• Interviews

Dave Franco and Emma Roberts have “Nerve”

 A dark suspense thriller for the age of Pokemon-Go, Nerve opens with nothing if not perfect timing. The augmented reality style game of the title features young people engaging in a social media based game of dare (“minus the truth” as the games site announces). In Nerve kids accept increasingly daring challenges laid out by the community of spectators following online in a game in which “watchers pay to watch; players play to win” cash prizes. Timid Staten Island high schooler Vee (Emma Roberts) is goaded by her friends into joining and is soon swept up in an intoxicating vortex of dares with fellow gamer Ian (Dave Franco). The fun and games quickly escalate into an ever more dangerous sequence of stunts from which, as the heroes soon discover, it’s very difficult to extricate oneself. Underpinning the thriller are issues of conformity and control in the age of pervading social media. We asked Franco and Roberts about it.