Movie Review: The Hater

The Hater ** ½ / *****
Directed by: Jan Komasa.
Written by: Mateusz Pacewicz.
Starring: Maciej Musialowski (Tomasz Giemza), Vanessa Aleksander (Gabi Krasucka), Danuta Stenka (Zofia Krasucka), Jacek Koman (Robert Krasucki), Agata Kulesza (Beata Santorska), Maciej Stuhr (Pawel Rudnicki), Adam Gradowski (Stefan Guzkowski 'Guzek'), Piotr Biedron (Kamil), Jedrzej Wielecki (Staszek Rydel), Jan Hrynkiewicz (Roommate Marcin Karpiuk), Martynika Kosnica (Natalia Krasucka).

It isn’t often when we have a promising filmmaker’s follow-up to their breakthrough success released mere months after that breakthrough – but with The Hater, Jan Komasa follows up his wonderful, Oscar nominated Corpus Christi – released in theaters earlier this year. You can certainly see similarities with his breakthrough success – both are portraits of angry, confused young men. But the main character in The Hater is far less nuanced – and interesting – than the one portrayed so memorably by Bartosz Bielenia in Corpus Christi – and the film is also more unfocused, lashing out angrily in many different directions. At two hours and fifteen minutes, it’s also a long movie – and it feels even longer.

We are introduced to Tomasz (Maciej Musialowski), and immediately know that ethics isn’t his strong suit. He has been called before his university’s ethics board – and will be expelled from law school for plagiarism by the end of the film’s first scene. But instead of learning from his transgressions and trying to make things right, and turn his life around, instead he decides to keep digging himself in deeper. Tomasz is from the country – a poor family, and is determined to make good one way or another. A wealthy family – the Krasucka’s, who used to vacation in the country near Tomasz – are partially funding his schooling, and Tomasz goes to their house for dinner – under the guise of thanking them. His real intentions though are to integrate himself in their family – their college daughter, Gabi (Vanessa Aleksander) goes to the same school (different program), and he wants to get in with her and her friends. The Krasucka’s are into politics as well – supporting a liberal politician running for mayor. Soon Tomasz is working for an ethically dubious online marketing firm – they do the dirty work, spreading fake news on the internet that the bigger places won’t do. When Tomasz sees his new plan also go up in smoke, he starts playing both sides – volunteering for the candidate, in an attempt to get back in good with the Krascuka’s, while sabotaging the candidate online. He goes above and beyond even what the firm with no morals would do though, when he targets a right wing nut job of a young man – and starts filling his head with thoughts of violence.

The Hater is Komasa’s attempt to delve into the internet world we live in now. I noticed that he had another film back in 2011 called Suicide Room – about an angry young high school student spending sending his hate out into the world in chatrooms, and the original title of this film – Suicide Room: The Hater – marks this as some sort of companion piece to that – updated for the fake news era. It’s certainly a subject worthy of exploration – but filmmakers still, I think, have not quite figured out how to address the dark corners internet in a way that doesn’t lead to extremes. The Hater isn’t as bad – or sensationalistic as Spree, another recent film about the subject – but I’m not sure it quite hits the nail on the head either.

A big part of the problem is that Tomasz just isn’t all that interesting. The film attempts to complicate him a little bit – like Komasa so memorably did in Corpus Christi – trying to make Tomasz a little sympathetic, in between him doing completely awful things – but it doesn’t really work. The film seems stuck between wondering if Tomasz is a monster – who uses his weapon of choice, the internet to do his monstrous things, or if he is a victim of the online culture – a wounded young man, crushed by unrequited love, who takes things too far because no one is around to stop him, and it’s just so easy. Perhaps Komasa thinks he is both of those things – which, admittedly, would be an interesting angle to take. But Musialowski’s performance lacks the nuance to make Tomasz all that interesting. He’s a blank slate – and at some point you wonder if there’s any “there there” at all.

The Hater touches on timely issues to be sure – and I hope that some filmmaker finally is able to crack the code on how to portray this generation of very angry, very online young men, who digital violence becomes real at some point. The Hater isn’t that film – even if it’s an honorable attempt to be.