Unfriended

9th May 2015 21:15 Leigh

Taking the found footage style horror of recent years and giving it a well needed update.

Since Blair Witch took the box office by storm with little production budget and massive returns, and then Paranormal Activity did the same a few years later the found footage genre has become very samey.  Unfriended takes the same premise, but instead of being found footage, it is live footage taken directly from the laptop screen of the main character.  The whole film is a laptop screen flipping between different applications such as Skype, Spotify, Google, Instant Messenger and even Chat Roulette.  This may seem a little dull, but of a age when computers run our lives, it just fits really well.

I often find myself flipping between multiple applications, even whilst writing this review, I have Spotify open, with Whatsapp on my phone chatting to my wife, this is what life is now.

The film opens with footage form YouTube of a high school student Laura Barns, who had be pushed to the limit with CyberBullying, and ultimately shot herself.  This is all the back story you need to start with. Then Skype kicks in and group chat begins, but who is the anonymous person in the chat group?  As things progress, the intent of the mysterious intruder become more evident.  Is it the ghost of Laura Barns seeking vengeance or is one of the group playing games?

Unfriended is not a horror film, although there are moments of horrific incidents.  The "Paranormal Activity£ bass growl does appear a few times which took me out of the tension as you know it is building to something instead of you just being shocked, but the use of camera glitches, buffering times, load errors, refreshing screens and not being about to "un-friend" someone added nice little cyber horror cliche's

there are a couple of real stand out moment that will be copied in future "found footage" films.  The printout section for me was brilliant, very tense.  Also a scene in which the group is unsure if a screen is frozen, so they ring the mobile and it starts to vibrate and move on the "frozen" camera was unnerving

When the film ended, I turned to Dave (he had come with me to watch the film, obviously) and we both said, "I enjoyed that!", when Dave got home he uninstalled skype and covered the camera on his laptop.

Orignally called Cybernatural, which I am glad they changed, Unfriended is a great little genre based film that does the job right.  Very entertaining, not too long, but based on this there will be 100's of spin offs and sequels to follow.  So watch it now and then wait for Skypernatural, The Twitter Zone or Spotifright, because they are on the way!