Catfish, a true thriller about Facebook romance, warns, “Don’t let anyone tell you what it is”

A new suspense-filled documentary thriller in theatres Friday, Catfish, is difficult to describe, but looks fascinating in part because of its mysteriousness. A warning on its site says “Don’t let anyone tell you what it is.”

The film is about a man, Nev Schulman, whose brother and a friend film him as he forms an online friendship with a young girl he meets on Facebook and then forms a romantic, long-distance relationship with her sister. Eventually, he travels to see her, and what happens then is the big twist, basically. (If you really want to know, the plot has been revealed online). Watch the trailer below.

Catfish is in select theaters today, and The New York Times calls it “one of the most intriguing movies of the year” because it “it “is a wretched documentary: visually and narratively sloppy; coy about its motives; slipshod in its adherence to basic ethical norms. The filmmakers, who occasionally appear on camera, shoot and edit with at least minimal competence, but their approach to the potentially volatile and undeniably exploitive implications of their stumbled-upon story is muddled and defensive. Shame on them, if that would mean anything to them.”