Movie Waffle | Unfriended (2014) - Internet Culture With Some Horror On the Side

Unfriended (2014) directed by Levan Gabriadze --

Watching other people use a desktop has never been a more painful experience.


I've never taken an interest in these types of "computer screen" movies—where the audience is just watching someone's monitor as they slowly inch their cursor around the screen with a touchpad like a prehistoric caveman. I half expected an "Unregistered Hypercam 2" watermark on the top left. Even so, I do think it is an interesting approach to explore; one that seems very much like a logical extension of the "Paranormal Activity" security cam trend. Not a big surprise considering that Blumhouse produced both this franchise and that one.


Unfriended follows a group of friends that previously bullied a young highschool girl into committing suicide. On the anniversary of her death, the group decide it's in great taste to have a Skype chat about how said girl sucked.


The child-like action of going "Look mom, I know that one!" gave me a strangely high amount of enjoyment. Twitter tabs. Pinterest bookmarks. 2010's FB and Youtube. Skype though. Why? They are even connected via their gmail account. Google Hangouts guys: it's 2014. Also you expect me to believe that the protagonist of this little romp doesn't know what a "troll" is? Dude, she has a BitTorrent window open for downloading illegal music; don't bs me like that, director.


The actual movie (I need to fit an actual review in here somewhere) descends very quickly into hilarity town in no small part due to its format. The crazy mood swings that characters have to go through to convey any sort of development. The awkward, edited silence in the video meeting as the main character tabs out to answer Facebook messages, and the way the voices fade back in as she gets ready to hit "Send" to not overload the audience with information. The character deaths that look straight out of a "try not to laugh" video playlist. 


I really enjoyed this movie. Not really for the horror aspect. That, honestly, was a disappointment. But I look forward to what else this format has up its sleeve.

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