Swipe 2020

James, an introverted freshman, shares a dorm with Lance, a wealthy student who’s sharp with girls and prefers casual hookups over anything serious. In their basic programming class, James stands out as the strongest coder, which catches Lance’s eye when he pitches a bigger idea: do minimal work so others don’t have to, and let James handle the heavy lifting.

When Lance and his friends decide to build an app for hookups, he learns that James has been coding since he was a kid. He hires James to develop Jungle, a campus-wide platform designed to match people for no-strings-attached encounters. The catch is stark: no numbers, no names exchanged—just guaranteed one-night stands. In exchange for their collaboration, Lance promises to pay for James to transfer to an Ivy League school.

James takes over the dorm room and dives into Jungle, burning the midnight oil and pouring his skill into the project. The app’s premise is simple yet provocative: connect people physically with no commitment, offering a private, nameless experience that avoids real-world consequences. As James pours his energy into Jungle, he rationalizes that this could open doors for his future, even as the line between innovation and ethics blurs.

To avoid being blamed for Jungle’s creation, James asks Lance to claim the project as his own. A sympathetic computer science professor excuses James from class duties, suggesting that he’s constantly coding somewhere. The wedge between intention and impact begins to widen.

Christmas break brings the harshest revelations. James witnesses the real-life fallout in his own family. His divorced father arrives with a very young date he found on Jungle, while his mother is persuaded by friends to try it herself. James follows her as she meets new people, a quiet, growing remorse weighing on him for the role he played in enabling this culture of casual, anonymous encounters.

The next day, James confronts a different facet of Jungle’s reach: he tries to survey his grandparents and their peers about their past sexual and relationship experiences. When he discovers his mom is back on Jungle, he acts quickly to shut down Jungle and similar apps to halt the spread of this behavior. Lance and his crew don’t take the shutdown lightly; they pressure James to bring the app back online.

Upon returning to campus, James seeks refuge in Hannah’s sorority house, hoping to dodge Lance and his friends. The sisters offer him safety, but only if he creates a relationship-focused app for them. He briefly returns to his dorm, where Lance and his companions intercept him, coercing him to stay and rekindle their project. In a bid to escape, James uses a calming tea to buy himself time and slips back to the sorority.

The tension escalates when Lance leaks James’s involvement to the press, forcing Hannah to confront the situation. James finally confesses that his work on Jungle stemmed from a wish to connect with her, though she never downloaded the app—making the project feel incomplete to him. In a quiet moment of honesty, he urges everyone to step away from all the apps and seek real connections. As the truth comes out, James also gathers the courage to admit his feelings for Hannah, and they share a restrained, hopeful kiss.

Ultimately, the story threads together ambition, responsibility, and the temptation of easy connections in a tech-driven world. It presents a portrait of college life where invention tests ethics, and where a man’s desire for authentic connection clashes with the lure of scalable, anonymous interaction. Through James’s journey, the film invites viewers to consider how technology shapes intimate relationships and the cost of choosing shortcuts over honest dialogue.