UNFRIENDED

Perhaps more than any other genre, horror movies struggle to stay relevant. While period dramas or spy thrillers can be successful no matter when you set them, horror movies must always tap into the fears of the modern audience. Horror filmmakers must seek out what new elements of life are in the forefront of our collective consciousness and how these can be spun into our latest nightmares.

Unfriended follows in the path of both found footage and the technology-based gimmicks of horror films such as The Ring, which imagines a demonic videotape. In this case, a group of high-school friends are tortured via Skype chat by the spirit of Laura Barns, a girl who was cyberbullied and committed suicide (savvy Web users might recognize this as the plot of several “creepypastas” brought to life).

However, in a unique twist on the found-footage horror genre, the events of Unfriended play out across the desktop of teen Blaire Lily’s MacBook during a group Skype conversation. The group is unable to log off for fear of their lives, so their terror is streamed over their webcams. The device of the film is without a doubt gimmicky, but the film uses it to build chills in a unique manner. 

The exposition is handled in a very clever fashion: We learn the backstory of the group through Blaire’s browsing and the bizarre links and images sent by the mysterious “billie227,” an unwelcomed guest who has somehow become attached to the group Skype session.

The desktop characterizes Blaire in a fascinating manner; at the beginning of the movie, Blaire reflects on Laura’s suicide by watching a video of it online. Her guilt for the potential role she played in her friend’s death manifests in the way she is unable to finish watching the video that ultimately drove Laura to kill herself. Though she is only seen on camera through her own webcam, the messages she types and erases in Facebook and iMessage conversations reveal her thoughts in a manner rarely seen in film. However, while this use of text is effective and innovative, the dialogue is little more than par for the horror-film course, with a lot of frantic screaming and yelling.

The desktop “setting” is no doubt eerily familiar for many students at this university; while Skyping her friends, Blaire watches Youtube videos, iMessages her boyfriend, listens to tracks on Spotify and browses Facebook on Google Chrome. This familiarity, coupled with the chilling ambient noises and ghostly thumps on the computers, make for a few truly unnerving jolts that are genuinely entertaining, and the film creates and sustains a genuine sense of dread.

However, because of its familiarity, the setting also creates some cheesy, awkward moments that draw laughter rather than screams. It can be hard to feel threatened when the ghost is communicating using the harmless beeps and pings of online chat systems, and a Google search yields the same corny website multiple times.

One of the movie’s bigger flaws is its willingness to fall back on lazier horror tropes in this unique digitally framed environment. The characters are all stock: Blaire is the typical good girl; her boyfriend Mitch is the jock; their friends Val and Jess fight over the role of “bad girl”; and so on. From Blaire’s frantic Facebook messages to Mitch and others, she comes across as clingy and two-faced, while her friends similarly demonstrate minimal redeeming qualities. When a horror movie makes you cheer for the monster instead of the screaming, attractive teens, the characterization of your protagonists needs work. 

Similarly, the film seems content to sacrifice plot for showmanship. It’s clear that the focus of the film is on showcasing its style; the story almost seems like an afterthought. There are several plotlines that are started throughout the call that begin to build tension, but these are ultimately never fully addressed. One such plot thread revolves around exploring the character of Laura herself, who is only seen through old Youtube clips and ghost messages, and whether she was a poor victim of bullying or a bully herself. 

But this bullying is just a device, a means to an end rather than an actual issue the film addresses with anything other than bloodlust. It’s perhaps for the best that the film doesn’t really comment on the issue of cyberbullying itself, as the last thing anyone wants is a schlocky horror film too loaded down in prescribing a moral.

Despite — or perhaps even because of — its corniness, Unfriended is solidly entertaining. It’s cheesy but fun and offers just enough thrills and scares that those without much experience with horror movies can comfortably jump in and leave without nightmares. The use of the desktop mechanic is intriguing, and for that, at least, it’s worth a watch — though I wouldn’t recommend watching it online, for obvious reasons.