I went into this movie knowing literally nothing about it other than its name. I didn’t know who was in the movie or what the basic plot of the movie was. I was going in blind, and came out pleasantly surprised after an odd start. The movie begins with a computer screen as a young girl, Vee, declines an acceptance e-mail into a college. The letter gives us our first glimpse into the type of person this is as she says the reason she can’t accept is because she is a “loser” that is too scared to tell her mom that she is ready to move out. The movie takes off from there as we are introduced to this 24-hour long game that involves “players” and “watchers”.  The players go through a series of different dares, each one rewarding a certain amount of money, while the watchers do simply that, watch as the other players complete, fail, or bail on these dares. If you bail or fail, you lose all the money you previously gained. If you snitch, well, don’t snitch. Through a number of circumstances involving Vee’s best friend, she decides to join the game. Her first dare leads her to meet this guy who is also playing the game. They go through a lot of their dares together, each dare getting progressively harder, moving from embarrassing to more and more dangerous.
 
What I liked:
The plot for the movie is extremely interesting and drew me in pretty quickly. In a lot of ways you find yourself wanting Vee to take part in this game and really just live her life free of insecurity, but immediately you also have the feeling that something is not right with this game. Something bad is going to happen.
The characters are all pretty strong. Vee is a girl who many people will find themselves connecting with as she is shy, overlooked, and constantly living in her best friend’s shadow. Vee’s best friend, Sydney, is the “popular girl”, who actually turns out to be extremely insecure and lost. This leads her to make a lot of stupid decisions that hurt herself and the people around her, but in the end she finds herself loyal to Vee, despite their differences. Ian, the guy who Vee meets while playing the game, is a character I have a lot of mixed feelings about. More on that later. The last character with significant screen time is Tommy. He is Vee’s other closest friend, who is clearly in love with her. He’s an extremely smart guy who clearly cares about Vee and does everything he can to protect her and is unwilling to see her in harm’s way.
This movie drove home a few very interesting points about our society. First, we are obsessed with entertainment and will do anything to get that “entertainment high”, including watch hundreds of people ruin their lives through a series of different dares. Second, anyone can be brave when hiding behind a mask. In the age of social media and anonymity, everyone is willing to throw around strong words. Sadly, few of us will stand behind those same words when face to face with the people we are talking to. There is a great scene in the movie where Vee and Ian are surrounded by “watchers” wearing masks. They are being urged to fulfill their final dare, which will result in death or serious injury for one of the two players. Vee cries out to the crowd “You think what you’re doing takes nerve? Why don’t you all take off your masks? It’s easy to be brave when you’re wearing a mask” (paraphrase). Yes, it’s really easy to be brave when hiding behind the mask of a username and computer screen.
Vee and Sydney are both insecure. Sydney deals with that by obsessing over Nerve, going through a hundred different guys, and putting down her best friend. Vee seeks to deal with this by joining in on the game as well. But quickly she realizes the danger and stupidity of something like that, and finds much healthier ways to break through her shell and discover who she is (i.e. Accepting the offer from the college).
 
What I didn’t like:
*Spoiler* At the end of the movie, Vee is pitted up against Ian in the final dare. They are each given a gn and dared to shoot the other person. First one to shoot wins. They both refuse to do it, but a third competitor jumps into the arena and says he will shoot Vee to win the game. The watchers are asked “Should he shoot Vee? Yes, or no. The vote comes in as a yes, and this third competitor shoots as Vee falls to the ground. At that moment, Vee’s friend Tommy, who is a super smart computer guy, gets a message sent to every single watcher that says “You are an accessory to murder.” It’s a really powerful scene that points out the blood-thirsty nature of our culture, despite our assumptions that because we didn’t pull the trigger we are free of any blame. However, Vee doesn’t die at the end. It’s revealed that the third competitor fired blanks in order to fake Vee’s death and end the game. Sure, it’s a nice happy ending, but taking away Vee’s death also takes away from the significance of that moment. Had Vee really died, the audience would have left the theater feeling the weight of the point the movie was trying to drive home: Entertainment isn’t fun if it’s getting people killed, and anyone who actively watches is only an accessory to murder. While I’m not a blood-thirsty psychopath who wants people to die at the end of every movie, I do think it’s sad that a lot of directors don’t have the guts to kill of their main characters. Sometimes, a good death makes a story so much more powerful and so much more memorable.
Ian “gets the girl”. I found this mildly confusing and frustrating. While Ian did try to save Vee in the very end, it’s hard for me to swallow that we are supposed to accept Ian as the “good guy” and “knight in shining armor” of the story. When he first met Vee, he knew where the game was headed. He knew the danger he would be getting her into. But evidently he didn’t care. He pushed her to keep playing even when she wanted to stop. If he really cared, he would never have allowed her to be put in danger in the first place. He would have respected her and protected her like she deserved to be, rather than push her to continue playing a game that could easily have gotten her killed. Not to mention the various decisions he makes throughout the movie such as stealing someone’s bike for a game. At one point Ian begs Vee to get on his bike with her while he fulfills his dare to go 60mph blind-folded. That’s not love. Love protects. In the background, however, we see this character Tommy who stands by Vee’s side the entire time and does everything in his power to make sure she is safe. But alas, Tommy is left out in the cold as Vee chases after Ian, the guy who was so self-absorbed with winning this game, that he didn’t even stop to think about the kind of danger he was pushing her into.
 
Conclusion:
8.5/10
This movie could have been much better had it fixed those two things I listed in the “don’t like” section. Those two changes really could have drove the point that this movie was trying to make home. Overall, a really interesting movie that really makes you think about the kind of society we are living in.