‘Unfriended’ Review: Internet-age scares

Oggs Cruz

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

‘Unfriended’ Review: Internet-age scares
'In terms of narrative, Gabriadze’s film is lacking originality,' writes Oggs Cruz

MANILA, Philippines – At first glance, it would seem that Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended is a work of unparalleled risk. It opens with a computer screen, with the mouse cursor directing the action which happens in between windows stacked over another. The unseen owner of the screen views a YouTube video, described as the video that led a certain Laura Barns to commit suicide.

The film would never retreat from the computer screen. Its characters, including the owner of the screen, Blaire Lily (Shelley Henig), are introduced via a Skype conference call, where their gestures and other personality traits are on display on their respective live feeds, the windows of which are shared along side each other within the frame of the screen.

Screengrab from YouTube

Every now and then, Blaire would click out of Skype and into Facebook or Instagram, adding further insight into their relationship and the situation they would find themselves in. As it turns out, Laura Barns, who is celebrating the first anniversary of her death that particular night, is out for vengeance, and has decided to use the very means of how she was forced to kill herself to kill those responsible for her death.

Slasher flick 

GATHERING OF FRIENDS. Screengrab from YouTube

Unfriended, however, is as conventional as a run-of-the-mill slasher flick. Its characters are mostly stereotypes, bearing all the likely characteristics of somebody created simply to meet a grisly demise. In terms of narrative, Gabriadze’s film is lacking originality.

Of course, by situating the story of various college students being killed off one by one by a mysterious murderer in a world of egos rendered fragile by the tentative and often insincere relationships are fostered in the Internet, the film is all of a sudden relevant. It intriguingly occupies a moralistic stance against the mindless bullying that has populated the Web with its benefits of anonymity.

 

It is this psychology that makes Gabriadze’s film particularly unsettling. Its very fluent manner in appropriating an Internet-age mindset into the film turns convention into something eerily too familiar. Its unadulterated display of applications and programs, and how Blaire strategically switches from one to another depending on her immediate need, is borrowed from reality, rendering their appearance in a ghost story authentically scary.

Formula over style

GUESS WHO? Screengrab from YouTube

We live in an age where the lifeless screen that we see for an hour and a half in Unfriended is more familiar than trees, or the real faces of friends and acquaintances. It is unsurprising then that despite its blatant mundaneness, it is very easy to install mystery and shadow amongst the seemingly soulless two-dimensional images that occupy the computer screen. 

Formula, sadly, catches up. As soon as all the mystery dissipates and the characters are panicking to save their lives from their body-less opponent, the film falls into the trap that it shares with almost all other films of its ilk. 

It is just one unsurprising death after another, with Gabriadze attempting to spice it up by having the violent suicides be broadcasted through webcam feeds to elicit that distasteful delight a snuff film would give to its viewers. Gabriadze completes the illusion and evokes as much realism as he can muster with glitches and ugly pixelation that are often part and parcel of a faulty Internet line.

Style over substance 

LET'S PLAY A GAME. Screengrab from YouTube

Unfriended never truly expounds on the world it criticizes. Lacking the opportunity to fully flesh out a back story outside the confines of empty pictures posted on Facebook, the film seems to forward the idea that the youth’s addiction to the Internet and the repercussion-less conveniences it provides has created monsters, all deserving of a comeuppance worthy of their sins.

It is a shallow perspective, one that takes away humanity out of the lives that have been consumed by the Internet. It is also probably alright, considering that Unfriended was never meant to be an exploration of a current phenomenon but just a piece of entertainment that utilizes the Internet as a gimmick to veil its reliance on genre conventions.

Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg’s Noah (2013), a Canadian 17-minute short film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Fest, predates Unfriended in utilizing the computer screen as its chosen medium for storytelling. What differentiates Noah from Unfriended, aside from the fact that the short does not have ghosts and murders but just a teenager ending a romance through Facebook, is that it offers a more coherent glimpse of the humanity that still survives despite the abject virtualization of everything.

Unfriended points to a different direction. For the film, the Internet is a means for predators to prey on their victims, whether it be Laura Barns, Blaire and her friends, or the film’s audience who might end up more intrigued by the concept than scared. Sure, there is some truth to that insight, but the insight could have gone further if the film invested in a little bit more humanity. – Rappler.com

 Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ Tirad Pass. Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios

Add a comment

Sort by

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

Summarize this article with AI

How does this make you feel?

Loading
Download the Rappler App!