While searching for his next story, Auckland-based journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a video of "competitive endurance tickling," in which a group of young men hold down and tickle a willing subject. Since he makes his living reporting on off-kilter human-interest stories, Farrier decides to reach out to the video's production company, Jane O'Brien Media, for more information and an interview. However, the organization responds with a series of messages full of insults, slurs, and refusals for access or information -- which only piques Farrier's interest further. Later, Jane O'Brien Media sends three representatives to Auckland to meet with Farrier, and they warn him that any continued inquiries will lead to serious legal ramifications (they also add a few thinly veiled physical threats). But Farrier and his filmmaking partner Dylan Reeve stay committed to chasing the story, which leads them on a trip to the United States.
The explicit threats, offensive correspondences, and lawsuits backed by high-powered attorneys mount with each day -- forcing the filmmakers to reconsider going further and further down this particular rabbit hole. It soon becomes clear just how vast this tickling empire is, despite the fact that the woman at the center of it is a ghost: No client has ever dealt with Jane O'Brien directly, and are forced instead to interact with a network of associates. Farrier and Reeve attempt to interview former participants in the thousands of tickling videos (some of which date back to the earliest days of the Internet), but almost everyone is too afraid of the company's power and endless resources to speak out. A few, whose lives were destroyed by Jane after they stopped participating in the videos, agree to revealing interviews about the startling means by which the company solicits, exploits, and extorts young men. Through extensive online research and insight from a former director of the tickling videos (who later became Jane's primary adversary), the filmmakers begin to hone in on the ominous figure behind the tickling empire.
Farrier and Reeve are careful not to demonize the tickling fetish or the individuals who seek out these videos for personal consumption -- instead, they are championing the cause of the vulnerable young men who accepted huge sums of money to participate in the videos, only to see them plastered across the web and used as blackmail. The filmmakers take aim at the incredibly wealthy powers-that-be behind the network, who attempt to conceal their identities as the investigation uncovers the vastness of their operation.
The implications of the web's anonymity -- and the way it can lead people to embrace ugly behavior they would never try in the real world -- provide this documentary with its most prescient moments. Bullying, deceit, and exploitation in the digital age are topics that have been explored numerous times before, but Tickled's inquiry into a decades-old online institution is fascinating. Early adopters of the World Wide Web will recognize the clunky windows and barren message boards of the Internet's infancy as the filmmakers follow the electronic paper trail of their subject. The well-established "tickle cells" across the United States that Farrier and Reeve uncover speak to the profitability of Jane's business, and the lengths to which the company's leader will go to remain anonymous become the crux of Tickled. As the layers of protection that Jane has built up over the years are slowly peeled back, the documentary sets up a Catfish-esque reveal.
Tickled excels as a look at one seemingly obscure corner of the Internet, but the larger implications here are left relatively unexamined, as is any sense of redemption for the former employees whose lives have been ruined. Farrier and Reeve do yeoman's work in getting to the bottom of Jane O'Brien Media, and the evidence they find constitutes an engrossing work of documentary filmmaking. But merely unmasking those responsible for an exploitative online enterprise leaves the majority of the heavy lifting still unfinished. As first-time feature directors, the duo sometimes lose focus of the trajectory of their story, even if Tickled still works as a self-contained, stranger-than-fiction documentary.