A camgirl’s streaming profile gets hacked by her doppelganger.
Today we will go through an American psychological horror from 2018 called “Cam.”
This is just my opinion on the movie and not a substitute for watching it. Links to the
film are in the description below.
Alice Ackerman is a camgirl who broadcasts live streams on a website named FreeGirlsLive.
For those who don’t know, a camgirl is someone who makes money on the internet by broadcasting
sexual videos. A solid business strategy, if you ask me.
Our protagonist Alice, live streams under the name “lola lola.” She has a whole
studio set up in her home where she broadcasts from. Miss Lola is overly obsessed with ranks
and numberings on the site. She wants to be the number one camgirl of all time which is
currently held by a girl named BabyGirl.
She has been able to gather a lot of true fans, AKA creepy middle-aged men through her
live broadcasts. Let’s just say she is making BANK off her job and is loving it too.
During one of such live streams, an anonymous user demands he wants to see blood. Which
is normal because we’re on the internet where people ask people to drink bleach every
day, so Alice ignores it. She blocks the anonymous user and moves on. But soon, another user
makes a similar request. Her comment section is spammed with the comments. Now, we know
people on the internet are crazy AF, but Alice is even crazier. She seriously accepts their
requests and slits her throat.
Everyone’s shocked. So, her rank and viewer count start to skyrocket. Why will that matter
when she is dead? Then suddenly, she reveals that the suicide was staged and the blood
was just makeup. It was just a publicity stunt to increase her rank, and it worked! Good
for her.
After the stream, she gets a call from one of her fans and the anonymous user from earlier
who helped her stage the prank. The man’s real name is Arnold, but since you can be
whoever you want on the internet, he is “TinkerBoy.” Alice gets a call from another one of her
fans. Did I mention she is famous? This one is named Barney. She quickly ends the call
with TinkerBoy and talks to Barney.
Barney looks like a typical internet creep and tips Alice really well, so she gets into
a bathtub while video chatting with him. Alice’s mother has no clue what she actually does
for work and thinks she works in web development of some sort. But Alice’s younger brother,
Jordan, knows his sister’s job and has promised to keep it a secret.
Alice doesn’t like mixing her internet work with her real-life, but it gets mismatched
when she sees Tinkerboy at a grocery store one day. They both instantly recognize each
other but do not talk.
One day Alice is talking to a fellow cam girl named Fox. She suggests they do a “control
show” at the camgirl clubhouse. A control show is when someone uses a remote control
sex toy on another person, and the viewers on the internet pay them excessively. Fox,
being a little more conservative than the other camgirls, denies the offer. Later, Alice
calls Barney to meet her at a location and ignores Tinkerboy’s call. Poor guy.
During her next show, she finally ranks in the top 50. That is like graduating in the
cam girl world. She starts celebrating and thanks her followers. However, her rank quickly
drops. It turns out the camgirls have a rivalry. One of them named Princess X, who had a strict
"no nude" policy, has promised to get naked on camera if Lola's rank drops below 60.
Princess X celebrates when Lola's rank drops to 59. Washed by disappointment, she ends
the live stream. Tinkerboy, being the biggest simp, calls her to tell her how much he hates
Princess X. But simp boy has called her on her personal number rather than a chatroom
call which angers Alice. She had given it to him in case of an emergency.
When asked about the awkward grocery store incident, Arnold reveals that he received
a job in Alice's state. I bet he did that on purpose, the man is obsessed with her.
She hangs up abruptly and calls Fox, demanding that they do the control show.
Alice, or rather Lola, is now at the Cam Girl Clubhouse. She runs into Princess_X and another
cam girl, who mock her. Then the control show happens and Lola’s number skyrockets again.
She reaches number 47 and is over the moon.
The next morning, when she tries logging into her streaming account, she sees that her login
credentials have been changed. She logs into FreeGirlsLive from another account and sees
that her account is still online and streaming. The girl is shocked, to say the least. The
girl who is streaming from her profile is a doppelganger and is in her studio. Her face,
mannerism, everything is identical to Alice’s. She is basically Alice. Alice walks into her
studio but sees no one. So, who the hell is streaming? She contacts the site's customer
service, believing that they are replaying old shows, but they say that is impossible.
FGL customer support claims that they can't do much since the account is live and the
performer matches the identification they have on file. The girl has no way to get her
account back from herself. She tries commenting on the stream to tell the followers she is
the real Lola but instead gets banned.
Later, she meets LuckyDuck and Fox at the clubhouse to show them what is happening but
the girls are just as confused. They watch a live stream where people pay fake Lola thousands
of dollars to write their names on her body. Alice thinks Princess X is behind the hacking,
but her doubt fades when she arrives at the clubhouse while the live stream is still going
on.
The following day Alice is at her mother’s salon when suddenly our Tinkerboy Arnold arrives
with a bouquet; talk about being a stalker. He even requests to meet her mother as if
he is Alice’s long-time boyfriend. Alice quickly dismisses him and sends him home.
That night, Alice joins the fake Lola’s live stream to see her live streaming from
a public library and exposing herself. Alice had a “no public show” rule, which fake
Lola has now broken.
At Jordan’s birthday party, his teenage friends watch Lola’s live stream. Suddenly,
Jordan starts attempting to wrestle the phone from his friend Alex's grip. The phone drops,
and Alice's mother picks it up. Oh damn! She sees the stream of her daughter touching herself
in a library.
At the same time, Alex yells that Alice "does porn." Alice tries to apologize to her mother.
But she doesn't respond. Instead, she ignores her completely and prepares the cake while
singing Happy Birthday to Jordan. Awkward.
At night, the fake Lola hosts an 80s workout show themed stream. Because of her venture
into the public library, her rank has increased to 31. An angered Alice pays for Lola to spank
herself until she bruises. Then the fake Lola starts teasing the audience by pulling out
different toys from a box. Suddenly, she takes out a gun. She asks the audience to give her
a hundred thousand tokens to use it. And they do. She then shoots herself splattering blood
all around. Alice freaks out and starts shaking at the sight. But surprise surprise, it was
a publicity stunt. The fake Lola reaches the top twenty in rank.
Alice has had too much of the fake her, so she calls the police. Two officers come to
her house, but when they see the live stream of a naked fake Lola, they turn as creepy
as the creepy dudes from the internet. They ask her to stay off the internet as a solution
and leave.
The fraud Lola then announces a live show with BabyGirl coming up soon. Babygirl is
the number one cam girl on the site. Alice joins Baby's Livestream in the hopes of communicating
with her. She grows suspicious when Baby mentions wanting to "burn her house down so a fireman
would take pity on her" and "needing to get fucked," both word-for-word phrases that the
fake Lola had said in her live streams.
She calls Fox trying to find out BabyGirl’s real name but Fox dismisses her. The next
day, Alice meets up with creepy old Barney for her date. Barney also used to video chat
with Babygirl and knows some stuff about her.
Alice manages to find out that BabyGirl is from Oehler, Georgia, and that she was prom
queen in high school. She then excuses herself to go to the bathroom. The fake Lola starts
streaming, and Barney figures the Lola he is with is fake. He starts threatening her,
but she manages to escape. Note to self, don’t meet creepy strangers from the internet.
At night, fake Lola and babygirl stream together. Alice finds babygirl’s real Facebook profile
and sees she has been dead for six months. She looks back at the screen, and babygirl
is right there with fake Lola. This could mean one of two things, either that’s babygirl's
ghost or fake Lola’s playing with fake babygirl. The fake cam girls then go into fake Lola's
room, which is identical to Alice’s room. She shows pictures of Jordan on the live stream
and reveals his name too. Alice never wanted to bring her brother into this, frustrated,
she breaks her laptop.
Then, we see Alice with her mother, who tells her that she watched some of the live streams
and that she enjoys Alice's confidence when she acts as "Lola,". She loves seeing a changed
Alice in contrast to her usual shy self. Jordan is furious at Alice, and rightfully so. The
boy must be being bullied into the ground after her last stream.
Later, Alice looks for every cam girl that has collabed with Babygirl in the past six
months. There are a few of them and all of them have Tinkerboy as their best friend.
The man’s whole life outside work is interacting with camgirls. Alice goes to find Tinkerboy
in the motel he was staying at. She asks for his help to figure out how the duplicate is
doing the things she does. He offers to help and asks her to stay the night.
Alice desperately needs his help so she agrees. I wouldn’t have done that after the last
time. She wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Tinkerboy in the bathroom, jerking
off to fake Lola’s stream.
She tases him in frustration and asks him what he knows about the duplicates. Since
Tinker’s whole life revolves around cam girls, he has also noticed the weird shift
in every girl’s behaviour when they reach the top twenty or flourish in the site rapidly.
He knows that some kind of bot that had been analyzing the girl’s live stream takes over
their profile as them. However, he doesn’t know how it works or how they can stop it.
The fake Lola then video calls Tinker. Alice stands in front of the camera, and to her
surprise, fake Lola doesn’t recognize that they are identical. Alice deduces that the
replicating entity is unaware of its own existence. She runs back to her house freaked out by
the fake bot.
Alice has finally found a way to expose the fake Lola. She sets up her mirrors in a position
that creates an illusion showing multiple of her. She pays to join a private cam session
with the fake Lola and tells her to sit in her vanity.
She then asks her to start a live stream so people can see "how good they look together."
Alice challenges Lola to a game where they need to imitate each other. Whoever the viewers
think does the best job wins and the winner has to dare the other one to do something.
Lola wins the first round and asks Alice to strip. In the next round, Alice smashes her
head on the table, making her nose bleed. Fake Lola hesitates but smashes her nose anyway.
Alice wins this round and asks for the password to fake Lola’s account.
Lola hesitates at first, but obliges once her audience asks her to. Anything for the
fans. Fake Lola finally sends Alice her password in a private message. Alice, who just sacrificed
her nose to get the account back, deletes it after logging in. The account’s gone;
fake Lola’s gone. Alice is now free.
Some time later, we see Alice’s mother doing her makeup. Alice is starting a new account.
Her mother fully supports her profession as we all should. Alice has obtained a fake ID
with the name "Emily Ramsay”.
She makes a new account with the username "EveBot." Finally "Eve" starts her first stream.
So that is how the movie Cam goes. Hope you liked the video! Don’t forget to leave a
like and comment. I’ll see you next time.