A bad case of cyber-bullying.
When it comes to horror movies, a bar has been set way up high since the yesteryears with movies such as 1973’s “The Exorcist“, 1980’s “The Shining” and 1990’s “It“. Given that there are only so many scare tactics that can be reworked before it gets stale, there have been some beautifully terrifying films of the recent years that have managed to raise, if not reach the bar that has been set.
Yes, I’m talking about movies such as 2010’s “Insidious“, 2012’s “Sinister“, and 2013’s “The Conjuring“.
That being said, I recently had the (dis)pleasure of watching a new horror film, “Unfriended“. The movie finds itself to be the latest entry in the tired found-footage subgenre and quite honestly, I was dying for the movie to come to an end. Before I go on to tell you why the movie sucked so bad, I’ll tell you what the movie is about.
“Unfriended” is a movie that unfolds over a teenager’s computer screen as she and 5 friends are stalked by an unseen figure who seeks revenge for a shaming video that led to a girl to committing suicide a year earlier due to harassment and bullying via the internet.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time for the full review.
What you get with “Unfriended” is an entire film that requires you to watch teenager Blaire Lily’s (played by Shelley Hennig) computer screen. The movie starts off with Blaire calling her boyfriend Mitch Roussel (played by Moses Storm) on Skype, where she teases him by unbuttoning her blouse and promising him that he gets to have sex with her on prom night. Yay, Mitch!
Their Skype call then gets interrupted by their friends Jess Felton (played by Renee Olstead), Adam Sewell (played by Will Peltz), and Ken Smith (played by Jacob Wysocki) and the 5 go on to have a conversation before realising that they have company.
As it happens, their chat is taking place on surprise, surprise, the one-year anniversary of their friend Laura Barns’ (played by Heather Sossaman) suicide. As mentioned earlier, Laura committed suicide because she was cyber-bullied after someone posted a video of her passed out with crap in her pants at a party.
Now, it appears, Laura or somebody who is pretending to be her by using her social networking accounts, is back for blood. As the unwanted stranger prevents the group of friends from exiting the chat, it kills them off one by one. That of course, only happens after an hour-long wait.
Honestly, I really don’t know what’s more annoying – to watch a group of obnoxious teens on Skype with each other or having to wait almost an hour for some action. This action of course came in the form of one of the kids putting his hand in a blender because a supernatural force made him do it, another kid who stabs himself in the eye, and another one who dies by swallowing her perming iron – really, not worth the wait.
After an hour and a half, though it really felt like forever, this painfully unscary movie comes to an end with a revelation that it was indeed Blaire who posted up that disgraceful video of Laura and well, like the rest of her friends that she was chatting with, she too dies.
To top it all off, instead of a ghost actually showing up or proper legit scares, I was served with a group of teens screaming in fear and arguing with each other, whilst crying and it gets so annoying to the point that I wanted to kill them myself.
However, there is one thing that “Unfriended” succeeded at and that’s getting the message across. Cyber-bullying is not to be taken lightly and if you’re a victim of cyber-bullying, please speak up and get help and for those of you who commit such acts, shame on you.
“Unfriended”, will hit cinemas near you on April 30th. Till then, check out the trailer below:
