In an age where feature length documentary is hugely successful, where the craft is becoming more refined and documentary filmmakers are becoming more recognised than ever before, it now takes an incredible story to break through in the genre and capture the audience. Luckily David Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s Tickled is exactly that – a once in a lifetime story that Farrier and Reeve stumbled upon, followed up and took the distance, even when all the odds seemed against them.
Farrier, a journalist from New Zealand happened upon a website one day, which promised riches to young athletic men across the world if they take part in endurance tickling competitions. Having watched some of these seemingly ridiculous videos where young men wearing sports kit are often tied down and tickled by other, equally sporty, young men, Farrier wanted to find out more about the competitions. He links these back to a company called Jane O’Brien Media, whom he reaches out to and instead of receiving a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about providing a comment for his article, Farrier receives a barrage of hateful and homophobic threats and taunts. The messages try to make the point that this is a strictly heterosexual activity and they do not want to be aligned in anyway with a homosexual journalist – ironic considering how homoerotic these videos actually are.
From this point onwards, Farrier along with Reeve begin to dig deeper around Jane O’Brien Media and why they were so angry to begin with. Soon legal threats start to come in, promising to ruin the pair but this doesn’t stop them and here is where Tickled really begins. They discover stories about the tickling fetish and whilst some are happy to come out and talk about it, those connected to Jane O’Brien Media stay quiet, scared that they would be bullied and harassed by the company who has videos of them being tickled. They learn these videos were placed online without the participants knowledge, often giving their personal details away as a means of keeping them quiet. The story grows wider, all the way back to the early 90s – David D’Amato was arrested for email bombings whilst he was pretending to be a woman online who wanted these recordings for personal reasons.
Farrier and Reeve travel across the USA to try and figure out what is going on and potentially how David’s story 
may be connected to Jane O’Brien Media but also to learn more about the fetish and the way this world is represented online.
The film reveals itself like a mystery, as the directors unveil each layer of the story, the audience are pulled in further and more questions come to mind. Tickled is an incredible piece of journalistic filmmaking, it never has a dull moment and it carries the audience through the story succulently and eloquently – a total credit to the duo. At times funny, whilst at others truly scary, Tickled is a prime example of the incredible documentary filmmaking skill that is out there today.
