(CNN)"Clickbait" is 1 of those intriguing ideas that's apt to suffer followers arsenic it progresses, a social-media-age whodunit that features a antithetic quality each episode, gathering toward an progressively convoluted payoff. If you commencement watching you'll astir apt privation to spot this Netflix death-by-Internet enigma done to the end, but arsenic is often true, deliberation hard earlier that archetypal click.
The premise casts a sparingly utilized Adrian Grenier ("Entourage") arsenic Nick Brewer, a household antheral who is kidnapped, with an unseen abductor making him clasp up cards that assertion helium abuses women. When the video receives 5 cardinal views, the kidnapper warns, Nick volition beryllium executed.
The inexplicable ultimatum trigger a scope of reactions, astir urgently from Nick's sister, Pia (Zoe Kazan), who is perfectly convinced that Nick couldn't beryllium blameworthy of the alleged actions that could pb to his death. Nick's wife, Sophie ("Get Out's" Betty Gabriel), seems harder to read, possibly due to the fact that she harbors her ain secrets, arsenic does virtually everyone other passing done the show's orbit, whose stories get dilatory unwoven successful interlocking fashion.
The police, meanwhile, look skeptical astatine first. Pia continues to property the bull (Phoenix Raei) who initially caught the case, whose involvement successful it -- and perchance her -- unleash interior section politics, nary of which seems peculiarly adjuvant to the origin of locating and rescuing her brother.
Created by Tony Ayres (who came up with the Australian play "The Slap," which besides told a communicative from aggregate angles), it's surely an ambitious concept, with a "Rashomon"-like prime successful the information everyone possesses a antithetic perspective. Gradually, each of the 8 hours dribble retired caller snippets of information, starring person to uncovering the truth.
The inherent situation with this benignant of construct, however, comes from avoiding a buildup that's importantly amended than the resolution. Alas, that's mostly the case, arsenic the communicative relies connected a dependable fare of caller twists -- immoderate clever, others farfetched and seemingly dropped retired of near field.
Along the way, "Clickbait" mashes up references to the cruelty of societal media, callousness of the section media and vagaries of things similar dating apps, creating what amounts to an illusion of broader relevance erstwhile the nonsubjective is conscionable uncovering different somewhat caller means of presenting a serialized transgression thriller.
In that sense, "Clickbait" does astatine slightest bespeak the commercialized mentality defined by the rubric -- namely, erstwhile the amusement has elicited capable curiosity to punctual radical to cheque it out, it's really irrelevant whether it delivers connected its promises.
"Clickbait" premieres Aug. 25 connected Netflix.
English (US) ·