Chatlines Review (2026 Manchester Film Festival)
You won’t be able to stop crying your heart out for Chatlines, the newest feature film from Lloyd Eyre-Morgan and Neil Ely. Shot in just five days on a shoestring budget, the Manchester-based film is a queer love story with science fiction pumping through its veins.
The film follows two terminally ill men who form an unexpected connection via ‘Chatlines’, an Omegle-style website that pairs strangers for video chats. As he undergoes chomotherephy, Jordan (Lloyd Eyre-Morgan) takes to the chat platform, looking for intimacy and connection among an ocean of yappers and unsolicited nudes. He eventually finds Danny (Nico Mirallegro), a young man fighting his own battle with cancer, who seems to be the exact combination of smart, funny and fit that Jordan has been yearning for. After their video link suddenly disconnects, Jordan takes to TikTok and Google, starting the search for a man who doesn’t seem to exist anywhere online. Jordan’s cheeky and headstrong sister/carer (Faye Mckeever) discourages Jordan from his search, believing it will hurt and confuse him. However, as they progress through the stages of their end-of-life diagnosis, Jordan and Danny are routinely reconnected through the chat portal, eventually discovering they are separated by more than just distance; they are also separated by time. Twenty years to be exact: Jordan is in 2025, whereas Danny is adamant the year is 2005.
Screenlife movies are a budding cinematic phenomenon of the digital age. The format, mostly used in horror thrillers, such as Searching and Dashcam, follows stories as they play out via computer screens, smartphones, webcams and video calls. Chatlines uses a hybrid of styles, but uses the screenlife format in an unexpected and unexplored way. Firstly, Eyre-Morgan and Ely use screenlife storytelling, not to deliver tension and thrills, but extremely relatable comedy. By allowing us to see Jordan’s comically unfiltered search history, the film lets us to get to know its protagonist very intimately. For who among us hasn’t searched for the most ridiculous and embarrassing stuff online, hoping a search engine will deliver us all the answers.
Secondly, the screenlife format allows Eyre-Morgan and Ely to walk the delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. A real triumph within the movie is the home video style memories of Jordan’s Mother (Siobhan Finneran), which are interwoven throughout the film. In them, we get to understand Jordan’s family history, having already lost his Mother to cancer and the strain this puts on his sister, who will soon be left alone. In bittersweet interactions with her children, Siobhan Finneran proves she is a master of her craft, blending our tears of sadness with tears of laughter.
Screening as part of The Manchester Film Festival, Chatlines is an example of underappreciated Northern talent. It’s extremely refreshing and exciting to see Manchester up on the big screen. The love for the city is palpable on screen, and our buzzy city eventually comes to feel like a character in itself. Each cast member perfectly captures typical Manc humour. During one unbelievable moment, having connected through time, Jordan breaks the ice by filling Danny in on future developments: ‘Blockbusters gone, Queens dead, and TikTok is like telly but on your phone’. This is just one of many examples of the deadpan, witty heart that encapsulates the film.
Despite its limited budget, the film’s science fiction elements hold their own. Chatlines feels spiritually connected to the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, as episodes shaped by Davies tend to blend big, emotional storytelling with playful sci-fi concepts. It adopts similar methods, placing ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Even with a high-concept premise like time travel, the drama and emotional core of the film feel accessible. Like Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, rather than rely on spectacle and special effects, the film introduces you to otherworldly phenomena and convinces you to believe what you’re seeing through well-acted performances and a well-written story.
The tides are finally changing for queer stories. Especially now, following the success of shows like Heated Rivalry and Heartstopper, the industry’s hesitancy to show queer joy and passion is subsiding. Chatlines is the next chapter on this journey, not because it includes queer characters, but because it embeds queer emotional perspectives alongside hugely popular sci-fi ideas, giving us something new, exciting and long overdue.
★★★★★
Screened at the 2026 Manchester Film Festival on March 20th. Releasing Late 2026 / Nico Mirrallegro, Lloyd Eyre-Morgan, Shiobhan Finneran, Faye McKeever, Laura Aikman/ Dir: Lloyd Eyre-Morgan, Neil Ely / Punk Spirit Films / TBC
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