Kiss Me First

So I really want to start this review by saying that I thought the acting was really good. I've seen way, way worse and I feel like the characters were believable.

This movie really reminds me of the movie Chatroom (2010) with Aaron Johnson and... Matthew Beard. Beard also happens to portray the 'evil' guy in this series.

Having finished the series in one evening and the last episode the next morning, I can definitely say that I enjoyed it. I was intrigued the whole time and wanted to know what else was going to happen.

I would definitely recommend if you like Black Mirror and/or Chatroom.

I really loved the theme, the magic, the VR . There were some messy and confused moments, that I thought would be explained later. But at the end I felt like it didnt have a good resolution.. it felt uncompleted for me.

The story is just so far out it ruins the whole series. Motivations of the characters are just.. too much. Way too many "as if" moments. Progress is very slow, seems like the producers were paid by the minute filmed.

But see for yourself. I had to force myself to finish the series.

In the beginning I was engaged and interested in this story line. The balance between reality and virtual reality was fantastic. It was cool. But they almost abandon Then about 3 to 4 episodes in the story line absolutely goes off the rails, and they almost all but abandon this dual reality concept. There are character (in particular) and story line changes that make no sense, and go no where. Then they expect you to forget two episodes of character development and buy back into the already messy characters. It's like two different writers who 'filled in like substitute teachers' and didn't compares notes. I get complex storylines, I don't need everything spelled out, but that's not what this is. It personally left me not caring about any of the characters or what happens next. And if Leila/Shadowfax's character, all full of angst, tells Adrian "F%&$ you!, I hate you" one one more time...

When it comes to bad adaptations, there's Eragon and there's The Golden Compass, there's The Girl on the Train and there's The Giver. Then we come to Kiss Me First. One of the worst adaptations of a good novel that I have ever witnessed. I've never been so disappointed in my life.

Of course, a bad adaptation doesn't constitute a bad film or show, there's numerous examples of a film being better than its source material. Hello, Fight Club. I'm sad to say that Kiss Me First is not one of these - it doesn't buck this trend. From the get go, Kiss Me First is an incomprehensible mess. Taking it on face value, it sounds intriguing. A show about the dark side of online worlds, virtual reality and mental illness. but it gets more and more nonsensical as the series goes on. It loses its way very, very quickly. And that's largely down to the script. More and more questions are continuously being raised, with characters going a full 180 in a matter of episodes. When you get to the final episode, you'll begin to realise that none of the questions will be answered, and that none of the episodes that came before it mattered. Look, I'm a fan of Brian Elsley's work, Dates was phenomenal television, and millennials grew up watching Skins, but this is not his best - it's nowhere near. With shoddy dialogue and plot that is all over the place, it's hard to take Kiss Me First seriously.

The biggest shame is that the creators had such a talented cast on their hands, with solid source material. If only they'd followed it more closely, it would have made for a better show, but most of all, it would have made sense.