Panic Button (2011)

Directed by: Chris Crow | 92 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Scarlett Alice Johnson, Jack Gordon, Michael Jibson, Elen Rhys, Joshua Richards, Vern Raye, Meggie McCarthy, Sarah Parks, Christopher Cale, Ri Richards, Hollie Blundell, Leighton Kyle, Tobias Jon, Charlene Ball, Bethan Morgan, Tom Powell , Millie Midwinter-Lean, Alan Humphreys, Sule Rimic

‘Panic Button’ is not just a horror film with a sadistic killer, no, it is a message film, or rather: a warning film. The film is similar in concept – and in its execution (killing or performing extreme acts to prevent a worse fate) – and somewhat like the ‘Saw’ movies, but the theme in ‘Panic Button’ is more topical and more specific. The film responds to the current immersion in modern (online) means of communication and social media, the indifference with which personal information is made public, and hiding behind an online “mask”. The film could have gotten a lot more out of its theme and has a weak ending, but ‘Panic Button’ is at the very least intriguing, is suspenseful for a long time, and makes the viewer think.

Recently, there has been an increasing warning about phishing and other attacks on computers, where sensitive (banking) data can fall into the wrong hands. The latter also happens in ‘Panic Button’, but the owner of these hands is not interested in account numbers, but in personal profiles and online behaviour. Also very topical is, unfortunately, the bullying behavior of groups of young people, who do not realize how traumatizing and destructive this can be, with sometimes even fatal consequences. Offline – on the playground or on the street – this happens all the time, of course, but online it also takes place, with the “advantage” for the bully that the belittling can be done (almost) anonymously. Also, the number of spectators that watch without intervening is potentially infinite. But this online anonymity is, to a large extent, a sham, as appears in ‘Panic Button’. Here, the person behind the alltogether.com contest apparently manages to find out the data and behavior of the participants without too much effort, and then blackmail them with it. With murders and mutilations as a result.

As a horror movie, ‘Panic Button’ works quite well. It’s exciting to start with finding out which skeletons everyone is hiding in their closet and then to see how far the competition organizer will eventually go in reprimanding these young people. Does he just want to scare them and make them think about sharing personal information online so frivolously, or will there really be (serious) consequences, as the corporate voice at the start of the game states? The mastermind behind this competition – visible only through an animated alligator on the entrants’ personal LCD screens – advises candidates to read the terms carefully before accepting them, but hey, who reads all that fine print anyway? There are great prizes to be won. More is not important, right? Until the moment that people actually die, the participants hardly wonder what they have actually agreed to. And then things go from bad to worse and no one can be trusted anymore. In the beginning it is still interesting to see what special assignments the passengers get, but, although usually nice and bloody, this unfortunately quickly becomes monotonous.

Still, the film is at least worth the effort to find out the identity and ultimate motivation of the “alligator”. Unfortunately, the motivation turns out to be rather ordinary and not quite in line with the film’s ambitions, but the “journey” (or flight) there is nevertheless entertaining. The long-lasting anonymity of the alligator remains intriguing and several references to Kubrick’s classic ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (the red camera eye in the cockpit door, the dialogue “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”) suggest that the organizer may not be a human at all but a computer, or rather: artificial intelligence. This provides the compelling suggestion that we are giving away too much information to the digital domain and unaware of how much power and control we are giving away with it. And that this digital domain will eventually control our lives directly or indirectly. This also seems to be the message initially, but unfortunately this universal theme is pushed to the sidelines. Briefly, this is nicely emphasized, in a recognizable scene that perhaps better than any scene puts the viewer on the facts. Just before the participants board their private jet, they are told that they all have to hand in their mobile phones (for several hours). One of the participants breaks into a sweat of fear and it is almost a deal breaker. She should at least send a text message soon. The woman who picks up the cellphones says, slightly sarcastic, “It’s like losing a limb, isn’t it?” The truth hits hard.