Kiss Me First comes across as a mix of the horrendous real life Russian suicide game Blue Whale and Ready Player One, which is a very disturbing combination. The six episode long British cyber-thriller drama show produced by Channel 4 and Netflix tells the story about 17-year-old Leila who just lost her mother and only finds comfort while playing the online game Azana.
Leila’s gaming avatar is known as Shadowfax, who is followed by another player, Mania. Mysterious things being to happen and Leila is drawn to a new world within Azana—the Red Pill, where she gets to know other players which all seem to have no real gamer profile. Red Pill is an homage to the Matrix movie where Neo has to decide to take the blue or red pill. This place is supposed to be a safe haven for players that, according to their leader Adrian, deserve a spot of peace.
When Mania finds Leila in real life she introduces herself as Tess and a friendship begins to bloom. For a while, everything seems to get better for Leila as she has a roommate, Jonty, so that she is able to pay the rent and even Tess starts to live with them.
Leila soon finds out that not everything is as it seems and starts digging more into the players real life identities after one of them, Calumny, jumped from a cliff within the game but also jumped from the roof into his death in real life. This is then followed by the death of Denier who killed himself and his orphanage guardian who sexually abused him.
Leila finds out that every one of the Red Pill group has some dark secret, Leila herself included. One night she tells Tess that she helped her mother kill herself because she does not want to suffer anymore from her illness.
Meanwhile, Adrian sends Force to Leila to scare her because he uncovered that she wants to stop his plans. He kills even Mr. Adams, Leila’s former teacher who helped her hack the game. Force was promised the address of Jacosta, who he fell in love within the game.
While Leila searches for help and contacts Ruth Palmer, the creator of Azana, Force was given Jacosta’s address and she is nothing he was expecting, because Jacosta is not a she but a he. Until the last episode the audience is made believe that Jacosta is dead, however, he is badly beaten and instead is alive lying in a hospital.
After a fight with Tess, who does not believe that Adrian’s master plan is to kill everyone from their group, Tess disappears and follows clues to the real safe haven to Croatia where she meets another player for real, Tippie.
Leila follows some clues as well and wants to save Tess, but she is confronted with an even worse situation and ends up kidnapped by Adrian. Tess now back from Croatia with the help from Jonty drives to Ruth Palmer and wants an answer from her.
It then is revealed that she did not built Azana, it was her son who is behind the game—Adrian.
The show is fast-paced and you are constantly switching back and forth between reality and the game, which makes for an interesting time. The last episode is by far the most disturbing one and may be hard to follow for some and the show ends with quite the cliffhanger, which is always frustrating but more so when a second season has not been announced.
The series is based on the book by Lottie Moggach, which is also titled Kiss Me First.
The series stars Tallulah Haddon (Taboo), Simona Brown (Guilt), Matthew Beard (The Imitation Game), Samuel Bottomley (Rocket’s Island), Haruka Abe (Cyberbully), George Jovanovic, Misha Butler, and Ben Chaplin (Dorian Gray).
