I’m a fan of quirky films. I’ve seen a lot of them. The thing is many aren’t all that good. It’s as if they are trying too hard to be quirky so they fail miserably. The rare ones that succeed are wonderful and worth revisiting. Then there are those that fall in between, not quite great but not quite terrible either. SPREE is one of those.
Kurt Kunkle (Joe Keery) is a young man obsessed with being a social influencer, one of those people who posts videos of himself online and gets tons of people called followers to watch him non-stop. The problem is no one is watching. One of the few to watch his feed is Bobby (Joshua Ovalle), a young teen that Kurt used to babysit who actually has a fairly decent following, causing Kurt to become jealous.
Then Kurt gets an idea of how to increase the number of followers to his feed. Working for a ride share service called Spree (like Uber), he rigs his care up with multiple cameras to capture every view possible in the car. All of his viewers can opt which one to watch. And then he puts into place what he calls “the Lesson”. This is his plan to inform others how to become huge influencers online and go viral, something he has yet to do.
“The Lesson” that he uses is to poison bottles of water that he hands out to rides he picks up and kill them. By so doing he hopes to gain viewers watching to see what happens next. Bobby thinks it’s all fake but the fact is it isn’t. His first victim is a racists on his way to make a speech. Another is a chauvinist jerk who just wants to get to his girl’s place to have sex.
As this passenger is in the car, Kurt gets another request
he responds to. The call comes from Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata), a stand-up
comedian with a huge social media following. Kurt hopes that by giving her a
ride she’ll help boost his own viewership. When the jerk hits on her, Kurt
comes to her defense but she leaves the car and Kurt is left to deal with the
jerk. Add up another body to the count.
Along the way we also get to meet Kurt’s worthless father (David Arquette), a failing DJ and music producer. Picking up a number of girls at the club he drops him off at Kurt continues to run up the body count. Still hurting from Jessie’s rejection he goes to talk to Bobby and the two argue. This results in a situation between the two and Kurt on his way with a gun to take out Jessie, something sure to gain him followers.
The movie is presented as a dark comedy with a subtle yet
overpowering performance by Keery in the lead role. He comes off as a lovable
dork who becomes a mass murderer with ease, smiling after each kill and never
troubled by what he has done. For him his sole focus it gaining more viewers to
his social media account. That’s it. No deep dark desire to change the world,
to rid the world of bad people, just killing people to get people to watch him.
The film is a criticism of the social media culture, a group that worships select accounts and listens to their every word for confirmation of their own existence. Teens who give make-up tips, style promoters and more are out there attempting to influence children in the world and succeeding far more than they should. Other than a narcissistic belief in themselves as being the center of the world they have no true skills and zero background to make their claims. And yet here we are with a movie skewering that lifestyle.
The movie is well made using a point of view style and cell phone video footage to bring us into the world of Kurt. It’s as if we have truly tuned in to his online presence and are watching as things unfold before our eyes. In a world where people are streaming crimes, murders, suicides and more this is a real thing. The movie looks at that and might just make you wonder, who is influencing your children?
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