Unfriended appears to be the type of movie that you hear about or watch the trailer for and immediately have to begin mocking. "Oh wouldja look what Hollywood has done now? They're making a "there's a ghost in the internet" movie, oh how stupid." That's totally fair. It's fair to kind of hear about Unfriended and think "That sounds like a stupid movie" but I hope you like being wrong, because you are wrong because it's the opposite of stupid (i.e. "smart").
It's not often these days that you watch a movie and genuinely get to ask, "How did they do that?" I can remember growing up and watching specials on TV that promised to bring the viewer behind the scenes of the big budget Hollywood spectaculars to show you how they managed to pull of those crazy stunts and wild scenes in all your favorite big budget films. Those kind of specials don't really happen all that much anymore because if you wanted to see a behind the scenes view of the movie magic that brought The Hobbit to life it would just be a large, dark room filled with people working on computers and then a shot of a bunch of actors in green suits on a green stage, jumping over big foam green things. But while watching Unfriended I genuinely found myself asking over and over again, "How did they do that?" I'm sure the short answer is "With brilliant editing" but at the same time everything looks so real and so seamless, it really makes you pause and just admire the brilliant craftsmanship of the whole piece.
The premise of Unfriended is that a year ago tonight a student (named Laura Barns) killed herself after an embarrassing video of her was posted online that led to her being bullied and mocked. Six friends who knew Laura are all meeting on their various devices to skype chat about how much fun it is to be young when there's a new blank screen joining their group chat. As the friends start to figure out what's going on they are entered into a deadly game of cat and mouse (computer pun! that'll be five dollars).
What I've just described sounds like it's rife with cliche, the one year anniversary of the death, the culprits being forced to play a deadly game (a deadly game of Never Have I Ever with rules that are either before my time or after my time). Cliches aren't in themselves bad, cliches are (in a manner of speaking) aspects of formula and formula isn't inherently bad, you can do great things with formula, it's all about what you put into it.
What's so smart about Unfriended (besides everything)(oh and except the very very end which feels kind of pointlessly tacked on) is how well the filmmakers nailed the internet. They must've spent the entire budget getting the rights to use every actual real copyrighted site in the film, which really does add so much to the experience. It wouldn't have worked or wouldn't have been as effective if they had to put "Friendbook" or "Skeepe" or something. But by managing to use all of the actual websites that many of us use everyday it takes the horror and the totally trapped feeling that the characters are experiencing and brings it in to our everyday lives. From the proper use of memes to the fact that Blaire is browsing through chrome, the film mirrors real life in a very knowledgeable, very in step way. Even the multiple tabs she has open at the top of her screen reek of authenticity (Mtv's Teen Wolf, Johnny Cash, Forever 21).
To be able to convey the feelings of being trapped and hopeless just using tiny screens on a screen is really something to be proud of. As the teens try to close out or exit or wipe their computer programs they find that they just can't. And they can't leave the game either.
When I reviewed "We Are Still Here" I had no problem blowing all the secrets and spoiling all the plot details because it was necessary to talk about how truly bad the film is and why you shouldn't see it. However I don't want to do that with Unfriended since a lot of the fun of watching it is watching the story unfold.
Another brilliant storytelling technique used in the film was conveying plot details through sentences being typed out on the screen (the entire film is from the perspective of Blaire's screen so we see what she types in real time as she does it), then pausing while pondering to press send or not, then deleting the sentence, typing another one, then pausing, deleting, retyping. Again, it makes the film feel real. Even if the actors all seem a bit old for high school students, everything else about the film feels quite real.
I'm always impressed with films that can tell a story using only one location, which Unfriended does quite deftly. It doesn't have to show it's hand that often, it builds suspense slowly and heavily, adding little creepy things in here and there. I'm sure there must be some that I missed because there's so much going on in the film.
As mentioned earlier, the very very end of the film has kind of a silly moment that throws away a lot of the good faith suspense that's been built up over the wonderfully short hour and twenty four minutes (I just like short movies, I'm not saying that this one HAD to be short, but did "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" have to be two goddamn hours long?). It feels like an ending that gets tacked on by Producers or a focus group because just before the ending there's an opportunity to end the film that really, really works. It makes sense given the entire story and it is in all actuality, in a lot of ways, a more fucked up and worse ending for the main character than the goofiness that comes after it.
All of that being said, it's still an excellent, smart, scary, inventive, clever, well made, charming, disarming, unsettling, moving, weird, modern, crazy film that is well worth the short amount of time it asks of you. It will also make you feel really nervous about hopping online the second it's over. Maybe read a book instead.
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