Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara

When I saw the title Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, I got excited. I am not a huge fan, but I have liked them in the past enough to buy a couple CDs. I thought, "Cool. I can hear a but about the story of the band Iand maybe hear a few songs. Maybe see them perform a bit."

Well, I sorta got what I wanted, on the former point. Die hard fans of the group will probably be fascinated and will love the band even more for what they have had to put up with. However, this is probably not going to make new listeners out of people who know nothing about the group (i.e. Everyone).. You hear a portion of "Walking Like a Ghost" and the first single off their next record, but that's it. The story is contained to Sara'so stories of interacting with her computer and what her family and friends thought about it all. The movie doesn't have much of a reason to extend into their life as a working band.

This is not really a story about how Tegan and Sara were catfished. This Is a case of severe identity theft. Tegan's fans were the ones being catfished. The band's routine of compassionately relating with fans was taken advantage of. The band had their passport photos stolen, emails hacked into, you name it. Fans who thought they were talking to the actual band thought they were off in ways that made them angry. It turns out that you can't hang out after shows to shake hands or tell your audiences personal details of your life anymore.

At 99 minutes, this is clearly too long. I am unconvinced that this couldnt be an hour long eposode of a tv show, with ad breaks. There is the show "Catfish" but this is different. You should probably not create a series about famous people that had their identities stolen, so I get it. That would set a bad precedent.

This is a decent, chilling account of a true life story. This seems largely made for fans that want to know what was going on over the years. For essayists and YouTube content creators, it is pretty much a must-see if you are looking for a true accounts about stalking or the perils of fame. But for a movie about famously entertaining figures, this is rather bland and uninvolving.

Good for fans, but in no way surprising. Look for YouTube videos or podcast episodes to quickly reference the most interesting bits.

7.5/10.

Everyone involved in this story was just plain incompetent. This story would make more sense if they were covering up for Tegan actually stringing fans along, because everyone is just so bad at trying to figure this mystery out.

The film doesn't figure out anything, and the story is sloppily edited. There's obviously more to these stories that were edited out to portray the band better. The managers who originally lost control of the online accounts and then decided to run the investigation themselves instead of hiring a professional are especially to blame. Tegan's weird manner while meeting her affected fans in the film was very off putting, with a hollow veneer of empathy used to gather more information out of them.

There's a whole industry behind cybersecurity today, just hire a professional researcher instead of playing amateur detective. I feel sorry to all the fans who were affected and will continue to be affected.

As "Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara" (2024 release; 99 min) opens, Tegan is talking to the director about why she has decided to tell the full story about how she was the subject of catfishing and how it has affected her and the people around her and the fans. The documentary then goes to the early days in Vancouver of identical twins Tegan and Sara, and how they broke into the music scene. At this point we are 10 minutes into the film.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from documentarian Erin Lee Carr ("At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal"). Here she assesses the strange tale of the catfishing of Tegan (someone else pretends to be Tegan, being a fake Tegan or Fegan as Tegan nicknames the fake her). The mere fact that this has happened is already strange. The fact that this went on for years and years is mindboggling. I should mention that I have seen Tegan and Sara 3 or 4 times in concert in the period 2008-2015, and I know who they are, but I am not a die-hard fan and this is the first time I hear of this story. Facts once again are stranger than fiction.

"Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara" premiered at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, and it started streaming on Hulu about 3-4 weeks ago. I just caught up with it earlier this week. If you area fan of Tegan and Sara or simply curious about catfishing, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

I didn't know anything about this story and was so interested the whole time and thought the editing and story telling was so good. I thought it was interesting how much the filmmaker and subject were on screen together speaking with the victims of the catfishing and help like the relationship with JT was cathartic in some way. Overall I would highly recommend watching it. What a horrible experience for band to endure and so many victims it's just so awful to imagine. Highly recommend if you enjoy documentaries or true crime. I don't have much else to say but think it was a well made film and check it out!

A current sobering doc (streaming on Hulu) on the twin sister group from the Great White North who got a shuddering reality from fandom. Knowing of the band when they first came out (I have a few of their CD's) & having watched their excellent 2022 Freevee series based on their formative high school years named appropriately High School, I was shocked & dismayed about this revelation documented here. A fan of the pair got an e-mail purporting to be Tegan which after the initial shock & skepticism the sender provided a lot of details only Tegan would know allaying the fan's fears which began a long relationship until the fan finally forwarded their exchanges to the band's manager at the time who quickly denied Teagan had any involvement w/this correspondence. The fan quickly retorted then you have a much bigger problem since she revealed there were more fans like her out there who have been duped by this person. Tegan hearing about this mobilized what or who she could to find out who the scammer was & hopefully bring them to justice but after a few years of digging (which this doc details) the best they could come up w/was a dwindling list of possibles w/the last moments an audio conversation between Tegan, the filmmaker Erin Lee Carr & the accused w/no real frustrating closure to be had. If you have seen the show & the original doc Catfishing, any person who hasn't had this happen to them gets an awful pit in their stomach realizing how low a person would stoop to upend a stranger's life for no apparent reason then you can't help but empathize w/Tegan's plight which by film's end still has not been resolved.