Chat is a Horror Comedy that works very well in the AI times we’re now living in. In fact, it may even be a little too late in its criticism against AI. If it even is criticism – I’ve been known to over-analyze a bit through the years, so it’s not an impossibility that I read too much into this. But the main idea of the movie is that an evil AI lives inside a tablet and that when a child gets a hold of it, the child gets tricked into using it in the wrong way. In this case, it’s violent and deadly, even horrifying, whilst the real world consequences might lean a bit more on the intellectual decadence it might bring along.
In the film, the AI is Beelzebub and if you know anything about the satanic mythos you should raise your eyebrows right away. It’s more or less another word for Satan or The Devil or something equivalent. There are nuances of course, and those better educated than me might argue that there are differences – that Beelzebub indeed is one of the seven princes of Hell, a fallen angel or a demon and not Satan himself. They’re probably right and in most cases the name is synonymous with The Lord of the Flies. The name allegedly even means something like that in the original Hebrew language.
Anyway, a family buys this furnished house from a questionable realtor and finds the tablet inside a closet. What’s strange is that it’s already on and never seems to run out of power. I guess that could happen if the tablet becomes possessed by a demon. But even if the demon lives inside the tablet, it still needs a trigger command to become truly active (and start the process for human possession). Of course, it’s easy to trick a child into activating it and the nightmare can begin.
The family falls apart
The film depicts how the family falls apart when the father becomes possessed and starts behaving very oddly. Of course, no one knows that it’s possession, he just starts acting strange. At the same time it’s not very scary. Not that it has an obvious comedic aura hanging over it – I don’t think it does – but there is some kind of underlying black humor about the film Chat. Brilliant name for the movie by the way. It’s never obvious but you can tell that there’s something else than just scarey scenes and horrifying possession too.
Overall, I think that it’s pretty believable. The acting is good and it’s somewhat “normal” after all. Except for a very strange character that just seems very “out there”. Either he’s very, VERY eccentric or he’s just written in a way that’s designed to stand out from the rest of the characters. Or maybe it’s a way to describe him as a religious nutcase. That there’s an old nervous breakdown or underlying psychosis is also a possibility.
Now, the realtor knows exactly what he’s doing and the whole plan of selling the house is very sinister. The whole point is to sell the same house over and over again. The inhabitants are supposed to get possessed and die so he can repeat the whole procedure over and over again. Money is the root of all evil it seems.
There are a few red herrings in there that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the plot at all, but still leave you wondering and there’s some great mise-en-scène in a few scenes that really stood out for me. I enjoyed it as a whole but it was kind of slow-paced and I would have liked it to be more horrifying, more scary or even shocking. But I don’t think that is the goal. The goal, as far as I see it, is to create something to make us think about what future we’re heading towards with all the technology we’re becoming more and more dependent on.
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