UNFRIENDED

Never thought I'd actually see this film. The trailer is pretty terrible and the entire film is a social media gimmick. Yeah, no thanks. But over the past few days the reviews have been positive. So far UNFRIENDED has remained fresh on Rotten Tomatoes which was surprising to me, so I had to see what the buzz was about.

Stylistically I hate everything about UNFRIENDED. This may make me sound old. But I do not want to watch a “movie” which is a characters computer screen for 82 minutes. I'm sorry but if you ask me, that's not a movie! However, I do think that there is something a tad clever going on here. But staring at iMessage, Facebook, Google, and Skype for almost an hour and a half is not my idea of a fun night at the movies.

That clever thing I was talking about is that the filmmakers may have reinvented the dead teenager/revenge slasher horror sub genre? But I'm probably giving the makers of UNFRIENDED too much credit. One film that may come to mind is I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which if you are a horror fan you should be able to dig deeper than that. I was thinking more along the lines of the early eighties slashers, where the killer is getting revenge for something embarrassing that happened to them or a loved one.

A group of online chat room friends find themselves being terrorized by a mysterious, supernatural force using the account of their dead friend. Laura killed herself after being embarrassed because of a video that was uploaded of her acting a drunk fool.

Kids, don't be a bully. Especially don't cyberbully. Thank goodness there wasn't YouTube or camera phones around when I was in school. Because if what happened to Laura happened to me, then yeah I'd want to kill myself to! I won't spoil it, but it's embarrassing and gross.

So one by one the chat room friends get killed and eventually a game of 'I Never' is played so that Laura can get her “friends” to fess up. This was when I couldn't take the gimmick any longer. I was getting annoyed looking at a computer screen.

Watching and hearing the audience reaction was the best part of UNFRIENDED which helped the movie be entertaining. In fact, if it wasn't for a sold out auditorium I would have probably walked out and asked to see another movie. Rarely do I go see a horror movie in the evening, because I am such a wuss. The downfall is that I miss the audience reaction which is the best part of seeing a scary movie, good or bad.

When the movie was over I overheard two groups of people talking about how awesome they all thought the movie was. And it made me wonder what would this group of people think about THE BABADOOK? I bring this up because I finally got to see THE BABADOOK. A film that is amazing, but I didn't think so at first. Admittedly I was a tad harsh on the symbolism and artiness of the movie. I'll get into that more if I ever review the film. But my point is that it took something like UNFRIENDED for me to see the greatness in THE BABADOOK.

In closing I can't recommend UNFRIENDED, based on the simple fact that stylistically I hated the movie. If the future of cinema is watching a computer screen then count me out.*

*Watching a trailer on a smartphone or tablet is the only exception.