UNFRIENDED (2015)

Genre: Thriller
Director: Levan Gabriadze
Cast: Shelley Hennig, Moses Jacob Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, Courtney Halverson, Heather Sossaman
Runtime: 1 hr 23 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: http://www.unfriended-movie.com/

Opening Day: 30 April 2015

Synopsis: Ushering in a new era of horror, Universal Pictures’ Unfriended unfolds over a teenager’s computer screen as she and her friends are stalked by an unseen figure who seeks vengeance for a shaming video that led a vicious bully to kill herself a year earlier.

Movie Review:

Despite the ubiquity of cameras and camera devices, the found footage genre has lost its relevance especially in recent years, so much so that what once used to be a technique is now often regarded as no more than a gimmick. It is therefore with some wariness that we approached the latest found-footage chiller ‘Unfriended’, which plays out almost entirely from the MacBook screen of one of its characters. And yet it won’t be because of lowered expectations that we were frankly quite taken with this low-budget horror, a terrifying cautionary tale for the zeitgeist that will make you think twice about posting some nasty comment on anyone’s social media page.

At the centre of this Timur Bekmambetov-produced feature is a ho-hum revenge plot, which revolves around six teenagers haunted by a malevolent spirit reaching beyond the grave to exact sweet vengeance against those who were responsible for her death. But it isn’t the story itself that is particularly interesting; rather, the ingenuity lies in the execution, which unfolds in real time over the course of a single evening. Chosen as the chief protagonist and audience surrogate is Blaire (Shelley Hennig), who at the start is looking at a video on LiveLeak captured from a cellphone of her childhood friend cum high-school mate Laura Barns commit suicide. In the same breath, we also get to see the opening of the Youtube video entitled ‘Laura Barns Kill Urself’, and it is pretty clear from the title alone that it was what drove her to kill herself.

As scripted by one of Bekmambetov’s former employees, Nelson Greaves, Blaire’s evening begins innocuously enough with some flirting with boyfriend Mitch (Moses Storm), before being joined online on Skype with their mutual friends Jess (Renee Olstead), Ken (Jacob Wysocki) and Adam (Will Peltz). Someone else happens to be in the same chat group, a mysterious anonymous avatar whose online identity Blaire later on discovers matches that of Laura. Just as ominously, both Blaire and Mitch receive Facebook messages from Laura Barns’ account, confirming that it was not some fluke that someone by that same name happens to be in their Skype group. And just to verify it isn’t one of them playing a prank, they add a sixth member, Val (Courtney Halverson), into the group.

Just as well actually – Val turns out to be the one who started a forum thread taunting Laura to end her own life. She is also the first to be killed by Laura in an apparent suicide, convincing the group that whoever is behind the avatar is not to be messed with. Suspecting it to be Trojan, Ken tries to pull a fast one by getting the rest to install a software to remove any bug on their computers, but ends up being the next to meet his end in gruesome fashion. Without giving too much away, the rest don’t get it any easier, as they are forced to play a game of ‘Never Have I Ever’ and manipulated to reveal each other – as well as their own – secrets, lies and personal betrayals.

Across multiple windows and multiple open applications, Russian director Levan Gabriadze digs deeper into the psyche of today’s youth to portray their insecurities, expose their hypocrisies and contemplate their herd-driven behaviour. Not only does it shed light on the consequences of what may seem like harmless trolling at the start, it fiendishly confronts the nature of truth and responsibility in the digital realm – and we dare say it does so that successfully that it will make you squirm in your seat, especially because you might find yourself guilty of some of the sins in real life that the characters are forced to atone for.

Gabriadze’s success is also in how he authentically creates the 21^st-century social media experience in the way that teens switch from Youtube to Spotify to Gmail with perfect dexterity or move effortlessly from group chats on Skype to individual messaging on iMessage. While the format he has chosen limits his ability to express what his characters feel, Gabriadze uses Blaire’s self-editing before she hits the ‘send’ or ‘enter’ button to give us a sense of her emotions as she faces down a technological entity who seems to know it all. There is even some pixilation added in for good measure, just so to make the footage look even more realistic.

Count this as the ‘Ringu’ for the Facebook generation, for ‘Unfriended’ deserves to be regarded as a similar cultural touchstone. This won’t be the first movie to perpetuate evil through computer mediation, but Gabriadze’s film stands out because it so accurately captures the anxieties and horrors of our increasingly interconnected social communities. It is also an excellent use of the found footage format, which itself is in need of a jolt equivalent to that which ‘Paranormal Activity’ gave it a decade ago. And seeing as how this is better educational material than any ‘Safer Internet Day’ campaign about the dangers of cyber-bullying, there is no doubt that it is an efficiently effective high-concept horror, one that so deftly taps into its audience’s real fears to deliver some truly spine-chilling moments. 

Movie Rating:

(If the fact that it will probably make you lay off cyber-bullying more so than any official campaign would is anything to go by, you can bet this found footage horror for the social media generation is spine-chillingly effective)

Review by Gabriel Chong