Unfriended
Dec. 7th, 2015 08:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiThe great thing about having a good library system is being able to check out movies for free (because Netflix is great for things from previous years, but not for the first few months after something's released on DVD).
So we watched Unfriended last night, a movie that I'd avoided on principal when it came out, as it sounded like a trendy "look at the Millennials and how silly they are" horror flick. While it's most definitely a teen horror flick in some ways -- it's got a cast of late twenty-somethings playing teenagers, with the usual relationship drama at the core, it's much better than I'd expected.
The plot itself is actually pretty traditional in a horror flick -- a horrible tragedy happened a year ago, and now someone wants revenge. This is the supernatural subset of that trope (think The Grudge as opposed to Prom Night), and bad things happen. What makes this one interesting is the presentation. The entire movie takes place on one character's laptop screen. And the creators did everything with real computer apps and sites, so the bulk of the movie takes place within Skype, YouTube, Facebook, Google, Spotify, iChat, LiveLeak, and other apps. It's extremely well-done, with a huge amount of tension (there's almost no music other than tracks that Blaire, the POV character, plays).
The plot that we get is that there an extra person joining a group Skype chat, and that person can't be kicked off, and strange things start happening, from Facebook profiles that can't be unfriended to unusual video uploads, to, eventually, physical threats. As things evolve, it seems that everyone in the chat may have played a role in the events that drove a girl to suicide a year ago.
It's not a perfect movie -- there's one character who seems to be punished for no reason, another who, while scum, doesn't seem to have a direct connection to the suicide. And there was a choice made to have Blaire only do things with her mouse, which makes things like copying and pasting seem a touch silly. Oh, and like so many horror flicks, it derails a bit at the end. But that's okay -- it's a blast to watch, and does enough neat visual stuff to absolutely be worth a viewing if you're a horror fan.
So we watched Unfriended last night, a movie that I'd avoided on principal when it came out, as it sounded like a trendy "look at the Millennials and how silly they are" horror flick. While it's most definitely a teen horror flick in some ways -- it's got a cast of late twenty-somethings playing teenagers, with the usual relationship drama at the core, it's much better than I'd expected.
The plot itself is actually pretty traditional in a horror flick -- a horrible tragedy happened a year ago, and now someone wants revenge. This is the supernatural subset of that trope (think The Grudge as opposed to Prom Night), and bad things happen. What makes this one interesting is the presentation. The entire movie takes place on one character's laptop screen. And the creators did everything with real computer apps and sites, so the bulk of the movie takes place within Skype, YouTube, Facebook, Google, Spotify, iChat, LiveLeak, and other apps. It's extremely well-done, with a huge amount of tension (there's almost no music other than tracks that Blaire, the POV character, plays).
The plot that we get is that there an extra person joining a group Skype chat, and that person can't be kicked off, and strange things start happening, from Facebook profiles that can't be unfriended to unusual video uploads, to, eventually, physical threats. As things evolve, it seems that everyone in the chat may have played a role in the events that drove a girl to suicide a year ago.
It's not a perfect movie -- there's one character who seems to be punished for no reason, another who, while scum, doesn't seem to have a direct connection to the suicide. And there was a choice made to have Blaire only do things with her mouse, which makes things like copying and pasting seem a touch silly. Oh, and like so many horror flicks, it derails a bit at the end. But that's okay -- it's a blast to watch, and does enough neat visual stuff to absolutely be worth a viewing if you're a horror fan.