PVT Chat

It's a film with a slackerish mumblecore vibe, and Hozie is refreshingly grown up about sex. But it's hard to see how his film adds much to the conversation about intimacy in the internet age.

"PVT Chat" is at its best when it delves into the intensity of digital relationships and the ways our minds can trick us into believing the deepness of a connection formed over a computer screen.

The movie ends up feeling like an older vintage of New York story, the kind of pre-gentrification indie you expect a youthful Jim Jarmusch to wander through.

There are flashes of interest, and even some welcome screwball elements, but PVT Chat doesn't coalesce in a meaningful way.

Ben Hozie's wry, observational film positions a young man's repressed sexual paranoia as a reflection of a more general social malaise.

There's a ragged, on-the-hoof quality to the storytelling, and to the scrappy handheld camerawork, which evokes the hand-to-mouth high and lows of Jack's daily life.

For the most part, PVT Chat works pretty well as a sexually charged, thrilling, deep dive into loneliness, addiction and how online persona's differ from our true selves, yet the ending and overall message leaves a lot to be desired.

Hozie nails the greener-grass metaphor in ‘PVT Chat’ with a clarity...

A degenerate charm wafts through this When Harry Met Sally for the OnlyFans generation.

PVT Chat has interesting moments and eye-catching characters (Jacks shady friends who call him Blackjack Jack make his gloomy world a little larger). However, none of this arthouse fodder seems to gel in the way you hope it will.