CAM (2018) is a smart, Black Mirror-esque techno-thriller that feels eerily prescient in 2025.
While not earth-shattering, it’s suspenseful and fun, offering a unique perspective on the modern fears of cybercrime and identity theft.
Because in a post-pandemic, chronically online, generative AI-laden world, getting scammed out of money isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you on the internet.
When your online identity is your whole identity, losing control of it can mean losing yourself entirely.
What’s the deal?
Alice (Madeline Brewer, aka that girl from Orange is the New Black and The Handmaid’s Tale), is an ambitious cam girl streaming under the stage name Lola. She’s good at what she does and dreams of being number one on her platform.
One day, she’s locked out of her account. But her stream is still live - and a perfect doppelganger is streaming in her place.
Alice calls customer service, the police, anyone who might help her regain access to her account, her money, her identity. As she digs deeper, she discovers other streamers have faced the same fate. Some of these doppelgangers have even kept streaming after the original streamers have died.
Alice creates a new account and messages her old one. Fake-Lola agrees to a face-off. They go live and let the audience decide who the “real” Lola is. Real Lola wins and deletes her account just as it reaches number one.
I can’t stop thinking about...
The central antagonist of CAM - the doppelganger - is never fully explained, leaving it up to us to draw our own conclusions:
Is it something paranormal? A glitch in the matrix?
Is it an AI deepfake created by a hacker for profit? (If so, why would fake-Lola agree to a face-off?)
Or is this doppelganger an autonomous actor, a rogue cyber-virus spreading on its own?
It’s not hard to imagine a (near) future where cam sites are run by AI performers: digital twins, deepfakes, and other forms of synthetic pornography running “live” shows.
In a telling scene, it becomes clear that Alice’s most loyal viewer prefers fake-Lola over real-Alice. Why confront the messy human behind the camera when AI girls are so much less complicated?
They don’t need to sleep, eat, or ever turn their cameras off - so why settle for the real thing?
CAM pulls off an unaffected treatment of online sex work: neither romanticized nor vilified, glamorized nor denigrated. It respects the complexities of the industry while raising some compelling questions.
As our lives become increasingly digitized, where is the line between self and screen?
When everything is broadcast, what do we truly own?
And when all is lost, how do we start claiming ourselves back?
Logging off,
Horrorshow Jane