Why you should skip Clickbait on Netflix

‘This is really sick, bizarre and you have to watch it.‘ That’s what a friend said to me about the series Clickbait, which has been on Netflix for a while now. If you’ve seen Clickbait too, then you probably know: I won’t be listening to this friend anytime soon. I did listen in this case and now I regret it. Because to be honest: Clickbait is not that great. Bizarre, it definitely is. Bizarrely unbelievable.

Okay, for those of you who haven’t watched it yet, I’ll quickly explain the idea. A video goes viral on the internet, in which a man (Adrien Grenier, you know, the one from Entourage) is seen holding a sign that says ‘I abuse women‘. The creator of the video says he will die if the video gets five million views. Okay okay, sounds creepy. Starts off well, I thought, but oh no, it went downhill very quickly.

Because the sister of this man sees the video and alerts his wife and kids. A bit unfortunate that the one who is least visible (Adrian Grenier, that is) can act the best. The acting performances of the rest are absolutely not believable, but the story itself isn’t either. If you’ve seen Behind Her Eyes, with that bizarre twist: this falls a bit into the same category. So you know a twist is coming, that it’s surprising, but yes, of course it’s surprising when it’s so far-fetched.

Really a shame too, by the way, because the concept is quite interesting. And extremely relevant, the huge impact of the internet on today’s society. It’s also a shame that bland characters have to do something with it, although I’m not sure if that’s entirely their fault, because the dialogues are so boring and meaningless that even a Leo DiCaprio couldn’t make it work here, I fear.

Final verdict: Clickbait truly lives up to its name. It’s pure clickbait. In other words, something you’d better avoid.