This is a necropost. This review of 2020 Egyptian internet challenge movie The Blue Whale was originally posted on Letterboxd. You should not watch 2020’s The Blue Whale.
The first sixty of these 77 minutes are trash. At best it’s disposable, and at worst it’s openly vile and toxic about mental health issues and what might drive a person to suicide. In the middle of those two extremes it’s also just very, very dumb about the internet. And not in the fun way a dumb slasher about a cursed phone or whatever can be, it’s more like how your parents or your dumbest uncle can be dumb about the internet.
And then, in the back 17, it drops the most truly unhinged, deranged twist I’ve ever seen. It’s not even a plot twist, because it comes completely out of nowhere, is never examined, and would have no time to go anywhere if it was going to, it’s more of a costume twist —
(And I’m not putting a spoiler warning on this because if I do nobody will read it, but look away and go watch it, even though it’s bad and you shouldn’t, if you don’t want to be spoiled for what is undeniably an absolutely damaged twist — )
But here I can do a read more.
— the big boss of the conspiracy behind the Blue Whale Challenge steps out of the shrubbery, and it’s the Joker. This is not an exaggeration or me reading things into things — out of the bushes walks a person made up and dressed in every way as the Joker from 2019’s Joker. It’s the Clown Prince of Crime. It’s the Joker. It’s. The Joker. He’s here, and he’s doing elaborate crimes.
For two shots, less than a minute, and then his voice reverts back to the computer-filtered one we’ve heard all movie, and we never see him again in the scene, even though he’s actively participating in it.
I can not explain or rationalise this. For all I know the actor simply came to set dressed like this on their own and there was no time to do anything about it. Maybe the scene was shot on Halloween.
And then the movie carries on like nothing happened, and is just bad again.
Unforgettable. I’ll think about this for the rest of my life.