Whether it's in chat rooms or on Facebook, via gambling sites or cellphones, the digital universe is athrong with hidden dangers, with cyberbullies and con artists who wish to do us harm. It's a theme that might easily slip toward daytime talk show paranoia, but Rubin largely avoids that risk by maintaining a sober, patient tone and getting out of the way of actors who supply the conviction necessary to sell the melodrama. Even the designer Marc Jacobs is shockingly good in a brief cameo as Kyle's pimp; good to know he has a fallback if women ever get tired of flowery fragrances and stripey separates.
Nowhere, however, is the film's dependence on performance more obvious than in its strongest segment, in which two distracted fathers (Jason Bateman and Frank Grillo) realize too late that their sons are in crisis. Helped by exceptionally strong work from the young actors Jonah Bobo and Colin Ford, Rubin teases out the nuances of loneliness that can drive reckless behavior, blurring the line between victim and villain. The result is a moving meditation on modern family that, in its attempt to locate the permeable boundary between flesh and fantasy, could easily have stood alone.
Even in the heightened awareness of a post-Catfish age (and its spoofs), Disconnect is naturally gripping. Using unforgiving closeups, Rubin pokes into unexpected corners— not least the different ways in which men and women respond to calamity — and never forces his story's social-media scares to improbable heights. Our hard drives may or may not harbor predators; perhaps even scarier is the film's reminder that they definitely hold our secrets.