Review: Tickled

Tickled (15)

New Zealand 2016  92 mins Dir: Dylan Reeve & David Farrier

Kiwi TV journalist David Farrier specialises in those quirky, funny “and finally…” items. His subjects include sundry nutters, plus Mr. Lordi and Justin Bieber. Then he happens upon a web page for the alleged sport of “competitive endurance tickling”. This really, erm, tickles his fancy, so he gets in touch with Jane O’Brien Media, the company behind web videos of these peculiar contests between toned young men, to request an interview. What he doesn’t expect is a tirade of homophobic abuse, aggressive legal threats and self-justifying assertions that what might, to the untutored eye, seem like an ever-so-slightly gay leisure pursuit is, in fact, a “passionate and exclusively heterosexual athletic endurance activity”. Refusing to be intimidated by “bullies with way too much money”, he decides to team up with filmmaker Dylan Reeve and travel to the US to make a feature-length documentary about this touchy ticklish underbelly of the fetish world.

It quickly becomes apparent that ‘competitive endurance tickling’ is a big global business, awash with loot. Young male participants, often from poor backgrounds, are offered huge piles of cash, flown free of charge to LA and put up in swanky hotels. There are also ‘tickle cells’ across America and around the world. That would be just so much harmless fun were it not for claims of subsequent harassment. Few of the ticklees are willing to speak on camera, but one fella named TJ reveals that he was told he would be taking part in a project exploring the use of tickling as a military tactic (er, right) and that when he objected to the unauthorised posting of his videos online, they were reposted everywhere, a dedicated website was put up in his name and his employers were sent emails claiming he was a pervert and drug addict. He wasn’t alone. Among other victims was a student whose university website was shut down by DDoS attacks apparently coming from his computer. It also seemed to be responsible for a cyber-attack on the White House, bringing the FBI to his dorm room. Whoever is really behind this stuff is clearly enormously wealthy and very powerful.

Farrier then learns that he’s not the first journalist to investigate the wacky world of tickling. Jane O’Brien seems to be a ghost, but the trail leads to a woman calling herself Terri Tickle, who kick-started the whole business back in the 1990s. Just as you think this story couldn’t possibly get any weirder, it promptly does. So I’ll reveal no more here.

You don’t need to have seen Catfish to be alert to the astonishing revelation that people operating online are not necessarily who they claim to be. So it comes as little surprise when identities start to melt away. What began as a jolly tale about strapping young lads going at one another’s armpits with feather dusters becomes a much more sinister story of cruelty, exploitation and domination. There’s also an unlaboured message here about how the rich and powerful, from religious cults to global corporations, use the same tactics to silence their critics and shut down investigations. In truth, this isn’t a documentary that really benefits from being shown on the big screen. But it is cleverly constructed, drip-feeding its jaw-dropping twists to keep us hooked all the way to a final extraordinary telephone conversation. There are even some handy tips for the tickling community. Who knew an electric toothbrush could be so effective at inducing paroxysms of mirth?