An earnest, ensemble-driven tech-age drama that works best as a mosaic of loneliness, surveillance, and damaged communication. It can be melodramatic, but the intersecting stories are emotionally legible and often effective, especially if you like issue-driven thrillers with a humanist streak.
44% ★★☆☆☆ (81,149)
Disconnect
Where to watch: Amazon
Movie · Drama · Thriller · R
2013 · 1h 56m · ★ 44% (81.1K)
Look up.
Director: Henry Alex Rubin
Starring: Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo
Overview
A hard-working lawyer, attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his family. An estranged couple uses the internet as a means to escape from their lifeless marriage. A widowed ex-cop struggles to raise a mischievous son who cyber-bullies a classmate. An ambitious journalist sees a career-making story in a teen that performs on an adult-only site. They are strangers, neighbors and colleagues and their stories collide as ordinary people struggling to connect in today's wired world.
Director
Henry Alex Rubin
Production
Lionsgate, Exclusive Media, Wonderful Films PLC, LD Entertainment
Cast
Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Skarsgård, Max Thieriot, Colin Ford, Jonah Bobo, Haley Ramm, Norbert Leo Butz, Kasi Lemmons, John Sharian, Aviad Bernstein, Teresa Calentano, Marc Jacobs, Cole Mohr, Kevin Csolak, Ella Lentini
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
An earnest, ensemble-driven tech-age drama that works best as a mosaic of loneliness, surveillance, and damaged communication. It can be melodramatic, but the intersecting stories are emotionally legible and often effective, especially if you like issue-driven thrillers with a humanist streak.
Best for
Viewers who like interconnected ensemble dramas
People interested in early-2010s anxieties about smartphones, social media, and online anonymity
Fans of emotionally heavy, socially conscious thrillers
Audiences who don’t mind some melodrama in exchange for sincerity
Skip if
You want a subtle or understated script
You dislike coincidence-driven ensemble plotting
You’re looking for a fast, twisty thriller over a message movie
You’re allergic to earnestness or heavy-handed social commentary
Overview
Disconnect is a very of-its-moment movie, but that’s part of its appeal. It treats the internet less as a gimmick than as a pressure chamber for ordinary frustrations, loneliness, and bad decisions, letting several separate lives collide in ways that feel messy but recognizable.
Worth noting
The film’s strongest quality is its empathy. It doesn’t reduce its characters to cautionary tales; instead, it shows how technology amplifies preexisting wounds in families, marriages, and friendships. That gives the movie a bruised, humane quality even when the plotting leans hard into coincidence and escalation.
Bottom line
It’s not a sleek thriller, and it can feel a little overdetermined in the way it stacks crises. But if you respond to ensemble dramas that use social issues as emotional drama rather than pure provocation, this is a worthwhile watch with a lot of lingering sadness.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Eli Hayes (5★) · 335 likes
I watched this with my friend very early in the morning yesterday; he showed up at my house a little while after the midnight and, since we didn't start it right away, we didn't finish the movie until after 3AM... and when the credits finally rolled, we didn't say a word to each other. I glanced over at him in my peripheral vision and noticed the tears rolling down his cheeks. And I just knew the feeling. I was crying… more
russman (2.5★) · 297 likes
Can we just shut the entire internet off? Except Letterboxd. We can keep that around.
Lia Allison (5★) · 161 likes
hot dad
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (3.5★) · 116 likes
A film that has been likened to the controversial "Crash" on and off this platform, and as the film progressed, one can see the parallel between the two, where racism is swapped for the alienation generated by technology, from social networking to sex or casual chat services. And, how anxieties, personal and relationship difficulties tend to manifest negatively under the anonymity of the internet. Over the course of the film, it tends to be fairly engaging, with one narrative certainly… more
jade (4★) · 104 likes
sorry,,, “love slave”?!? i ain’t saying he deserved it but
2018 · Drama, Mystery, Thriller · 1h 42m · PG-13 · ★ 66% (496.1K) · Where to watch: Netflix, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Netflix Standard with Ads
A more suspenseful digital-age mystery that uses screens and online traces as storytelling tools.
2014 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 5m · R · ★ 61% (160.3K) · Where to watch: Max
Not tech-focused, but it shares the same controlled tension, moral pressure, and urban unease.
Themes
technology and alienation, family breakdown, online anonymity, cyberbullying, loneliness, surveillance, emotional disconnection, media ethics
Topics
ensemble drama, social thriller, digital age, cyberbullying, family dysfunction, online anonymity, melodrama, urban loneliness, early 2010s, issue-driven