<div><div data-journey-hook="client-content" data-testid="BodyWrapper"><div><p><span>One of the</span> most remarkable achievements in cinema is when a film successfully transports its audience to another time and place. Ang Lee’s <em>Brokeback Mountain</em> immerses viewers in the world of cowboys in 1960s Wyoming. Pawel Pawlikowski’s <em>Cold War</em> brings us to bleak, gorgeous 1950s Poland. Spike Lee’s <em>The 25th Hour</em> could take place nowhere but post-9/11 New York. And now we have John McPhail’s <em>Dear David</em>, a journey to the psychedelically cringe heart of the 2010s internet.</p><p>A tepid attempt at horror about a narcissistic blogger as he’s menaced by a ghost with an oddly wholesome anti-cyberbullying agenda, <em>Dear David</em> is not a good movie. But it is the most epic bacon amazeballs doggo i can haz cheeseburger [tips fedora] <em>you sir have won the internet</em> film of all time, an ironic mustache-finger tattoo of a motion picture, so committed to bringing the giddy spirit of BuzzFeed to our screens that there is nothing left to do but gaze upon it in awe.</p><p>For those unfamiliar with its origins, <em>Dear David</em> is adapted from a series of viral tweets BuzzFeed cartoonist Adam Ellis wrote in 2017. In this ongoing bit, Ellis described how he felt haunted by a supernatural being that visited him in dreams. “So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he's trying to kill me. (thread)â€ reads the first tweet. In the follow-up, he drew a cartoon of the ghastly child and described his appearance: “He had a huge misshapen head that was dented on one side.â€</p><p>Over the next few months, Ellis continued to update his followers about the figure, which he called “Dear David.â€ He started taking photos and videos that, when brightened with editing software, appeared to show a spectral childish figure as it followed him. The whole thing was, frankly, both exhausting and clearly fake—I feel a bone-deep embarrassment typing it out—but people went wild for it. An incredible number of digital news outlets reported on “Dear Davidâ€ like it might possibly be real. Ellis gained over a million followers on Twitter and Instagram, and soon enough, a movie deal was struck.</p><p><em><span>Dear David</span></em> is not the first film based on tweets; Janiczka Bravo based her mesmerizing 2020 film <em>Zola</em> on a rollicking Twitter thread by Aziah “Zolaâ€ King. But it is, alas, the <em>worst</em> film based on tweets, one which plays up the most cloying bits of Ellis’ Twitter presence instead of leaning all the way into the inherent goofiness of its premise.</p><p>In the film, Ellis, played by Augustus Prew, is a self-absorbed cartoonist who ignores his nice boyfriend and treats his friends like accessories, all while talking in a slurry of geriatric millennial clichés. (“I’m relatable AF,â€ is an actual line of dialog.) He draws the malevolent spirit of “Dear Davidâ€ into his life by being rude on Twitter. Specifically, he responds to a mean comment by telling the person to “DIAF,â€ which means “die in a fire,â€ and then finds himself terrorized in sleep paralysis by a malevolent force that does indeed have a weird misshapen head. (Ellis’ cartoon is reproduced in full for the film, as are a large number of his tweets.)</p></div></div></div>