Troll
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Anu Valia
Genres: drama
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
A cynical internet troll called SushiHat collides with an aging indie rocker in a hospital while visiting her grandfather. Their conversation slowly threads back to a teenage boy in a coma — and the real-world weight of anonymous cruelty.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally — an internet movie that doesn't smother us in screen-recordings and Discord notifications. Valia drags the troll out of the basement and into a hospital, where consequences actually live.
Anu Valia refusing to render internet cruelty as screen-time and instead staging it as a hospital visit is the formally correct, ethically serious answer to the genre. That's the version I want.
Refusing to stage internet-cruelty drama as screen-on-screen and instead routing it through a hospital visit with a grandfather is a brave structural choice — the form is the moral argument. That's the craft I show up for.
Reviews
A searing indictment on the state of online anonymity and cruelty.