Though my own teen years were over with before the internet (and cell phones) became so widespread, I was deeply saddened by the Phoebe Prince "bully-cide" case of 2010; I then heard about CYBERBULLY (apparently inspired not by the Prince but by the equally tragic Megan Meier case) and decided to watch it. I found the film quite suspenseful, affecting and, above all, informative; it made me understand why the common advice to "cyberbullied" teens -- "Just turn off your computer!" -- is really not all that practical. CYBERBULLY is well written, filmed, and edited; the acting, though occasionally wooden, is a cut above what I would have expected from a "Lifetime" movie (and let's face it -- even such a classic "after-school special" as 1981's THE WAVE contains some wooden acting). The talented Emily Osment was both persuasive and likable as pretty-but-not-quite-popular Taylor Hillridge; she had me on her side. As for the much-mocked scene in which Taylor's not being able to open a bottle of pills foils her suicide attempt -- the scene actually is believable if you consider that the bottle cap may have stuck (which has happened to me more than once, and I'm in my thirties!); or that Taylor, evidently in a panicked state, was probably shaking hard; or that she might subconsciously have been TRYING to stall so that someone would save her in the nick of time. Regardless, CYBERBULLY is a well-done after-school special which taught me things I had not understood before about the online world of today's teenagers.
Review of Cyber Bully
