Unfriended
In Unfriended,
it has been one year since the horrible suicide of teenager Laura
Barnes (Heather Sossaman). On the evening of the anniversary, Blaire
(Shelley Hennig) and her pals are spending the night together on Skype,
when a strange, anonymous figure joins the conversation.
This troublemaker seems to have hacked into Laura’s old
accounts, and wants to play some games to reveal the dirty little
secrets each kid has been trying to hide, especially their role in the
embarrassing video posted on YouTube that led to Laura being ridiculed
and cyberbullied.
Is anyone innocent?
Can anyone escape?
Who is this stranger?
Unfriended
might sound like a lame attempt to appropriate modern technology to
desperately appeal to younger people, but director Levan Gabriadze and
writer Nelson Greaves show they can make the movie more than a cheap
stunt. They meld modern technology with traditional suspense and
thrills to make this a movie worth checking out, even if no one will
ever mistake you for a millennial.
Some of Unfriended
might sound gimmicky as the entire movie plays out as if we are
watching Blaire’s computer screen. In a twist on the found
footage genre, we see the different windows she opens, the searches she
conducts, the web pages she reads and more in a first person
perspective.
Gabriadze skillfully uses this canvass to give the audience a great
deal of visual stimulation, but, also, some intellectual and emotional
stimulation as well as we are invited to see the snarky comments being
sent to the gang, find ourselves teased with half played videos to make
us wonder what comes next, and hear the classic bumps in the middle of
the
night as we fear what is making noise behind a character or notice
movements in the dark. Even how Blaire edits the responses she types to
different characters gives us a whole new way to understand what is
happening in her mind.
Greaves also adds another layer reminiscent of classic horror movies.
Despite the teens’ constant protestations that they are,
“good people,” every twist and turn kind of makes
you wonder if these kids are getting some sort of comeuppance or paying
for a sin they have committed.
Granted, each one might be paying too high of a price, but it
wouldn’t be a horror movie if the penalty fit the crime. This
added question of ethics and morality is just the right spice of
complexity to make Unfriended better than the average horror movie
about teens in peril.
Unfriended
could be more intense. Gabriadze needs to provide a few more shocks and
scares, but the cast keeps the intensity level up as we watch each
individual reaction and the changing looks on their faces as things get
real.
Unfriended
is rated R for violent content,
pervasive language, some sexuality, and drug and alcohol use - all
involving teens.
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