Clickbait review – gripping drama about the human cost of moderating the internet

Here is a workplace drama, of sorts. Like many people, Daisy (Lili Reinhart) works a desk job using a computer. Unlike most people, fainting at work is a rite of passage; she moderates videos on social media that have been reported for violating the terms of service. That means watching everything from horrible porn to horrible politics to horrible accidents and everything in between, a non-stop diet of videos with titles such as “fetus in blender” or “strangulation but she doesn’t die”.

Her boss takes her to task for deleting a graphic video showing a suicide, which supposedly has news value and should have been left up. But the tipping point for Daisy is a really nasty video titled “nailed it”, which shows violence and cruelty that she believes is real and non-consensual. So begins a low-key quest to track down the perpetrator, though she is far from sure what she will do when she finds them. Nor is she altogether sure why it is this particular video, of all the trash and hatred washing over her, day in, day out, that has inspired her obsession. Her colleagues and boss shrug off her concerns: this video is nothing special.

At its best, there’s a kind of gen Z Blow-Up dynamic at play here: much as in Antonioni’s swinging 60s classic, our protagonist may have stumbled across evidence of a serious crime in the course of doing her job, but is initially unsure what that might mean for her. Clickbait is just as interested in who Daisy is as a person and how she exists in modern society as it is in functioning as a procedural drama. Directed by Uta Briesewitz (Severance), this is a modest film, but an effective and thoughtful one.