Originally premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U. S. Documentary Competition.
TikTok, Boom. Focuses on one of the most influential platforms of the contemporary social media landscape, TIKTOK, BOOM. Examines the security issues, global political challenges, and racial biases behind the history-making app. Director Shalini Kantayya tries to bring something new on the history of TikTok, the controversies surrounding them and how TikTok is impactful to society and citizens. Despite good points are brought up and some informative discussions, the movie doesn't really bring anything new to the table and ends up being a standard basic documentary that you can easily predict miles away.
As a person who knows about TikTok and even uses it, this documentary doesn't really do much justice. There lacks a focus as there are many information and ideas discussed but the film has no idea how to handle each one of them throughly and it feels all jammed up together like a messy sandwich. There wasn't much to really learn about because it didn't really do anything new or discussed something we never heard of before. I understand if this documentary is for viewers who don't know much about TikTok as an app but what would they really get out from it?
The presentation of the camerawork is decent and the sound design is pretty good. The editing is normal and the pacing is alright. There were some good interviews that I did enjoy listening to but there were some interviews that felt really out of place. Certain moments shown are very clear that this documentary struggles on trying not to be one-sided.
One of the positives thing I can say is that at least it wasn't terribly made and it's not unwatchable. It's a watchable documentary but it's nothing really innovative. If you are interested in checking it out go for it but I recommend skipping this one.
Rating: C+
