Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jacob Gregor
Starring: Maddie Daviss, Jacob Gregor, Ian Erickson, Brandon
Daley
Parents once told their kids that movies were bad for them. Those kids
then told their own kids that TV would rot their brains. Those kids went
on to scorn their children for spending too much time on YouTube. Now
YouTube addicted parents are frowning at their kids' obsession with
TikTok. It seems every generation views the latest media as harmful at
worst, a waste of time at best.
Writer/director Jacob Gregor's
Endless Content Forever aims to satirise the current state
of media, with, as its title alludes to, the practically infinite choice
of viewing materials we have on hand today. It does so in a very luddite
manner, reducing the entirety of online media to its worst
elements.
The closest the movie has to characters are Sam (Maddie Daviss)
and her unnamed friend, played by the director himself. The two lead
aimless lives, constantly staring at screens and speaking to one another
as though they're reading text messages aloud. The latter starts up his
own directionless YouTube channel, beginning with a cringy review of
Avengers: EndGame
before ditching that format for reviews of burgers. This gives us the
film's one genuinely humorous moment as he gets so consumed with
enjoying his burger (it does look delicious) that he forgets he's meant
to be recording his opinions.
The rest of the movie aims to replicate the experience of
doom-scrolling endlessly through online video content. Images and sound
blur into a headache-inducing collage. I guess that's the point, but it
sure is irritating to watch and listen to. Ironically, though it
purports to be examining a very modern phenomenon, there's a very 1990s
feel to Endless Content Forever, with much of it resembling the sort of music promos industrial bands
like Ministry would assemble from the weirder outposts of America's
public access TV, the precursor to YouTube.
There's something disingenuous about Gregor's representation of online
video, and he doesn't seem to understand that in order to find an
audience a creator has to have a certain appeal and a level of
professionalism. You can argue about the value of the "content" that's
consumed or its political influence, but to suggest that people are
wasting their time watching videos as amateurish as those recreated by
Gregor is just naïve. Endless Content Forever is a lot
like a millennial screaming at their own generation to get off their
lawn when they actually live in a fourth floor apartment.
