Sexting in Suburbia (2012) Liz Vassey, Jenn Proske, Ryan Kelley, Kelli Goss, Rachel Delante, Judith Hoag, Celeste Oliva Movie Review

Sexting in Suburbia (2012)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Liz Vassey in Sexting in Suburbia (2012) (aka: Shattered Silence)

Cleve the Ending

When Rachel Van Cleve (Liz Vassey - Man of the House) returns home from work it is just another day, but then she discovers her daughter, Dina (Jenn Proske), hanging in her bedroom. Distraught and struggling to come to terms with why her daughter, a promising hockey player, would take her own life she discovers, via Dina's laptop, that she was in fact miserable thanks to cyber bullying and those people she thought were friends turning on her after an incident with a sexy photo she sent her boyfriend. Determined to get to the bottom of who instigated the cyber bullying Rachel is met with a wall of silence as not only do none of Dina's friends want to say what happened but the school do not want her causing trouble for the school.

So "Sexting in Suburbia", which is also known as "Shattered Silence", is a three part movie and it is a three part movie which goes from being reasonably good to being far fetched. The reasonably good part is Rachel discovering that in her last weeks Dina had been miserable thanks to cyber bullies who after she sent a sexy picture of herself to her boyfriend the whole school saw it and she was labelled a slut. This first half does a remarkably good job of highlighting how something sent via phone which is private can fall into the wrong hands and spread like wild fire. And with mention of a webpage all about Dina being a slut it does a reasonable job of highlighting elements of cyber bullying.

Jenn Proske in Sexting in Suburbia (2012) (aka: Shattered Silence)

Now with Rachel determined to get to the bottom of things we have the thriller part as she follows what few leads she has to discover how it all started, with the naked picture. Unfortunately "Sexting in Suburbia" becomes almost a standard thriller where not only does Rachel have a wall of silence stopping her from getting the truth but the direction over emphasizes a character as being the possible instigator. It's almost a case that it goes around in circles for a bit with Rachel not really getting anywhere other than facing the wrath of the school when they become hot news.

But then unfortunately things spiral out of control as not only does Rachel become the subject of sick notes, a break in as well as discovering Dina's grave vandalized but who could have started it all becomes convoluted. And sadly when we learn who was behind the cyber bullying it is so outrageous that you stop taking the movie seriously. Not only that the ending to "Sexting in Suburbia" is so painfully cheesy that I suggest stopping it when a certain hospital scene appears in the last few minutes as what happens beyond that is cheesy. It is a shame because after such a decent start and doing a fair job of looking into the issue of cyber bullying "Sexting in Suburbia" goes down hill and never recovers.

What this all boils down to is that "Sexting in Suburbia" starts well as it focuses on the subject of sexting and cyber bullying but the longer it goes on the more it evolves and unfortunately not in a good way with the actual ending being something which should have been left on the cutting room floor.


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