Alicia Veliz – Guest Writer
The Hater is a Polish thriller/drama about a social outcast named Tomasz Giemza (Maciej Musialowski). He is expelled from law school in Warsaw and quickly occupies his time by becoming dangerously obsessed with the well-to-do Krasucki family. It is apparent from the get-go that he is lonely and does not seem to have any existing family or friends.
However, Tomasz is very skilled at using the social media to manipulate certain outcomes to his favour. Eventually, he is hired by a public relations company that turns out to be the front for what is known as a “Troll Farm.” Clients hire them in order to take down opponents and disgrace their character using social media platforms and any other means necessary.
What strikes me the most about this movie is that it is very eye opening as to what really goes down in the deep, dark, seedy world of trolling and negative social media influence. We live in an age where these platforms are being used constantly. At the surface, it is used to communicate with family and friends to share fun statuses and pictures and professionally to promote our businesses. But, there is a sinister area that it not pointed out to us very often and that is the negative use of people’s personal information to manipulate the outcome of the masses who are gullible enough to believe everything that they see online.
It was so disturbing and yet remarkable to see how Tomasz used his skills of psychological manipulation to not only help himself survive but to destroy other people’s lives and careers. Just when you think that maybe he will not stoop so low he proves the audience wrong and makes a deep descent into triggering an event that ends up with casualties.
This is the type of movie that makes you stand up and take notice. Although what you are seeing on the screen can be disturbing at times, it is hard to tear your eyes away because you cannot believe that one person is capable of doing so much damage. Tomasz’s character is not only resentful at the world for the cards of life that he is dealt but is so intense that you need only to look at his eyes to see what a damaged individual he is.
The movie is directed by Jan Komasa and written by Mateusz Pacewicz and is considered to be a sequel or spin-off to Komasa’s 2011 film Suicide Room. It is currently available on Netflix in English. Just one little downside is that the texting and computer typing scenes still show up in Polish, but you can follow the general trend of the conversation using the emojis.
This one is another must see for 2020 and you should definitely add it to your movies-to-watch list guys.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
For my review of action drama The Rhythm Section you can click here.