The film Dark Web: Cicada 3301, based on one of the greatest mysteries of the Deep Web is directed by Alan Ritchson. In addition to starring in the feature, he is also responsible for the script alongside Joshua Montcalm. The plot follows hacker Connor, his best friend Avi and a shrewd librarian who find themselves in trouble as they are forced to compete in a sophisticated global recruitment game of a dark web secret society. The cast still has Kris Holden-Ried, Conor Leslie, Jess Salgueiro, Jack Kesy, Ron Funches and Avaah Blackwell. A pity, considering the synopsis and the strong cast, the production left a lot to be desired.
Reading the synopsis we think that this is a guy, a math genius who decides to go on a hunt to find a secret society called "Cicada 3301". So far, nothing too bizarre. But the way everything was built is horrible. The script is messy, nothing makes much sense, there's a lot of sexual jokes that are unnecessary, the added humor doesn't connect naturally and the ending... without explanations. The moment when the protagonist Connor is in a kind of trial and manages to get out of that situation without any problem, is unreal.
I would have been breathless if it had been well tied up, if it had had a well-structured script, because the photography is good, it has a team of interesting actors, a nice subject, but these elements are incapable of making the film take off. In fact, the actors' performance was not that good, since the script didn't know where it was going.
As it is Alan's first work as a producer, director, screenwriter and actor of a feature, it is normal that it is not the "big debut of the year", but it could have had a better result. The perfection that the production could have reached if these errors had been reviewed and mitigated so that the final consumer, the viewer, would not feel cheated.
The challenges that the characters managed to solve are part of a virtual competition inspired by an enigmatic organization that really existed, the Cicada 3301. This organization has, on six occasions, posted a set of complex alternate reality puzzles and games to possibly recruit codebreakers from the public. The puzzles were about data security, encryption, and steganography. It has been called “the most elaborate and mysterious riddle of the internet age” and is listed as one of the “top 5 unsolved mysteries of the internet” by The Washington Post.
We realized how much the plot was inspired by the real group, but it couldn't make it clear what the purpose of the feature was. The dialogues here are shallow, the clues even have a certain level of complexity, but at times the level of the challenges was below what we saw before. The female character who has the most screen time, is smart, but doesn't have chemistry with Connor as they both spend most of the film together, deciphering and looking for clues. In addition, for a smart character, he appears a little "covered" in some scenes, however, if the intention is to be funny, it doesn't work.
It seems that here they wanted to combine the bullshit with action, suspense and humor and I can tell you that it didn't work out. The jokes come out of time and when we really think something interesting is going to come out, nothing happens but the cliché that we've seen reasonably in bad movies.
Distributed by A2 Filmes, the film premieres exclusively on NOW (Claro TV+) from September 22nd, reaching other platforms on October 13th.
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