Unfriended

Unfriended should be called The Skype Murders

You know… it’s come to this. The horror movie that takes place on a teen girl’s laptop screen. In case you hadn’t heard, or didn’t care, or maybe you’re thinking of something else like bacon flavored ice cream and ended up on my blog by accident and you’re about two seconds away from clicking the back button–wait don’t leave!–Unfriended is Universal’s new take on the “found footage” real-time horror movie. Yes, the movie takes place entirely on what is supposed to be one of the character’s laptop screen–an Apple MacBook no less, and it could be described as one long group Skype call gone horribly wrong. The backstory is that one year ago, fellow high school classmate and bullying victim Laura Barns committed suicide by gunshot, and someone using Laura’s FaceBook account has hacked into their Skype call and wants to play some games. The loser dies. Did I mention this group of friends are all the mean little shits who bullied Laura? This is payback. But, is it a hacker, a virus, or something supernatural? I won’t say (spoilers!), but some suspension of disbelief is required to buy into what happens later in the movie.

👿 📹 😢 🔫 😵

Horror movies aren’t about logic, they’re all about suspense, and Unfriended delivers on that. There is also a bloody, gory payout. The whole “group Skype call” mechanic works and doesn’t detract from the suspense. If anything, it feels like it’s real because you experience it as one long continuous event shown from one unchanging point of view. There are no cuts or scenes in the traditional sense, and I found that fascinating. If you go back and watch really early films–from the silent age–you’ll see many of the cinematic storytelling techniques and shots used in modern films today. There really hasn’t been a whole lot of new in how movies are shot in the last 100 years. The Matrix is probably one of the few recent films that really brought something new to the table with “bullet time,” and found footage tries to mimic the authenticity of home video recordings. But moving all the action into a computer screen? This is horror for the YouTube generation.

💻 📞 🎲 😱 🔪 😵

Question is: does that make it better or easier to relate to? Yes. If anything, it works because this particular story was crafted around the format, so the story couldn’t be told any other way and be as visceral. There are some things done in the name of suspense that are somewhat transparent or eyeball-rolling (depending on your level of cynicism), such as when characters predictably walk out of view of their FaceTime cameras, or when the Skype video breaks up or freezes when something juicy is about to happen. But it still feels like a real event. Many of us are computer savvy and can relate to what the main character is doing on her computer, including attempts to thwart, or suss out the identity of the person using Laura Barns’ online identity. And all of the screens look like real, authentic applications and user interfaces we (or at least the intended audience) knows, including Skype, iMessage, FaceBook, YouTube, Google, Chrome, and Mac OS X. I always appreciate it when computer screens look real and authentic, and surprisingly few filmmakers want to present technology or user interfaces that looks remotely real for fear that the movie will look dated and passé in a few years. There seems to be purpose in “keeping the computer screens real”: and that is as the main character is using her computer, she’s doing things very familiar to us–or at least anyone who uses a Mac (which is most of the people who would watch this movie), including using Force Quit to kill Chrome after the spinning beach ball cursor appears (and if that didn’t make any sense to you, then this movie isn’t for you).

🎬 💻 🎥📍🔒

This isn’t the only film to take place on a character’s computer screen: a recent episode of the ABC network TV show Modern Family took place on a character’s MacBook screen with FaceTime and iMessage. I don’t, however, consider this to be the beginning of a trend in cinematography. It’s just too confining to limit the action to a single computer screen. I can imagine another filmmaker doing a variation of this using a surveillance video screen–like a movie version of the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. Or a movie like Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows, which incorporates surveillance-footage-on-computer-screens into an otherwise conventionally shot movie.

Now, wouldn’t it be something to someday watch this movie on your MacBook in full screen? 7/10