I'm still not entirely sure what to make of this movie. I certainly wouldn't call it good but it's such a mix of emotion with poor acting and direction that it's kind of unreal. It has a very early 2000s feel to it so I might call it dated as well. The movie drops a lot on the audience several times so it's harder than you think to fully flesh out. Jack Livingstone (Justin Kunkle) is a software developer (because that's what James Nguyen likes to give his male leads as occupations) who is doing poorly at work. Following the advice of his sleazy, sex addicted friend Jack decides to sign up for an online dating service. He meets a mysterious woman named Julie Romanov (Jenn Gotzon Chandler) with whom he hits it off, save her evasive behavior whenever Jack asks her questions about her past. At one point (after about 3 months) Jack finally demands to know more about Julie's past when an out of the blue plot twist reveals that Julie and Jack have never met in person but have in fact been dating through virtual reality the entire time. Julie disappears and cuts off contact with Jack who then goes about trying to track her down. It turns out that Julie was a computer software student who started a million dollar computer company (again, because that's what Nguyen likes to give his characters as businesses despite living like regular people) who eventually disappeared. In a second plot twist it is revealed that Julie has actually been dead the entire time and that the computer she designed had enough of her personal information to replicate her in the dating service. After wrapping your head around that second out of the blue plot twist, you realize that Nguyen's affinity for paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock was alive and well back then as well as it has several references to Vertigo in place of The Birds. Jack rebuffs Julie and then forgives her but it comes too late as she is quickly decomposing as a pack of computer information (clearly I'm no expert with computers writing sentences like that). So the film has a very tragic ending that actually leaves an impact which is bizarre considering the fact that it's very poorly made. And given how strangely the plot is structured it's hard for me to actually say what I think of the film as a whole. It's not well acted, it's not well directed, it's not particularly well written but at the same time it really has to be seen to be believed.
Review of Julie and Jack
