Unfriended

Or "Unknown User" as it is being called in Germany. Before you come up with things like innovative and never seen before, let me refer to something called "Open Windows" (which by comparison might feel like a masterpiece and it isn't either). That's just one example there are others too (The Den to name another which is also slightly better than this).

That doesn't mean you can't have "fun" with this movie too. It's just that it feels weird to say the least. I still was curious to see where it would go, but at times it felt like watching someone type ... which it sort of is too (literally at points). Also teenager drama can be annoying, characters swing their moods more often than a pendulum and the "twist" is so mad, that it almost destroys the whole movie ... A shame for some more than interesting points the movie has.

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.

The only reason I watched this, is because my sister and I traded blu rays so we can each see horror films the other has that we haven't. I was very skeptical to watch this. Blumhouse lately is a hit or miss. Truthfully they find some amazing horror films, then add sequels until they're bled dry. This film, by the trailer looked, seemed similar to The Gallows which I was forced to go to with my younger brother-in-law and my wife even though I knew it would be terrible; it was by the way. The movie luckily was not like The Gallows. In fact he biggest thing that surprised me was that the writing and acting was actually good. Usually with low budget horror films they grab some teenagers that have never acted in their life. Drama seems to be the easiest catagory to act but still, the acting was believable. As for the writing, the premise is simple. However they take a simple idea of Skyping and add elements to the internet that push the story along without just showing the faces of the actors interacting. However, I would probably have more of a hard time watching his again. Films like Burried and Locke are the same premise as this film in a way and those are both incredible. This film shows more to the watchers eye, however it depends on the performance if you need that. I think with both it adds enough. One thing I hate in teen based horror movies, is lingo. Thank god this film didn't throw a bunch in which also helps age the film. All in all, it's worth watching at least once. It was entertaining. Blumhouse hit a triple with this film, and thanks to my sister I got to view it.

Unfriended can be described as Paranormal Activity/Saw taking place over a Skype session. The pluses and minuses of Unfriended seem to balance out. This movie did well with using current technology trends such as Facebook, Skype, and iChat to bring a sense of reality to it and speaks to this generation about the growing concern of cyberbullying. What I really liked about the film is the role karma plays in the lives of cyberbullies. With technology these kids like to wear two faces. They will be your best friend in real life but in an online society, most of them will like to bring out a deceitful dark side or tough guy mentality. With that being said, Unfriended was a great idea for a horror film, but like most horror films, its script could have used some work, the death scenes were a little cheesy, and there was a lack of common sense. The beginning will be a little boring because it takes time to get use to a whole movie taking place on a computer screen.

This was a very cool idea to do and can be potentially scary. However, the execution is absolutely awful. There's a lot of unexplained details and plot holes weirdly enough and it bugged me. Many things were mediocre and done pretty stupid. I will give credit when it's due however, it gave unintentional laughs with being so bad at some points and the deaths were a little satisfying. However, we don't know enough about the characters to care. The details that are noticed are more than baffling. This all around had some potential and it was thrown away, this was a legitimately cool idea but it's just not utilized. 5/10.