Unfriended

A 21st century horror movie. The basic plot is A group of friends on an online chatroom get gatecrashed by stranger who then questions them about a friends death. A clever cheap way of making a movie that kept my attention, but not what I'd call scary. A novel idea which might frighten younger viewers.

OK, I usually don't write reviews for movies, but as of today there are only reviews for the trailer and I find this to be quite stupid...similar to judging a book by its cover or by its summary...

Anyways... I just came out of the first screening of this movie in Canada. What is my first impression? My first reaction to it? I am entertained! For those who want to watch something profound, deep, meaningful or even something you will remember...this is not the right movie for you, but if you just want to get entertained for 2 hours, get some cheap scares, some good laughs (this movie is currently my #1 in most unintentionally funny movies made) and just forget about the world, this is definitely it.

Pros: - Entertaining. For me thats the most important thing. It's nothing great, but entertaining. You will have a lot of laughs and some scares. - A rather new and interesting concept. It's not as shaky and unsharp as found footage movies but isn't a normal filmed movie either....also it embodies the whole social network very well. It's feels like you are on your computer.

Mehh: - I believe it's a movie that you either watch at the cinema or not at all. I feel like it will loose most of its (already very little) tension and effect if you watch it somewhere else. - Quite forgettable. It's nothing special. It just isn't...

Cons: - The acting is quite lousy. Sometimes it's distracting, but maybe I'm too critical. - Predictable. You know from the beginning what's going to happen... - Stupid reactions...OK...this is a horror movie, so...if everyone made everything right in horror movies, half of them wouldn't exist, but I just couldn't stop thinking why they behaved the way they did...

Overall: 6.5/10 If you get a ticket, if you can convince a group of friends to join you, if you just want a date flick or are just bored and want to be entertained, this is the perfect horror movie for you. If you expect more than that, you will get disappointed.

Unfriended (2014)

*** (out of 4)

Six friends get together in a chat room on the one year anniversary of the suicide of a girl they all knew. At first the six are just having some fun but they soon realize that there's someone else online with them who is about to bring out their darkest secrets.

UNFRIENDED seems to be getting a lot of mixed reviews in regards to some people downright loving it while others finding it to be a complete mess. Logic is always a very big issue when it comes to horror films and more often than not it's best that you turn your brain off and just enjoy. While watching this film I was certainly enjoying it and I thought the mystery of what was going on was captivating but there's no question that if you start to think then you're going to find some loose ends.

With that said, I found the film's mystery to be extremely well-made and it played out quite successfully. I'm not going to spoil anything about the film since that would be unfair to new viewers but the movie uses current technologies like a chat room, instant messenger, Facebook, Skype and other things. It plays out in real time, which was another great bonus because it feels as if you're right there in this chat room. Director Levan Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves have really broken a wall down because there really hasn't been anything like this done before. Sure, the elements have been in other movies but never put together like this.

Another thing that works so well is that all six of the actors do a terrific job. Not for a second do you feel as if you're not watching real teenagers battle it out. Some have called the characters annoying and I'd agree with that but in this case it actually helps because these are flawed characters and their dumbness, shallowness and ugliness just helps the central mystery. Technically speaking the film is well-made and it certainly keeps you guessing as to what's going to happen next, which is the hardest thing for any horror movie to do. While I never found it to be scary, the film was still a success.

I think the film is a lot deeper than many are going to give it credit for. It's funny but I think this here really does play to generations. I'm not sure if someone in their 80's would fully get everything going on here. Not because they're not smart enough but today's times are just different and the "event" that leads to the "mystery" here is something that happens quite often on social media. This film certainly attacks current issues and does so in a believable way. UNFRIENDED is a lot smarter than most are giving it credit for.

Oh lord . . . how long till Avengers? Unfriended is unwatchable, a product of towering dullness wrapped in a gimmick that doesn't work, packed with people you wouldn't want to spend five minutes with. It's a colossal miscalculation of character and tension built on a flimsy idea and padded out by technological glitches that don't build tension so much as get on your nerves.

I admit, the ad campaign had me sort of intrigued – I looks like a new idea – a Skype horror movie. Well, I can say I've never seen that idea played out before. Actually, it's the same dreck I've seen over and over, it's just another found footage movie broken up into six screens so that we watch six people having a video conversation, and die one by one.

I had hope, maybe because my senses within the genre have been recently (and temporarily) altered for the better. Having been dazzled by the freshness and skill of the recent It Follows, I walked into Unfriended with something resembling a hopeful heart. That earlier film, about a girl who is given a curse by her boyfriend after having sex with him in his car was a welcomed drink of water in a genre that is mostly an arid desert. Watching Unfriended is like having a mouthful of sand.

It goes something like this: Recently, a party girl named Laura went out got drunk, passed out and defecated in her pants. A fellow party goer took a video of her humiliation and posted it on the internet from which came a volley of cyber-bullying so severe that she ended up committing suicide.

The entire movie is made up of six screens that make up a six-party video chat. Our main character (I think) is Blaire (Shelley Hennig), talking with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm) and four friends: Jess (Renee Olstead), Ken (Jacob wysocki), Adam (Will Peltz), and eventually Val (Courtney Halverson). Also online is a mysterious presence that goes by the name billie227. No one can identify this stranger and all attempts to rid themselves of the unwelcome visitor come to nothing.

What follows is a textbook of every single manner of irritating your audience that you can imagine. From buffering to incessant typing to screen blips and flashes. billie227 plays games with their sanity and with their honesty by posting humiliating videos of cheating, and other bits of truth telling that break down their trust in each other. Much of this movie, you should know, is made up of people screaming before they meet a horrible (not to mention ridiculous) end – one guy is seen briefly with his hand in a whirring blender.

The gimmick might not be so bad if the participants weren't all screaming, self-centered bores. None of these people are worth spending time with. None of them have any real personality and when they die you really don't miss them. Then the movie comes to a baffling, nonsensical ending, a jump-scare that pulls the rug out from other whatever ground has been gained the past 80 minutes.

Unfriended is a depressing experience made by people who don't seem to have any real idea of what movies are suppose to be about. It is a movie made by committee, from people who concoct movies by gimmicks and commercial plugs, not by any sense of entertainment or giving the audience any kind of real experience. It's a hammered together project that seems based on what's popular at the moment. This is rank cynicism of the worst kind.

If you must see a horror movie this week, go see It Follows. That movie has style and a sense of characters, and a plot we care about. Sure, it's ridiculous and silly, but you come away feeling as if you've seen something new. Unfriended is the kind of movie that just ruins the rest of your day.

...or maybe the villain is Sheldon Cooper gone evil...Because you couldn't do the kinds of things that the villain does in this film unless you have all kinds of coding skills and superuser privileges. But I digress.

It was actually pretty interesting to me.A lot of people complain about it not being scary or containing the essence of a horror film, and I think that's kind of the point. The cliches of horror are there to throw you off the scent - the real horror comes from these kids and the depths of violence and cruelty that they show themselves to be capable of. They experience horror in the form of a ghost haunting them as they skype and chat online, but any violence that goes on is nothing compared to what they do to each other as they're forced to reveal their own and each other's secrets.

That alone, to me, makes it worth watching seriously. And the film has a "gimmick" that demonstrates a command of realism that returns to the fundamental idea of the verite style, after so many hackneyed "found footage" films made that term meaningless. The same is true for the dialogue - it's not good, because it's realistic. The characters do dumb things because it's realistic. And anyway, the idea of characters doing dumb things is a staple of horror films and makes for good writing. Characters making smart choices does not a good horror film make.

I'd recommend it.