Unfriended
Taking place almost entirely in real time on the computer screen of a teenager named Blaire (Shelley Hennig), Unfriended puts us right in the middle of a group Skype chat on the anniversary of the death of the group’s friend Laura (Heather Sossaman) – who killed herself after being relentlessly bullied online. It quickly becomes clear that someone else hasn’t forgotten this, as an anonymous presence suddenly appears within their chat and apparently can’t be deleted. Though initially dismissed as a “glitch”, the unknown presence soon starts a terrifying game of life-or-death with the group that inevitably leads to the revelation of several dark secrets.
Unfriended isn’t a film that’s easy to defend – the script can be laughable, the scares are often tired and predictable and the characters are so nasty and annoying that it’s as if the film doesn’t even want us to root for them; in retrospect, this probably would have worked better as a short rather than a whole feature. Yet when the film does work it does so on a remarkably chilling level; some of the scariest moments come not from the jump scares, but from the quieter moments before them. Yes, at its core it’s a teen slasher flick made specifically for a teen audience, but its anti- bullying message is one that would only truly resonate with that age bracket anyway. Older audiences likely won’t understand the addiction that comes with being online, nor the horror that unavoidably comes from being a teenager online.
Unfriended is available to buy from 7th September 2015* | Words: SK | Read the full review here.