K-SCORE: 80
Director: Leo Gabriadze
Writer: Nelson Greaves
Starring: Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, Courtney Halverson, Heather Sossaman
Spoiler Level: Moderate to Major
See? This is why I don’t have a Facebook page!
Unfriended has some issues. The premise is just fine. Six teenager are having a group Skype videochat when they’re cyber-attacked by a mysterious seventh person, who they can’t get rid of and can’t hang up on. What starts as various attempts to uncover and shake off the tormentor, evolves into the forced unfolding of the details behind a cyberbullying incident and subsequent suicide of one of their former classmates. Oh, and some violent deaths. There’s that too.
“ Unfriended, surprisingly, does a good job of making the viewer feel like they’re watching an actual chat between a bunch of high school friends. However, under almost all circumstances, you don’t want to watch a video chat between a bunch of high school friends.”
The first obstacle with Unfriended is what prevented me from checking it out between its release and earlier today, and that is simply that it’s tough to care about the problems of teenagers. Now, most films that more or less realistically portray teenage characters are going to have this issue. Unfriended, surprisingly, does a good job of making the viewer feel like they’re watching an actual chat between a bunch of high school friends. However, under almost all circumstances, you don’t want to watch a video chat between a bunch of high school friends. Thankfully they’re dying left and right, but before those wonderful moments you’re cringing at the kinds of things they’re saying to each other and the kinds of issues that lead to their arguments. It’s not really a strike against the work of the director and writer though, because, hey, this is their selected content. And maybe a bunch of adolescents went to the theaters and loved this film. I don’t know. I’m not one of them and even when I was one of them, I was at home watching Memento, LA Confidential, and Star Wars for the thirtieth time. There is a prerequisite to being unfriended.
“despite constantly claiming they’re going to hang up on this video chat going to hell, fail to actually do so”
What is on the shoulders of the creators is the issue that these characters, despite constantly claiming they’re going to hang up on this video chat going to hell, fail to actually do so, and at no point is that reasonable. Yes, the malicious cyber-infused force can prevent emails from being forwarded, make force-quitting windows impossible, print things to your office printer, play specific songs on Spotify without any inputs, send messages to anyone and from anyone, with access to videos and pictures that exploit every dirty secret of every character, but the force doesn’t really display an aptitude for restricting movement. Basically after the first girl died, I would have said to myself, “Maybe I should just leave my laptop on my nightstand and go talk to my parents and the police.” Certainly after the second guy died really graphically in front of his webcam, I would have thought, “It can’t possibly be safer to stay on this Skype call. I should go, knock on a neighbor’s house, stay in their kitchen eating a snack until some CSI guys figure out what happened to Ken.” And even if I convinced myself from the time the call started to the time people started dying that ghosts are real, this one is after me, and it’s going to make good on its threats, surely when it demonstrated a desire to kill everyone, one at a time, I wouldn’t have hung around for my turn. Hey, maybe when you’re a teenager in Fresno, California, your mind works differently. Your priorities are a little goofy. You can care a lot about relationship infidelity and rumors circulating about eating disorders even after you’ve seen two of your classmates turn their insides out. I don’t know. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
“seen exclusively through the lens of a laptop with Skype calls, YouTube channels and videos, gmail messages, Google searches... brilliant”
The reason I’ll do so is because the form of this film is so cool! And the form matches the content perfectly. There is a plausible story in the background regarding a teenage suicide after an incredibly embarrassing leaked party video and the subsequent abusive comments made by classmates. To make that the inciting incident for a horror film is interesting enough, but then for the slashy scary killing to be seen exclusively through the lens of a laptop with Skype calls, YouTube channels and videos, gmail messages, Google searches, etc. is brilliant. Watching a character type a message instead of just reading a message that has been typed gives you unique insight into their thoughts that then occasionally get filtered. Messages get deleted unsent. It’s very clever. I’ve seen the format before, but it’s not too common. The great thing about it in this case is the matching of the cyberbullying with the cyberattacking, and putting it all in the realm of real accessible programs that modern teenagers are genuinely masterful at using to spread gossip and vitriol amongst themselves. In today’s world, communication is that easy. If you want to record a moment in life, start a rumor, showcase something embarrassing, make an anonymous threat, post a nasty comment for all the world to see, pick on someone who’s demonstrated weakness, obfuscate your own problems by highlighting someone else's, belittle and berate people you don’t like within your social circle, it’s never been easier to do so. Such technological power is awesome and requires responsibility. Young people haven’t fully developed that responsibility, and some never will. And that’s why it’s so fun seeing these tools used against these kids that have done some messed up things to each other, why it’s fun having the stakes raised on their pettiness while at the same time revealing the depth of their cruelty. I don’t mind at all that the film encourages you to dislike Blaire, Val, Jess, Adam, Mitch, and Ken. In fact, I liked them more and more as time went on because as their secrets are revealed, so too are their vulnerabilities, which gives their characters depth. It’s almost tragic that they can’t escape their demises even after they finally are forced to come to grips with that which they’ve done wrong. How many eighteen-year-olds have you met that are just brimming with such a stupid amount of confidence that you quietly can’t wait until life gut-checks them into the boards? Enough. And Unfriended is compelling in the cast it creates, the story behind them, and the means with which it smashes them together. At no point was I bored, and I’d even watch a sequel or two, or a few other films in the same vein. Though I hope for the next one they all drop Time Warner Cable because I'm tired of the lag. I'm willing to suspend disbelief enough to think these panicking teens ran fiber optic cables into their houses and custom built PCs with an Intel 18-core Xeon E5 processor and a Geforce GTX 1080 graphics card that boasts a 10 gig per second memory speed and 8GB frame buffer. You know, so the screen doesn't look like it's covered in ants when Jess shoves a curling iron down her own throat.
It could have been much better had they had more consistent paranormal powers for the Laura Barns ghost character. It could have been even better than that if there was no paranormal entity, but rather one of the characters was masterfully manipulating their computers and tricking them into their grisly ends. And it could have been even better than that had Ken been playing Eve Online the whole time. Come on? That’s a geeky multitasker. He can’t take time out of his galactic conquest just to talk to his friends on some random night in April. But you know, even as is this is better than 90% of horror films I’ve seen in the last decade, and there’s an important message at its heart: Don’t use Facebook! Like, if I had a Facebook, what’s to stop me from saying, “I wonder what that girl I had a crush on in math class eleven years ago is doing this Labor Day,” and then spending hours flipping through pictures, trying to see where she lives and who she’s dating, and if that trip to Scotland she had planned lived up to the hype and then hating myself so much that I tinker with my protein shake drink maker until I can hit the ‘pulse’ button without the cup on top and thereby use the rotary saw to turn my jugular into chorizo? Although I’m not Spanish, so I guess it’d just be sausage.