Social media has become a niche for horror film. Riding this wave, Unfriended achieves the feat of having a bad script, bad acting and a non-existent soundtrack.
Bad gag
At the start of Scream 4, victims joke about “the Facebook killer.” Unfriended seems to have taken inspiration from this passage and created the Skype Killer. Friends are chatting on the messaging app. A stranger appears in the conversation, but it is impossible to remove him. He begins a harassment, via Facebook, Skype, Instagram and YouTube.
You could forgive the film for being found footage, after all Searching was a good thriller. But being in front of Skype for 80 minutes is a painful and unnecessary ordeal. Maybe she’s less obnoxious outside of an epidemic, which has confined half the planet in front of a computer screen.
The harasser intends to avenge the death of a high school friend, who committed suicide following harassment. Nothing very original, it had already been seen in various films during the 90s, including Mortelle Saint-Valentin. We cannot even say that the addition of social networks is a real contribution, because it is poorly exploited. Supreme insult to the spectator: we do not know who the killer is.
We can not say that this film will appeal to computer junkies as the inconsistencies are numerous.
Magic computing
The main character in the film is Blaire’s computer. Even if the autonomy of MacBooks seems to be heard, it is curious that the battery never drains. Blaire spends an hour and a half on his computer, chatting online, going on the web, watching YouTube, using Spotify, and his computer, which is not plugged into power, never drains.
During the conversation with the stalker, Blaire receives an email. She opens Gmail, as a web interface. The “transfer” button does not appear. Her friend Jess replies “anyway, computers are always full of bugs”.
The email contains a link to Instagram. Blaire doesn’t dare to click, not knowing what she is going to see. One of his friends told him “transfer the link [Instagram] to Kevin, he’ll find the guy’s IP address ”. Let’s also add that Blaire goes to YouTube and various websites, without suffering any advertising, but without his browser - Chrome - being equipped with an ad blocker.
But ultimately, the most beautiful technical inconsistency remains the power cut. During a macabre game of truth, electricity is cut to all participants of the conversation. But the Internet connection continues to work. As if the terminals are equipped with fully autonomous batteries.
Teenagers all alone
Finally, the most unlikely element of the film is not the series of technical inconsistencies, or even the unknown identity of the stalker, but the total absence of adults. Following an evening of drinking, Laura finds herself filmed in a bad posture. The scene is broadcast on YouTube, Laura is insulted and decides to commit suicide. She films her acting out and streams it live. Neither the parents nor the teenager’s teachers are mentioned.
As for the protagonists of the film, they also appear to be without parents. Kevin smokes a bong in a living room, Adam lowers a whole bottle of vodka into his bedroom, Val walks around a house as big as the White House and there are no adults.
Our killer can therefore easily enter six different houses, kill six teenagers, without being disturbed by anyone, not even by Val’s dog who howls at death when she is on the phone. We also note that our killer must be a cousin of Flash, because he manages to kill half of the teenagers in a limited time frame.
The only believable point in the film remains Laura’s suicide scene, which remains available on YouTube. Recently, in France, a rape that took place in the street was filmed and broadcast on Twitter. As of this writing, the video is still live. Whether in 2014 or 2021, moderation of some content seems difficult.
Should we give Unfriended a chance? Honestly, if you have 83 minutes to spare, we would rather recommend Chucky 3, who perfectly assumes to be a nanar.
