Matt Goudreau
Since the “Found-Footage” format of horror films has been sucked dry in recent years, I’ve been heavily anticipating the release of Unfriended. The premise, albeit rather gimmicky, is one that could present a unique spin on films like Paranormal Activity. Everything that occurs in the film is restricted to real-time on a single computer. There’s more than one character thanks to the wonders of social media, but in there lies the problem. It’s got a great wind-up; six Skype connected teenagers are stalked online by a supernatural entity until one remains. It’s the prototypical teen slasher film with millennial technology added on top. Sadly, the screenwriters failed to create characters or a story worth as much investment as the conceit warrants.
Through a clever opening involving a pixellated Universal introduction, Unfriended embraces the conceit head on. In the opening scene, we see high school student Laura Barnes (Heather Sossaman) commit suicide after an embarrassing video of her drunken antics at a party went viral. A year later, her friend Blaire (Shelley Hennig) is shown having a sensual online chat with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm). Their conversation is soon interrupted by their clique of friends who meet all the horror stereotypes. We have the nerd, the best friend, the pompous princess, and the slightly less pompous friend. Also joining them is an undisclosed user who somehow utilizes Laura’s accounts to communicate. The gang soon realizes that this is far from a practical joke: it’s a matter of life and death.
In many ways, Unfriended feels like a spiritual successor to The Blair Witch Project. Technology has shifted from hand-held cameras and recorders to all in one computer bases. I admire the way this film does not hide from its conceit. It embraces it to the fullest. The screen is not limited to Skype on its own, which would be really tedious. We see Blaire type and re-type various messages, watch videos, and play around on her music database. There is some suspense created in the way technological faults are utilized like sound cutting on and off as well as distorted videos. It runs under 90 minutes so I never experienced any sort of fatigue watching the film.
Unfriended is a horror film on the most basic level. Given the absence of humor, I assume the filmmakers sought to make it as scary as possible. As a “scary” film, I think Unfriended falls short in that regard. By creating a film set entirely in one place over real-time, the buildup of suspense depends heavily on the technology itself. There are extended sequences of loading screens, waiting for responses to typed messages, downloading files, etc. I think the success of whether or not this film functions as being scary depends heavily on your technological knowledge. It serves as a commentary on not only the dangers of cyberbullying and social media, but on millennial sensibilities as well. If you’re not up to speed on either of these, there isn’t much here to appeal to you.
As someone who falls in the target demographic, I think the movie fails at being an effective horror film. All the characters are detestable. Not only do all of them have a hand in Laura’s death, but each states in one way or another “she had it coming.” If I cannot find someone to root for, then watching them die holds no purpose outside of pure sadism. I would have rooted for the killer, but it’s unclear as to what it is exactly. I don’t need an expository diatribe i.e. a Christopher Nolan film, but some kind of explanation would have made it a lot more fascinating to watch.
Unlike Friday the 13th for instance, there’s an attempt in Unfriended to make an underlying statement on the harm technology can cause. You can’t have your cake and it eat it too with a slasher film. Either make us care for the characters or make them completely detestable for the sole reason of exploitive murders. The kills themselves are rather unimaginative. They’re frequently distorted by camera cut offs and cheap jump scares which always get on my nerves. One thing I can complement Unfriended on compared to something like Friday the 13th is the quality of the acting. As broad as these characters are, all the actors sell the idea that they’re potentially the next to go.
Once it turns into a claustrophobic bottle film, Unfriended actually succeeds at being suspenseful. They even found a way to mix in some effective humor via the killer’s manipulation of the music played during a game of “Never Have I Ever.” The humor works there, but there’s also some unintentional hilarity to be found in the overly melodramatic circumstances surrounding the character interactions during the game. Heck, there’s a scene involving a blender that made me laugh rather loudly in the theater. Unfortunately, the suspense is undermined by a heavily rushed and sadly anticlimactic finale.
Unfriended is a tough movie for me to recommend. Like I said, it depends a lot on how much you know about social media. If you hate watching detestable protagonists, then this movie isn’t for you either. With that said, I found myself admiring Unfriended much more than I liked it. It effectively utilizes its premise to the fullest, but it’s at the expense of making the film work as a horror film to me. I will say that its success does stem from the effective usage of the new spin on “Found-Footage.” It suffers from lackluster dialogue and plotting like the majority of most modern horror films, but I give it points for trying something different.
Review – ‘Unfriended’ (2015)
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