Just when you think the internet can’t surprise you anymore after The Emoji Movie, The Angry Birds Movie, or even questionable horror like Slender Man and , comes a new pseudo comedy/horror film like Who Was Phone that will leave you talking over the dialogue thinking why hasn’t a movie based on the Ayuwoki been done yet.

Who Was Phone starts by the how the story goes: a guy receives a phone call and then a man’s voice asks “what are you doing with my daughter” to later hang up. The guy tells his girlfriend, Fiona (Kelly Voke), about the call and says it was her dad. She insists that her dad is dead. Suddenly, the guy is impaled across the chest from under the bed by a big stake, and a masked man comes out from under the bed. By now, the setting is creepy and intriguing— the feeling doesn’t last long. By the time the cops arrive, you might realize the detective is a moron and her friends are even worse. It makes you wonder if this is another Scary Movie sequel without the Wayans brothers. After random events happen, attention is set and it is explained that the plot floats around the mysterious and now riddling death of Fiona’s father. Is he dead or is he hiding from something?

When it doesn’t take itself seriously as a social commentary against its own basis for the film, you can catch some funny moments that don’t rely on mistakenly mocking what they believe is cool to make fun of at the time of production. Who Was Phone is so outdated that the ’80s are already coming back to claim their throne in pop culture, again— it would’ve been probably relevant if it had been released maybe ten years ago.

The problem with it is it goes from plain dumb to lightly interesting and it drops back to dumb— you might feel the desperate tone it has to laugh at the satire it proposes by laughing at internet culture but it later becomes the joke itself. It’s sadder when it has to explain itself during the end credits to justify its plot and what it means as if anyone would actually believe it is based on true events. The story is oversaturated with characters that you grow to like— and it is a long way for them to be likable. Instead of reinforcing the irony with which the story is founded during the first 15 minutes, they only represent an empty vessel of rhetorical and expired stereotypes that not even a premade profile can save them. They are entertaining but at the same time they’re annoying and limited to punch lines.

Just like the infamous creepypasta meme, Who Was Phone is poorly written but, even when it tries too hard to make the viewer laugh, it does have some moments that are laughable and sort of enjoyable. It is claimed constantly that it is the first film written by internet users. But, in this day and age, aren’t we all internet users?

2 OUT OF 10 HASHTAGS