Parents' Guide to

Anon

By Brian Costello, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Violent sci-fi thriller has sex, cursing.

Movie NR 2018 100 minutes
Anon Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 18+

Based on 3 parent reviews

RoxyHE
RoxyHE Adult
January 31, 2021
age 18+

Dreadful, on so many levels

Right at the start in a suicide scene we follow a man jump off a building right till he hits the ground. A young boy is hit and killed by car. Frequent scenes of murder and sex. Sex scenes are pornographic in style and are re-played by the characters' memory. Hiring a prostitute is normalized. Poor acting all round. Irritating text is continuously displayed in every scene. Skip this movie!

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much sex
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
OnyxLioness
OnyxLioness Adult
January 19, 2021
age 18+

SEX is everywhere.

There are so many different sex scenes and nudity shots. A lot of sexual filth. It's like porn. The main character also hired a hooker. There is a drug snorting scene. There is also gruesome violence where people get shot. Blood pours out onto the ground. There's a person who jumps off a building to commit suicide.

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much sex
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
See all 3 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Sal Frieland (Clive Owen) is a detective in a world where crime has nearly been eliminated at the expense of privacy in ANON. Everything everyone sees is recorded and kept in "The Ether," and so solving crime is merely a matter of finding and playing back the recordings of the parties involved. Detailed information on all objects in sight scroll along the sides of everyone's field of vision. Buildings are draped in digital advertising. For the most part, Frieland's job in this world is unchallenging, but this changes when, one day on his walk to work, he passes a woman (Amanda Seyfried) who seems to have no identity or digital footprint. At the same time, Frieland begins to investigate a series of murders in which people with information they would prefer to keep secret are shot and killed at point-blank range. What distinguishes these murders is that the points of view of the victims are inaccessible, evidently hacked by the killer. In order to track down this killer, Frieland must go undercover. He creates a new identity in The Ether, sleeps with a prostitute, then goes into The Ether in search of anyone who can hack into his mind and erase that memory so his "wife" never finds out. The anonymous woman he passes on the street reaches out, and it's up to Frieland to figure out if she's the one behind these killings, how she remains off the grid and why she chooses to do so, and how the killer can be stopped before Frieland is next.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (3):
Kids say (3):

This is just a so-so sci-fi thriller. Like the best sci-fi, it takes a theme and explores it to its fullest extent and uses that theme to make a comment on contemporary realities. Privacy, surveillance, and information overload are presented directly in the story, and indirectly in the points of view of the characters, as everyone and everything they see is accompanied by the facts about them across their field of vision. However, like the worst of sci-fi, the story itself doesn't hold up under the weight of the themes and the presentation of this near-future world.

Indeed, the first half of the movie is engaging as we experience this world, and the world of a detective in which nearly all crime has been eliminated, and when problems do arise, it's simply a matter of accessing the memories of the victims and perpetrators of the act. The references to social media, Google, Reddit, and the internet as a whole are creative and provocative. But as the second half of the movie goes on, the story itself becomes surprisingly predictable. It doesn't take much to figure out which of the secondary characters is going to get murdered. It turns into a "whodunit" in which there's no surprise as to the identity of the "unexpected character" behind the killings. Overall, Anon is a mixed bag.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about science fiction movies. How does Anon compare to other sci-fi movies?

  • How did the movie use the science fiction genre to explore themes relevant to our society, such as privacy and surveillance in the digital age?

  • How do you think technology will change in the future? How will these advances benefit or hurt society?

Movie Details

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