Unfriended (2015)
Certified: 15
Duration: 83 minutes
Directed by: Levan Gabriadze
Starring: Shelley Hennig, Moses Jacob Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, Courtney Halverson, Heather Sossaman, Mickey River, Cal Barnes
KRS Releasing Ltd

Made on a miserly $1 million but with a very healthy return of $43 million, Unfriended is more of an experience than a normal movie. I would say it’s one of the most memorable movies in the last couple of years as it presents a different format and revolutionises not only the horror movie but also the found footage genre.

The film was going to be titled Cybernatural, but then it was changed to Unfriended, showing even more how this movie is the product of our social trends and, even more so, of how teens talk and act in cyberpace.

Laura Barn (Heather Sossaman) committed suicide after becoming a victim of cyberbullying. A video of her drunk and doing stupid stuff ended up on the net and she could not live with the shame that came with it.

Exactly a year later, a group of friends are all engaged in a Skype call. These include Laura’s friend, Blaire (Shelley Hennig) and her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm). The others are Jess (Renee Olstead), Adam (Will Peltz), Ken (Jacob Wysocki) and Val (Courtney Halverson).

The stakes are set high as secrets start to be revealed and in-fights occur, follow by a mysterious death

They are joined by an anonymous online user who calls himself Billie. They try to get rid of him but realise they cannot. The movie follows the chat in almost real time as they start to realise that this may be Laura’s ghost.

The stakes are set high as secrets start to be revealed and in-fights occur, followed by a mysterious death as the ghost seems to be on a quest to want to know who had been the one to upload Laura’s shamed video.

Produced by Timur Bekmambetov, the director of such genre favourites as Night Watch (2004) and Wanted (2008) and who also produced an animated classic, 9 (2009), returns on production duties in a film rich in style and content.

The cast’s reactions are very engrossing.

After a few minutes, once the audience get used to the film’s ambience and where it is taking them, Unfriended becomes quite a thrilling exercise, delivered in real time almost, as if events were happening as we watch the movie on what seems to be our computer screen.

With the camera screen engaged in one unbroken long take – one of the hardest movie-shooting techniques – and depicting a Skype video call with other popular programmes inserted for good measure, makes the film quite original.

Throughout all this, the cast’s reactions are very engrossing. Some scenes emerge as quite powerful, a case in point being the blender scene. The fact that the teens are played so well, complete with all the nuances of how teens speak and act, makes this experience very real and also very familiar.

Besides the cyberbullying aspect, the film also makes us very much aware of how one has no control over what is placed on the internet.

Unfriended twists the rules of the genre around to deliver an experience imbued with cleverness rather than a run-of-the-mill horror retelling.