High school senior Venus "Vee" Delmonico longs to leave
Staten Island for college, but is reluctant to tell her single mother because they continue to mourn the recent death of Vee's older brother and the price of college. Her friend Sydney is popular on
Nerve, an online reality game in which users either enlist as "players" or pay to watch as "watchers". Players accept dares given by the watchers in order to receive money and a spot in the final. After Sydney chastises Vee's unadventurous nature, Vee decides to sign up as a player on
Nerve. Her first dare is to kiss a random stranger. At a diner, she kisses Ian, who dances and sings to Vee, revealing he is another player on a dare. The watchers dare Ian to take Vee to
Manhattan, and together, they travel to Manhattan. After their first dare of trying on expensive clothes, the fear of her mom catching her in the city gets to her and she decides it's time to go back to Staten Island. However, with the encouragement of Ian to step out of her comfort zone, and the next dare's cash prize, Vee continues to play the game. Thus, together they complete several dares: Vee gets a tattoo, and Ian drives his motorcycle at 60 mph blindfolded. This, as well as Vee and Ian's chemistry, allows them to become two of the top players. Jealous of Vee's popularity on
Nerve, Sydney accepts a dare at a party to cross a ladder between two buildings, but she bails during the dare and is eliminated from
Nerve. Vee arrives at the party and catches Sydney making out with J.P, a boy Vee has a crush on. As they argue, Vee discovers from her hacker friend Tommy that Ian was dared into bringing Vee to the party and incite an argument between her and Sydney. Vee receives a dare to complete Sydney's dare of crossing the ladder between the two buildings, which she completes. Realizing how dangerous
Nerve is, Vee attempts to report the game to the police but is disbelieved. As a result, all of the money in her and her mother's joint bank account is removed.
Nerve player Ty knocks Vee out in order to keep her in the game. Vee wakes up in a
shipping container, where she finds Ian, who confesses that he and Ty were players whose friend was killed in a dare in Seattle. When they tried to alert the authorities, their families' jobs, bank accounts, and identities were compromised. Vee has joined them in the secret third category of the game: "prisoners". If a prisoner can reach and win the day's final round, they regain everything. Tommy and Sydney work with Tommy's hacker friends to try and disable
Nerve by altering the game's online code. They hope to prevent Vee from playing the game, but since all of the watchers' phones and profiles act as a
distributed server, they cannot completely disable
Nerve. Vee wins a spot in the final of
Nerve, and Ian completes a dare to also gain a spot in the final, which takes place at
Battery Weed. At the final, Vee and Ian are dared to shoot each other with guns, which they both refuse to do. Ty then takes Ian's place in the final and proposes a vote on whether or not he should shoot Vee. The watchers vote yes by a majority, to which Ty shoots Vee, who seemingly dies in Ian's arms. Tommy and his hackers are able to modify
Nerves source code to decrypt the watchers' usernames into their real names and send them a message: "You are an
accessory to murder." The panicked watchers log out of the game, closing all the servers and ending
Nerve. Despondent over Vee's apparent death, Ian aims his gun at Ty, but Vee stops him, revealing that she and Ty staged her murder to scare the watchers into shutting down their profiles on
Nerve and ending it permanently. Tommy and his hackers manage to restore the money to all of the players. As Vee and Ian watch the sunrise, he reveals his true name to be Sam. A few months later, Vee and Sydney have reconciled, while Vee and Sam are a couple. Vee is attending the
California Institute of the Arts and asks Sam to come and see her in person. == Cast ==