Unfriended

Synopsis: A year after a girl killed herself due to a cyberbullying incident, a group of friends on a Skype chat find themselves terrorised by an unknown visitor.

Unfriended is a hoot. A horror film for millennials, it’s a nice variation on the “found footage” horror genre that kicked off so long ago with The Blair Witch Project. Here, we have a bunch of disposable teens getting picked off in real time as they get trapped in a Skype chat that manages to be more terrifying that an office teleconference. I can’t remember any of the names of the characters, except I think the main girl’s name is Blair (aside from the reference to the above-mentioned benchmark, one of the important tropes of the genre is that the main protagonist’s name has to be gender neutral - Laurie, Ash, Sydney, etc, etc.)  Anyhow, we start with her talking to her boyfriend and uncomfortably they move towards cybersex before being interrupted by a bunch of friends joining their video call. And then the weird stuff starts happening, and they discover they’ve been targeted by a vengeful dead girl.

This all plays out on Blair’s computer screen, as she iMessages her boyfriend, Skypes her friends, checks Facebook and YouTube and tries Chatroulette to call for help. Instagram makes an appearance too. It’s a really neat conceit, and uses the lagginess and distortion of video chat to creepy effect, with the different layers of communication building upon each other to build tension. There’s a surprising amount of character revelation to be found in someone typing a response, deleting it and writing something different. And typing private messages to someone else in a group chat proves equally revealing. As the tension ratchets up, the kids fall upon each other and all kinds of dark secrets get revealed. If you didn’t like these kids to begin with, they’re less likeable by the end. There’re some great shock moments as well, with distorted video suddenly jumping into great shock moments. The deaths are violent, bloody affairs here.

Unfriended is a ghost/revenge story for the modern age. It’s more evolutionary than revolutionary, but it’s a lot of fun, confidently executed, and Gen Y kids should get a real kick out of it.

 

 

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