One of the most exceptional achievements in cinema is when a movie efficiently transports its viewers to a different time and place. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain immerses viewers on this planet of cowboys in Sixties Wyoming. Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War brings us to bleak, beautiful Fifties Poland. Spike Lee’s The twenty fifth Hour might happen nowhere however post-9/11 New York. And now we now have John McPhail’s Dear David, a journey to the psychedelically cringe coronary heart of the 2010s web.

A tepid try at horror a few narcissistic blogger as he’s menaced by a ghost with an oddly healthful anti-cyberbullying agenda, Dear David shouldn’t be a great film. But it’s the most epic bacon amazeballs doggo i can haz cheeseburger [tips fedora] you sir have gained the web movie of all time, an ironic mustache-finger tattoo of a movement image, so dedicated to bringing the giddy spirit of BuzzFeed to our screens that there’s nothing left to do however gaze upon it in awe.

For these unfamiliar with its origins, Dear David is tailored from a sequence of viral tweets BuzzFeed cartoonist Adam Ellis wrote in 2017. In this ongoing bit, Ellis described how he felt haunted by a supernatural being that visited him in goals. “So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he’s trying to kill me. (thread)” reads the primary tweet. In the follow-up, he drew a cartoon of the ghastly baby and described his look: “He had a huge misshapen head that was dented on one side.”

Over the subsequent few months, Ellis continued to replace his followers concerning the determine, which he known as “Dear David.” He began taking pictures and movies that, when brightened with enhancing software program, appeared to indicate a spectral infantile determine because it adopted him. The entire factor was, frankly, each exhausting and clearly faux—I really feel a bone-deep embarrassment typing it out—however individuals went wild for it. An unbelievable variety of digital information retailers reported on “Dear David” prefer it may probably be actual. Ellis gained over one million followers on Twitter and Instagram, and shortly sufficient, a film deal was struck.

Dear David shouldn’t be the primary movie based mostly on tweets; Janiczka Bravo based mostly her mesmerizing 2020 movie Zola on a rollicking Twitter thread by Aziah “Zola” King. But it’s, alas, the worst movie based mostly on tweets, one which performs up probably the most cloying bits of Ellis’ Twitter presence as a substitute of leaning all the way in which into the inherent goofiness of its premise.

In the movie, Ellis, performed by Augustus Prew, is a self-absorbed cartoonist who ignores his good boyfriend and treats his pals like equipment, all whereas speaking in a slurry of geriatric millennial clichés. (“I’m relatable AF,” is an precise line of dialog.) He attracts the malevolent spirit of “Dear David” into his life by being impolite on Twitter. Specifically, he responds to a imply remark by telling the particular person to “DIAF,” which suggests “die in a fire,” after which finds himself terrorized in sleep paralysis by a malevolent pressure that does certainly have a bizarre misshapen head. (Ellis’ cartoon is reproduced in full for the movie, as are a lot of his tweets.)