot better.
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