Cam-Girl

Cam-Girl: A Review

by Luce Allan

The double standards within the areas of sexuality and violence are explored in Cam-Girl (2016), in which a young single mother and graduate school student, Gessica (Erin Nicole Cline), curbs the financial strain in her life by taking a job as a web cam stripper who satisfies the private sexual tastes of her predominantly male audience. She soon discovers, however, that one of her regular viewers is the local Box Cutter Killer—and that he has planned a dark and voyeuristic series of degrading acts that she must perform in order to save both her life and her child’s.

Cam-Girl serves as both a tightly-crafted thriller and a playful love letter to classic horror films through its strong and well-paced storyline and its generally artful nods to such movies as American Psycho, American Mary, and Scream (among others). Erin Nicole Cline’s impressive and engaging performance complements the subtle complexity of her character—although the audience progressively learns about Gessica’s selfish past, her combination of both badassery and emotional vulnerability allow the audience to sympathize with her struggles. The actor (who will not be named in this review due to the major spoiler that it would reveal) who provides the voice of the Box Cutter Killer also shines through his delivery of his lines with a vibrant relish and fluid sense of villainy. The movie keeps its momentum throughout the running time, and avoids any overly long or tedious scenes that would hamper the story’s tension. The embarrassing actions that Gessica is forced to perform are painfully awkward, in the best possible way.

While the film is solid, there are a couple of flaws that slightly undermine its power. For example, the beginning of the movie has a bit of an ‘undercooked’ and almost artificial feel to it that fails to reflect the quality of the rest of the film. A few situations don’t have an entirely authentic and believable element to them, and serve as temporary distractions to the film’s tension.

(Caution: mild spoilers ahead) One element of Cam-Girl that is important to note is its commentary on sexuality and violence, and how these themes are often predominantly attributed to one gender over the other, and vice versa. Although the message is uncertain near the beginning, the film gradually reveals the subtle atmosphere of depth that lingers in the background before it is fully acknowledged. The Box Cutter Killer, throughout the film, almost equally judges Gessica due to her profession and her manipulative relationships with men in her personal life, even though the respective intent behind each element of her life is markedly different. He demonizes her for supporting her child in a manner deemed relatively unconventional by society’s standards, and refuses to accept the equal transaction that occurs between the web cam strippers and their online clientele. Although Gessica admits to feeling guilt over the personal relationships that she sabotaged in the interest of her desires, the Box Cutter Killer refuses to see the parallel between her manipulative tendencies and his violent tendencies in their individual attempts to get what they want. Although the Box Cutter Killer succeeds in shaming Gessica for her past, she also gains insight into the hypocrisy of his spiteful games, and the thin line between men and women in terms of inner darkness.