Cyberbullying isn’t something any of us would like to admit to, however it’s something unfortunately many of us have been drawn to at one time or another. The anonymity of it all coupled with the fact you probably won’t ever meet the person in real life makes it all too easy to mock them – or even tell them to kill themselves.
Walking out of Unfriended, the new cyber horror from newcomer director Levan Gabriadze, you may find yourself completely dismissive of the characters’ despicable actions and laughing the whole thing off (depending on your tolerance of cheap jump scares), however some time later you may also find an uncomfortable niggling in the pit of your stomach as cold reality starts to settle in: our actions do have consequences, even the seemingly harmless ones. Damn.
As well as occurring in real time, Unfriended takes place in more or less entirely on the laptop screen of teenage girl named Blaire who, while on a Skype chat with her friends, finds that an unknown presence has somehow been added into the group. First dismissed as a “glitch”, the presence turns out to be someone (or something) using the account of their dead friend Laura, who killed herself after being continuously harassed online when an embarrassing video of her was uploaded to Facebook. The someone then starts a twisted game of manipulation and torture within the group as dark secrets are slowly revealed.
While the film’s themes are nothing new or revolutionary – cyberbullying is wrong, guys! – the concept is a remarkably fresh take on the simpering found-footage genre. Not only does its relevance serve as the perfect marketing ploy to the film’s target audience, but it also manages to keep everything flowing and natural. Instead of painfully forced dialogue, for example, plot exposition is given through Blaire looking up news stories on Google, or shown through messages she nearly sends then decides not to at the last moment. The latter in particular is one of the many subtleties the film has that will undoubtedly resonate with millennials who grew up with the internet and now can’t imagine life without it; we understand everything that’s happening onscreen and can relate to it so well where older generations who aren’t as used to social media and online chatting probably wouldn’t; what’s happening to these teenagers therefore has a very real underlying horror to it that probably won’t even raise a hair on a 40-year-old. “Just log off,” always seems to be their oh-so-brilliant advice, as well as a repeated criticism of the film. Well, aside from the fact that the kids are told they will literally be killed if they turn off their computers, anyone who’s ever been cyberbullied knows that logging off and putting the computer away is a very hard thing to do it. The internet is an addiction, and no matter what the situation there’s always a small nagging part of us that just has to see what happens next.
That being said, if the thought of yet another slasher movie where a bunch of white teenagers cry for 80% of the film and get picked off one by one doesn’t sound appealing, this probably won’t be for you. The characters – aside from them being just plain awful people – are annoying and largely underdeveloped, and the jump scares are so predictable that hardly any of them have any actual affect. The real chills actually come from the periods of extended silence before the jump scares; it’s the moments where your imagination takes over as the webcam fails to see the horror that one of them is seeing, for example, that really register the most. Gabriadze does a wonderful job at creating the deeply unsettling and suspenseful atmosphere that the characters are no doubt feeling themselves, utilising the simplest of tools like a distorted Skype call to make the viewer feel ever so slightly more on edge. There’s even some dark humour (some of which involves a particularly sadistic game of “Never have I ever”) and solid acting thrown in to boot.
Following last year’s The Babadook and this year’s It Follows, low-budget horrors seem to be on one hell of a roll. Though it certainly runs the risk of feeling outdated in a few years time, Unfriended is a wonderfully creepy and interesting twist on the found-footage genre that will no doubt find its way to becoming a must-watch at every sleepover. Hell, it might even teach kids a thing or two about bullying as well.
Words by Samantha King