Because I will watch any movie with a found footage premise, I watched Unfriended. Unfriended depicts a clever twist on the found footage premise. Instead of film or video, all the footage in Unfriended is generated from a computer either through video chats or webpages such as Facebook or Skype. If you are not familiar with social media or proficient with a computer, I would skip Unfriended because you will not understand what is going on. If you cannot stand teenage protagonists, then do not watch Unfriended because every character will annoy you.
Unfriended is a supernatural revenge story inspired by a real life cyber bullying story. A group of teenagers chatting with each other online are interrupted by an unknown user and cannot stop the interaction using traditional means. The unknown user knows a great deal about them and exposes a secret about each friend to the group in successive escalating fashion. Each reveal sows discord within the group, but the friends cannot log off without endangering each other’s lives. Even though each friend is home alone, the friends begin violently disappearing. Are they being murdered or committing suicide?
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Unfriended is a clever twist on several tropes: “then there were none,” when a group of people is picked off on by one, driven to suicide and ghost in the machine. I enjoyed the idea of a vengeful ghost in the cyber world. There were nice traditional haunting touches throughout Unfriended such as the barking dog. I was a little frustrated that I could not see what was in Val’s mirror. The best twist in Unfriended is that Adam, a complete jerk, technically doesn’t betray anyone to save his life during the games. People praise movies by Robert Altman and Orson Welles for shooting everything in one take, and while I’m not saying that Unfriended even belongs in the same category as these greats, Unfriended deserves some praise for basically doing a feature-length take.
I had a few technical quibbles with Unfriended. I was annoyed that the characters were using their computer, but there was a separate window for Facebook pages/newsfeed and Facebook messages. Also “see friendship” is not in the same menu as unfriend, so you cannot scroll down to do the same thing. I was also disappointed that the final scene was not found footage, but took place in the real world.
Unfriended is an enjoyable entry in the found footage genre that I would recommend if you enjoy horror featuring feckless teens violating all the rules of decency.