Review: Unfriended (2015)

One night, while six high school teenagers Blaire, Mitch, Jess, Adam Ken and Val take part in an online group chat session, they are suddenly joined by a user known only as “Billie227.” Thinking it’s just a technical glitch, the friends carry on their conversation… until Blaire begins receiving messages from someone claiming to be Laura Barns, a classmate who killed herself exactly one year prior. As Blaire tries to expose Billie’s identity, her friends are forced to confront their darkest secrets and lies.

Unfriended is yet another entry in the found-footage horror genre, the only difference between this film and every other found-footage movie ever made is that instead of being filmed on an annoying shaky handheld camera its takes place on the computer screen of high school girl. Quite honestly, I would’ve preferred the annoying shaky handheld camera. Like almost every other found-footage movie, this movie takes forever to deliver that one moment that is supposed to have us shocked and horrified but when it comes we are neither shocked nor horrified. Even with a run-time of 82 minutes this movie is painful to sit through because it’s boring and takes forever to end.

The majority of the movie is spent staring at a static web browser and program windows on Blaire’s desktop. Within those windows are smaller video boxes featuring close-ups of her friends or text bubbles featuring the written exchanges between two characters in the typical, lazy shorthand of online communication. The characters in the movie are all self-absorbed, unsympathetic and unlikable jerks who you couldn’t care less about, let alone root for and their performances consist of them screaming at the top of their lungs and looking scared when one of their friends puts his hand in a blender. You know something is wrong when you’re cheering for the ghost to kill them just so the movie could be over early. The film also serves as a social-commentary on cyber-bullying, okay we get it, it’s bad. Cyber-bullying is bad. It’s also an incredibly dull subject for a horror film.

Unfriended does have a couple of good moments, like a mediocre boxer about to get knocked out it manages to pack some good punches, in this case a couple of decent scares but ultimately they are not worth the price of admission and for the most part I found myself feeling irritated and annoyed while watching the film because well it’s just not particularly interesting watching a girl clicking on stuff, typing stuff, searching for stuff nor is it particularly interesting to watch these actors who know nothing about acting chew up the scenery. Heck, I could even bear that if any of this was scary but the worst thing about Unfriended is that it isn’t scary at all.

1.2/10

-Khalid