Movie review: Characters have ‘Nerve,’ but not much personality in uneven thriller

Like “Hunger Games” but digital and with cuter outfits, the uneven thriller “Nerve” pits teen against teen in a daredevil online game – “like Truth or Dare,” we’re told, “minus the truth.” Staten Island high-school senior Vee (Emma Roberts), frustrated when her best friend Sydney (Emily Meade) calls her a “watcher,” signs up to play Nerve, the game all her friends are obsessively following. This means she must carry out a series of dares, beginning with kissing a handsome stranger (Dave Franco) who’s reading Virginia Woolf in a diner, as handsome strangers do.

Yes, he’s a plant – a fellow contestant – and the two become caught up in a string of increasingly lucrative challenges, all over Manhattan in the course of one long night. Stunts are performed, a really fabulous green-sequined dress is obtained (via a dare taking place in Bergdorf Goodman), and Vee quickly becomes “insta-famous.” And while the opening challenges are silly, they soon get dark and dangerous – and there’s much talk of some dare going horribly wrong “last year in Seattle.” Will Vee and her new dress make it out alive?

Unfortunately, the filmmakers – busily splashing the film in crayon-colored light, vaguely sinister pop music and jittery camerawork – forgot to give Vee and Handsome Stranger (his name’s Ian) much personality. Franco grins diabolically throughout, and Roberts sounds a bit like a junior version of Sarah Jessica Parker’s “Sex and the City” character Carrie Bradshaw (perhaps Vee watches this show a lot?); otherwise, they’re awfully bland, and it’s hard to get too invested in their fate. The ultimate message – be careful in the digital forest – is a reasonable one for the young audience at which “Nerve” is aimed, but they may be distracted by the film’s most perplexing line, uttered by one teen to another: “Use a pay phone.” Good luck out there, kids.