Review // Unfriended

A good anti-virus program is always worth the money. One that blocks ghosts is even better. That’s the underlying message in Leo Gabriadze’s Unfriended, a new horror film for the generation who’s fight or flight response involves picking up their laptops. Set entirely on the screen of a teenage girl’s computer, this story of cyber haunting won’t exactly scare the pants off you, but it more than makes up for it with its inventive visual style.

The film follows Blaire (Shelley Hennig) a typical teenage girl who spends her evenings Skyping with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm) and their group of horror archetype friends. There’s the chubby jokester Ken (Jacob Wysocki), the spiteful floozy Jess (Renee Olstead), the handsome party boy Adam (Will Peltz) and the no-time-for-a-personality hot girl Val (Courtney Halverson). While they seem like a typical group of teenagers they all harbour a dark secret: each contributed to the cyber bullying of their former classmate Laura (Heather Sossaman). A bullying so severe it led to her suicide.

On the one year anniversary of her death Laura is out for revenge, and the best way to get it is the same vehicle on which she was persecuted: social media. First appearing as a faceless presence on the group’s video chat, soon Laura’s ghost has the friends spilling their secrets or dying mysteriously by their own hands. All while the others watch in small, glitchy windows. It’s a pretty standard formula – you can predict the exact order in which the friends will die by about the five minute mark – but it moves things along at a quick clip, and keeps the true details of Laura’s shaming a mystery until the end.

(Unfriended) also features an authentic message against cyber bullying, a real accomplishment considering most horror films can’t deliver an authentic anything.

What really makes the film interesting is  the fact that it’s set entirely on the desktop of Blaire’s computer.  Our only view of Blaire comes from her own Skype window, a Blair Witch style watery-eyed low angle that grows increasingly glitchy as the haunting intensifies. As she Skypes with her friends she also carries on Facebook conversations, a private IM chat with Mitch, an occasionally prescient Spotify playlist and the regular googling of cyber-ghost specific questions. It’s an authentic look at the computer activities of a teenage girl, and the attention to detail is spot-on, right down to the bookmarks in her browser and the targeted ads on the sidebar of her Facebook.

This authenticity also appears in the performances, especially Shelley Hennig’s Blaire who is equal parts prom queen and girl scout, but who’s occasional computer activities make us suspect that good girl image. Following the action on the computer screen is surprisingly easy, and you find your eyes darting here and there, trying to spot the clue on Lara’s desktop that will save the friends. This hunt is largely unrewarded however, as the film continues down a predictable horror plot line instead of utilizing the style for more inventive purposes.

While it doesn’t deliver the jumps that other horror films do, Unfriended gets great mileage from a visual style that could have come across as a cheap gimmick. It also features an authentic message against cyber bullying, a real accomplishment considering most horror films can’t deliver an authentic anything. Horror fans should enjoy Unfriended, if not for the frights, than for successfully adapting the genre to a computer screen. Afterall, what’s scarier than a terrible Facebook post from your sixteen year old self?

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.