Cyberbully (2011)

Welcome readers and thank you for you continued reading. For this blog post I am steering away from soap land and moving in the direction of film-land (well it’s a TV film/movie but it still counts I reckon).  The film that has caught my attention this week is called Cyberbully. I watched this on Netflix and it was one of the best films I have watched in a while.

Cyberbully was released on the American TV network ABC in July 2011. As the title suggests this TV film tells the story of a teenage girl who gets bullied online. ABC family worked with the critically acclaimed Seventeen magazine so that they could be sure that the right audience were tackled by the drama. Seventeen magazine hoped that it would help to ‘delete the digital drama’.

Now for the plot, like any good film this has a gripping and real storyline. It begins with the main protagonist Taylor (Emily Osment) talking to her friend Samantha (Kay Panabaker) online making an innocent comment about one of the people in her class, Lindsey, in which she takes offence at. Taylor is a teenage girl who is being raised with her brother by her single mother, and on her 17^th birthday she receives a laptop from her mum. She is grateful for this as it means that she can go online without her mum watching her every time, and this is where things start to go wrong. 

At this point I would like to put a little warning your way, if you read on there may be some spoilers but I strive to provide as much detail as possible, as besides spoilers are kind of my trademark (not in a bad way I just do the research so others don’t have to).

The plot starts to hit home with teenagers and parents when Taylor is asked out by one of her classmates Scott ( Jon McLaren), her two best friends react in different ways. Samantha doesn't like Scott as one of his friends dumped her; however Cheyenne (Meaghan Rath) is happy for her. Taylor soon becomes a victim of cyberbullying when her brother hacks her social networking profile and post a defamatory message about his sister, to which the kids at school start to comments that start to become nasty resulting in Taylor not being able to face going to school.

A contributing factor that results in Taylor not being able to face school is when she meets a guy called ‘James’ online. At first he is nice to her, as time goes one she finds that he post that she has slept with him and given him an STD. this then results in Taylor receiving even more nasty comments. This all finally gets too much for Taylor when she posts a video saying that she cannot longer cope with the torment and that she wants to end it all. Luckily Samantha sees this video and rushes over to Taylor’s house to find her attempting to overdose on pills however she cannot remove the cap.

This act of attempted self-harm sees Taylor admitted to the hospital as she is diagnosed with depression. Worried her mother tells her to go to a support group she has found, and she does her best to fight the system to get a law passed that will save others from going through the same as Taylor. At the support group Taylor learns that she is not the only one going through the hell of cyberbullying, someone closer to her is going through the exact same thing; her classmate Caleb (Jade Hassoune) (although he is being targeted for being gay).

Through this group Taylor becomes stronger, and later throughout the film she finds out who is behind it all. Samantha reveals herself to be ‘James’, however it seems that this then makes her a target herself. After the both of them doing a newspaper article telling their story Taylor, her mum and Samantha finally get the good news they have been waiting for, a paper is being passed to make it an offence to bully a minor on the internet.

This finally leads me to the end of the film where we see that the 3 friends have rekindled the friendship and the 3 of them along with Scott and Caleb stand up to the bullies. This film in my opinion is a well thought out film and it speaks to a whole generation that has grown up on the internet, and also it speaks to the parents who may not be aware of the dangers of the internet. If I was to rate this film, in my honest opinion I would give it 9/10 as it is such a moving film that can be used as a learning tool both at home and in the classroom.