Except for the terrified teens, the images in the new horror film Unfriended will look familiar to the average Mac user, and that’s because the movie takes place entirely on the computer screen of high-schooler Blaire (Shelley Hennig). We see exactly what she sees, whether that means a Skype striptease for her boyfriend, a ChatRoulette session with strangers or a video of a classmate’s suicide, recorded on a smartphone, naturally.
The horror begins when that classmate, Laura, returns from the dead to cyber-stalk the teen and her friends, who are group chatting online. A year earlier, Laura killed herself after suffering public shaming-by-way-of-Facebook after a drunken night led to an embarrassing viral video. The girl’s ghost is commemorating the one-year anniversary of her death by getting revenge on some of the kids who bullied her.
The computer screen movie is a novel approach. The question is: Does it work? Or is it just a gimmick? In truth, the movie succeeds better than you might think. But there are some drawbacks, as expected. Here are some of the pros and cons.
The good: At least it’s not found footage
While you could say this is another strain of Paranormal Activity copycat-ism, Unfriended feels fresh. Unlike the stream of grainy video feeds from found footage, this isn’t just one long and staticky Skype hangout. The story unfolds through constantly minimising windows, including emails, Facebook notifications and Google searches. In a clever touch, the soundtrack comes from the Spotify player on Blaire’s computer.
The bad: Non-user frustration
Have you ever watched over the shoulder of a friend or colleague as he or she tried in vain to efficiently navigate a browser? You look on, powerless, while the cursor lazily orbits its destination and you fight the urge to scream, “JUST HIT TAB ENTER,” and wrestle the mouse away from this incompetent amateur.
Watching Unfriended evokes this particular feeling of frustration, especially when Blaire types, deletes, retypes, deletes then re-retypes and re-deletes a Facebook message.
The good: The audience can get a lot of information fast
There’s no need for a lot of stilted exposition about Laura’s suicide when we can see a news clip about it, followed by the viral video and Facebook history that led her to such an extreme and terrible fate. And there’s no point in narration when Blaire’s instant messages to her boyfriend serve as cyber-soliloquies.
The bad: Watching someone type and toggle gets old
Especially when (see above) that person waffles so much about how they want to phrase a simple reply.
The good: It’s so familiar
We don’t need anyone to explain to us how unsettling it is when Laura starts tinkering with Blaire’s computer programs. The reply and forward functions disappear from Gmail, and Blaire can’t mute or close Spotify when Connie Conway starts singing How You Lie, Lie, Lie at maximum volume. The typical horror movie stuff turns out to be laughable, including (spoiler) when one girl chokes to death on a hair straightener. But the rainbow pinwheel of pain? (Or the paralysed hourglass, for you PC fans.) That’s something that will leave any computer user shuddering in fear.
The bad: It’s so familiar
Then again, most of us already spend all day, every day looking at our computer screens. The reason we go to the movies is to escape from that, right?
The good: The horrors are real and timely
Between Monica Lewinsky’s TED Talk and Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, cyber-bullying and the tolls of humiliation in the internet age have been in the news a lot recently. Laura’s targets are all victims, of course, but they were sadistic abusers first. They may never have said anything mean to Laura’s face, but the anonymity of the online existence allowed them all to tap into the worst sides of themselves while basking in the bluish glow of their computer monitors.
When a faceless avatar starts stalking these kids, it seems so unbelievable. You wonder why they don’t just shut down their computers. And while the plot explains it away with the “Speed” solution — if the kids don’t play along, everyone dies — it also echoes the reality, which is chilling. A girl who gets bullied on social media can’t just erase the sickening feeling in her stomach by rebooting. The capricious cruelty of the internet follow us into our real lives, and that’s truly terrifying.