Unfriended has a pretty unique hook. The story is mainly told on the computer desktop of Blaire (Shelley Hennig). The film takes place a year after a friend of hers, Laura Barns, committed suicide following the posting of a humiliating video. She and her friends are just trying to chat on Skype, when they all start getting messages from Laura's inactive accounts. At first they think they're being hacked, but as things get violent, they quickly realize there is something otherworldly at play.
At its core, Unfriended is still just another typical horror movie featuring a group of unlikable teenagers all turning on each other when they could be working together to save their own lives. The film, like so many other, becomes about waiting for people to get their turn to die, rather than being about rooting for the protagonists to break out of their horrific predicament. There just isn't really anything they can do to save themselves, or at least, that idea just isn't communicated.
Given that, there is clear merit to the presentation. The film finds really clever ways to make staring at a desktop more interesting than it sounds. It mines real tension from mundane icons and the odd notification. The villain of the piece is represented mainly by the default Skype user icon, and one of the film's most impressive achievements is turning that blank piece of design into something that feels weirdly ominous. When it starts taking up the screen, it becomes an oppressive reminder of the actual danger that the characters are in.
The film cheats with the presentation every now and then, but it mostly keeps things fairly realistic. People talk over each other, while messaging in secret, and various notifications pile on to that mess of stimuli. It mainly uses real Internet sites like Facebook, Google and YouTube, and builds a real sense of verisimilitude that lends the horror some measure of potency. The film also gets a lot out of the eerie that can happen with streaming video, with glitches like video artifacting and ghosting used to pretty great effect.
It's just too bad that the plotting isn't nearly as inventive. The film tends to overplay its hand with the deaths, pretty much foreshadowing the means of every execution. As a whole it plays things pretty broadly, which is an approach that is easily reflected in the acting of the young cast. There is no nuance to any of these performances, the actors all hitting their assigned type pretty hard. The movie only really calls for the actors to yell at each other angrily, the story leaving little room for anything more complex.
But Unfriended remains a worthy curiosity. We get a lot of horror movies here, and they all pretty much look alike. This is a genre of film that has over the years attracted the most unimaginative filmmakers, those who simply want to do what has been done before. At the very least, Unfriended has its presentation, which feels fully thought out and developed. The film really capitalizes on the weirdness that can emerge from the computer, the unexpected moments that are surprisingly unnerving. There are deaths here, sure, but the real attraction is a blank icon standing in for all of our fears.
My Rating:
