‘Kiss Me First’

In the virtual gaming world of Azana, you can be anyone you want to be. Depressed teenager Leila, under the alias Shadowfax, acquaints herself with a community of misfit gamers who all possess one thing in common – a bleak and rather gloomy existence in the real world. They are psychologically wounded and misguided souls.

The elation that the union fosters is short-lived once Leila discovers the sinister motives of the group’s leader Adrian. Afflicted by Adrian’s ploy to manipulate the others into an early grave, Leila, played by Tallulah Haddon, takes on a personal mission in the real world to put an end to it all.

The enthralling cyber-thriller ‘Kiss Me First’ is infused with suspense and coming of age romance. The separation of real life from the confines of virtual reality is tested. In spite of its thought-provoking premise, the six-episode Netflix series is ultimately an anticlimactic case of unfulfilled potential.

In the British series, Leila is seen to use the virtual world of Azana as an escape from the heartache of losing her sick mother. We witness Leila seek a job as a cleaner at a Turkish restaurant nearby. She desperately needs the money to finance her expensive internet gaming habit. The story fails to reveal much about Leila except her grief and an apparent gaming addiction. She is presented as quirky, snoopy and somewhat clever due to her persistence to get what she wants. There is obvious pain and melancholy in her being that calls for an engaging backstory but the plot is thin and reticent about what exactly makes this protagonist tick.

The series rather presents a teenage girl with no school record or next of kin following her mother’s death. We see Leila make ends meet on her own as she rents out her mother’s old bedroom to a terrible aspiring actor named Jonty, who can’t afford to pay the rent.

In Azana, Leila meets Tess, played by Simona Brown, who leads her to find Adrian and the rest of the vulnerable group. They have created a safe space within Azana called the ‘red pill’, in which Adrian hacked the code to create this safe space characterised by luscious mountains and clear blue waters. One by one the characters start to die in real life and only Leila sees the connection with Adrian and the deaths. He promises them a nirvana in which all their problems can be forgotten. Suicide is the only prerequisite for this, and a cult is born.

Leila and Tess would ultimately spark a fire between them in real life. Tess is a classic case of a middle class wild child with drug addiction and a strenuous relationship with her family. Leila helps her out of trouble in order to get close to her. Whether or not the relationship is a platonic one based on mutual pain and kindness or romantic in nature is quite ambiguous, since clear advances were never made. In spite of this, Leila develops strong feelings for Tess. Ultimately, saving Tess would be at the heart of stopping Adrian from misleading her into an early grave.

The series is thematically dubious. We witness themes switch from romance, and preserving the virtues of justice, and the implications of virtual reality all leading up to a lackluster ending strung with unsolved issues as Adrian is still very much alive.

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