King Kelly

It's an unflinching update to media scholar Neil Postman's prophetic claim about the deadly impact of television on cultural identity: Smartphones in hand, we face the danger of filming ourselves to death.

Director Andrew Neel has hit upon a compelling reason for the found-footage gimmick: to indict a narcissistic generation who think their phones make them royalty.

King Kelly is a broad indictment of the emptier side of self-documentation and a more nuanced one of the Internet as a source of affirmation.

The movie's other master stroke is the artfully unhinged lead performance of Louisa Krause as the despicable King Kelly, a character who would have been ready-made for Tuesday Weld.

Sadly, this film's POV conceit -- in which all scenes are shot by the characters, whether they have a plausible reason to hold the camera up or not -- quickly becomes as grating as Kelly herself.

The film decides very early on, as part of its premise, to reduce Louisa Krause's King Kelly to a one-dimensional narcissist.