Social media become source of inspiration for modern horror in dynamic flick
First there was Michael Goi’s Megan Is Missing (2011), which mixes found footage with webcam scenes to tell the story of two teenage girls threatened by an Internet stalker. Then Zachary Donahue’s debut feature The Den (2013), about the dark fate of a young woman who chats with unknown people on a forum and all of the sudden turns into a witness to an online murder. And Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows (2014) focused on a blogger who spied on his favourite actress via his laptop to then have his life threatened when he got trapped in a web of webcams.
Now Leban Grabiadze’s low-budget Unfriended furthers the above formal experiments and turns the gimmick into a legitimate and very effective piece of new horror cinema subgenre. Taking place in real time and shot without using cameras but instead screen captures, Unfriended is about six friends who meet in an online chat room and are unexpectedly and inexplicably hunted by a supernatural force emerging from the account of a dead friend — Unfriended’s original title was, in fact, Cybernatural.
Everything you see is rigorously limited to what is on the screen of the protagonist, Blaire (Shelley Henning), a popular high-school girl who harbours some nasty secrets. This fixed framing device allows you to see video-chats, text-messaging sessions, Skype group sessions with her boyfriend and four friends and, most disturbingly, the Facebook messages coming from the dead girl, Laura Barnes.
We find out that Laura killed herself exactly a year before out of shame after a video showing her passed out drunk was anonymously uploaded to YouTube. Of course, it went viral in a matter of minutes. For some reason, Laura’s ghost seems to know this particular group of friends is responsible for uploading the infamous video. It’s payback time.
And so we have the first cyber-slasher, if you will. And yes, considering the formal characteristics of Unfriended, you probably think it makes for a non-cinematic, tedious experience. Yet I found it to be quite the opposite. That is to say that bearing in mind the limitations of the original gimmick, the film not only takes advantage of its potential but also exploits the many online applications to their fullest in a very precise manner. Which means it’s dynamic, smart and occasionally surprising.
What struck me the most is that it all feels realistic and spontaneous. As the many windows pop out, are maximized and minimized, and messages are sent and received, suspense and tension are skilfully built step by step, little by little, and using non-digitally enhanced effects. By the way, there’s another video uploaded to YouTube besides the embarrassing one and it is quite unsettling and realistic: the video of Laura shooting herself in the face in the high school campus.
Moreover, there’s much logic to what the characters do in order to get rid of Laura’s ghost. At first, they do the things you do at home when your computer goes nuts and seems possessed by an evil force. You know, it all starts working incorrectly and so you open this program and close the other one, open new sessions and then close them, and so forth. But then they realize that their online group chat truly is haunted and this is when everything they do fails to make the spirit go away.
However, it’s not only just a game of who gets killed first and how. There are also some well-kept secret evil doings and sins that each friend perpetrated against the others and so they were first victimizers and are now victims. According to these friends, Laura had it coming because she was always mocking and criticizing others, but when you find out what’s been hidden, you realize that this group of friends had it coming too. It comes as poetic justice that Facebook, the place to have hundreds of friends, is where unfriendly messages come from. It’s even more ironic that dead Laura has now more friends in her community page than she did when she was alive.
Not that Unfriended is a profound take on the effects of cyberbullying or a study in the illusion of friendship in these cyber times. It doesn’t want to be so either. Instead, it’s a source for modern horror that boasts more than a couple of effective jump frights, a tormenting feeling that surfaces as the characters reveal their dark sides, and a rebooting of the vengeful ghost that comes to right the wrongs.
And although the format wears thin every once in a while and even if consulting a demonic possession web page to get rid of Laura’s ghost is too artificial when compared to the rest of the movie there certainly are more assets than flaws to be found in Unfriended.
Production notes
Unfriended (US, 2014). Directed by Levan Gabriadze. Written by Nelson Greaves. With Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson, Shelley Hennig. Cinematography by Adam Sidman. Film Editing by Parker Laramie, Andrew Wesman. Running time: 85 minutes.
