Even a Good Screenlife Movie Is Exhausting

Screenlife movies just seem cruel at this point. After all, we spend most of our waking lives staring at screens. Computer screens, laptop screens, tablet screens, smartphone screens. In comparison, movies are a respite. Sure, you’re watching them on a screen. But at least they provide a simulation of real life.

But screenlife movies, including this one produced by Timur Bekmambetov (Searching, Unfriended, Profile and, much to his detriment, War of the Worlds), don’t seem to be going away. At least, until fans grow tired of them, much as they grew tired of the increasingly exhausted found-footage genre.

LifeHack, at least, is a superior example of the form, foregoing the usual thriller or horror film formats in lieu of another cinematic staple, the heist film. Except in this case, the thieves are not incredibly handsome performers clad in well-tailored outfits but rather four grungy teenage hackers who clearly don’t get enough fresh air.

The ringleader of the larcenous group is 17-year-old Kyle (Georgie Farmer, Wednesday), with his perpetually online cohorts being Petey (James Scholz), Sid (Roman Hayeck Green) and Alex (Yasmin Finney, Heartstopper, Doctor Who). The story begins with Kyle doing something that has us rooting for him instantly. Receiving one of those ominous-sounding messages that his computer has been compromised, he turns the tables on the would-be hacker and takes over his computer, eventually sending the criminal scurrying away from his call-center operation located in a foreign country.  I was watching a screener of LifeHack at home (on my computer, naturally), but it was easy to imagine a theater full of people standing up and cheering.

Kyle isn’t content with such small-scale operations, however, considering his and his friends’ talents. He decides to target loathsome, right-wing tech billionaire Don Heard (Charlie Creed-Miles, Peaky Blinders, providing some relief from all the youthfulness on display), whose resemblance to Elon Musk must surely be coincidental. Determined to take a small portion of Heard’s cryptocurrency fortune, Kyle targets his young influencer daughter Lindsey (Jessica Reynolds, Kneecap), who naturally reveals everything about her life online. Luring her in with an offer from a fake modeling agency, they soon have all the info they need to get to her father’s money and score a fast $100,000.

To reveal what happens after that would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that things turn out to be more complicated than they seemed, and that the hackers are forced into a more elaborate caper designed to get many more millions of their mark’s riches. Except this time there’s a physical component involved that involves, gasp, a human being actually having to enter Heard’s office to procure vital information. All of which we witness on screens, naturally, via cell phone and surveillance footage.

Debuting director Ronan Corrigan keeps things moving at a fast and furious pace. So fast, in fact, that unless you’ve got an advanced degree in computer science, or are under the age of, say, 25, you’ll have very little grasp of the myriad details presented on so many screens within screens. You may feel you have a case of undiagnosed ADD. Not that it matters, since the net effect is so enveloping and hypnotic that you go for it, at least until you inevitably begin experiencing screen fatigue.

The performers, who spend most of the film’s running time shot in Zoom-style close-up (with the exception of a sequence set in Amsterdam, in which you realize with a shock that they actually have fully intact human bodies), handle their very specific chores effectively, alternately conveying youthful arrogance and panic during the plot’s twists and turns. While there’s not exactly a surfeit of character development, the screenplay co-written by Corrigan and Hope Elliott Kemp provides just enough motivation to keep us interested in more than just the caper.

As with all screenlife movies, though, LifeHack eventually wears thin with its preponderance of very specific style over substance. By the time it’s over, you’ll be relieved that you can go back to more humanistic activities. Like scrolling through your phone.