If you’ve at all followed the savvy marketing campaign behind the documentary Catfish, you’ve probably been prepped to approach the film (A) knowing as little about the plot as possible and (B) expecting a surprise ending. In today’s world of media over-saturation and Internet leaks, this 
approach is effective, but the latter instruction ultimately belies the former. In particular, the theatrical trailer raises suspense expectations to an unnecessary degree and, coupled with the cagey tagline “Don’t Let Anyone Tell You What It Is,” almost leads the audience to believe the events may end in some sort of violent climax or shocking Sixth Sense-like change in perception.
Indeed, there is a major revelation at the end of the film, but in the context of how the overall story develops, it isn’t particularly earth shattering—which isn’t to say it comes at a disappointment. Rather, it arrives circuitously, more at the logical end of the proceedings than out of thin air or in a single eureka! moment. Viewers are apt to slowly figure things out right along with the filmmakers, so the end result still packs an emotional wallop even if it lands in the ballpark of what they might have been expecting.
Here’s all you need to know: the film stars twenty-four year old Manhattan photographer Yaniv “Nev” Schulman, who is sent a painting of one of his photos by an eight year old prodigy from Michigan named Abby. Impressed with her work, he connects with her on Facebook and quickly develops a relationship with her entire family, particularly her beautiful nineteen year old sister Meghan. Something of a romance blossoms, despite the fact that Nev and Meghan have never met and live over a thousand miles apart. Nev soon begins to realize, however, that something is not quite right with the perfect “Facebook family.”
Catfish is directed by Nev’s brother Ariel Schulman and friend Henry Joost, who for some reason record his travails from the beginning, long before they knew he had any kind of a story. This has caused some speculation that the film is at least partially staged, or that the filmmakers and participants may have known more than they let on. The truth is probably a lot simpler: smiling, self-assured Nev is just a product of the Facebook/YouTube generation—a charismatic and likeable guy, to be sure, but one who feels the need to chronicle the minutia of his daily life and share it with the world.
In this case, though, the world should take notice. Wittingly or not, he’s captured the zeitgeist. If you’ve ever had an online “relationship”, you know how easy it is to think you know someone you’ve never met, only to realize you’ve been pining after nothing but a false ideal. Alternating between hyper stylized Facebook reenactments and unsteady handheld shots documenting life at its messiest, Catfish surveys that murky no-man’s land between actual reality and the one we cultivate online—which often seems more real.
