Director Daniel Goldhaber, who is 3 for 3, as far as I’m concerned, with “Cam,” “How to Blow Up A Pipeline,” and “Faces of Death,” just had his debut feature, “Cam,” which was acquired by Netflix in 2018, yanked from the streaming platform. It’s no longer available to stream anywhere.
That’s not a problem—Goldhaber has decided to make it available to watch online for free via his website. Wise move.No subscriptions or payments required—just press play and start the film.
As he notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like.“
“Cam” had a reported production budget of around $1M. It’s frustrating to see Netflix just get rid of it like that, at the snap of a finger, but they tend to do this kind of thing from time to time—another victim was Mike Flanagan’s “Hush,” which, after being removed from Netflix, eventually received a physical release last year.
“Cam” is about online identity theft taken to an almost existential extreme. It follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), a cam girl who performs under the name “Lola” and carefully curates a persona designed to climb rankings on a live-streaming platform. One day she finds herself locked out of her account, only to discover that “she” is still online performing, perfectly replicated by someone—or something—else.
The horror and dread of the film come less from jump scares and more from the slow unraveling of control and identity, anchored by Brewer’s committed—and I mean absolutely committed—performance. It’s a tightly wound, unsettling thriller that lingers because of its ideas more than its plot, and it remains, in my view, Goldhaber’s strongest work to date.
Goldhaber is coming off “Faces of Death,” a meta remake of the taboo 1978 film. I liked it. The film maintains Goldhaber’s grimy, realist aesthetic and is an utterly depraved statement—in the best sense of the term.