Warning this review contains a shed-load of spoilers for the movie.
As pretty much everyone knows, the movie is set on Skype. We don’t see anything other than the computer screen of the main character, Blaire. Of course, we see all the characters faces through the Skype call, but mostly the audiences sees a computer screen. Very modern. I liked it a lot. I also liked little tit-bits you could see on Blaire’s computer screen. The log in to her Tumblr, the things she kept on her task bar, the music she liked when she looked for music to play, recently talked to friends on her Facebook, etc etc. I, personally, am a huge fan of sounds, especially those featured in this movie. Because this movie takes place more or less on a computer, there’s the clicking of the mouse pad, the ever-present tap-tap-tap of the keys, the notification noises for Skype, Facebook or iMessage, it all feels very real!
Now, I usually don’t do horrors. The last time I looked into something labelled a horror was Five Nights at Freddy’s, and let me tell you, while the first and third game hardly phased me, the second game made me sleep with the bedroom light on for at least a week. I am absolutely the weakest when it comes to horrors, so I don’t really know why I agreed to go and see Unfriended with my friends when I did!
So, the lights dim and the movie starts and everyone begins to get a little excited and already a little scared. It starts out pretty simply, just friends on Skype, and then things get a little weird. And by “a little” I mean “a lot”.
At first, things are just a little creepy, and it seems as if the problem is easily resolved. It does just look like the dead girl, Laura Barns, account has been hacked. It’s something easy to fix, but when it’s tried, that’s where things get weird.
Before anything real happens, me and my friends noticed that there was a lot of foreshadowing in this movie. For one, Blaire tries to get Laura Barns Facebook page memorialized, fills out the form to complete this, and sends it in. After the page loads, all the text boxes are filled with the same three words: I GOT HER. When you’re first watching it’s an odd thing to see, but probably not unusual for a horror. But at this point in the movie, it just doesn’t make sense. Later on, in the last few moments of the film, we see Blaire filming the video of Laura Barns, and we see a cut out scene at the end of it, where Blaire giggles and whispers: “I GOT HER!”
Next thing, another character, Mitch, pretends to be threatening and points a knife at his computer screen while talking to just Blaire. (This is at the very beginning, way before anything gets real.) Towards the end, he is killed with a knife.
Another character, Adam, flamboyantly throws around a gun. Guess what his death involves? That’s right. A gun.
If you’ve seen the trailer, which I assume many have, you see that one character, Ken, gets his hand shoved into a blender. A good while before things start to go sour, he proclaims that he has a drink, and shows his blender on the screen.
One character, Jess, is in the middle of straightening her hair during the Skype call before things get weird. The last we see of her is her sat in the bathroom, screaming over the same pair of straighteners in her mouth.
It’s interesting, that’s for sure. Everyone wants to know who filmed or posted the video, everyone is scared of whose going to die, or what jumpscare is coming next. It draws you in, you want the knowledge, you want to know what happens next, you want to know what the next sentence in the demented game of “Never Have I Ever” is going to be, and what the consequences will be, you want to see if they turn against each other, you want to see how it ends.
The scariest thing in the movie, for me, wasn’t the jumpscares. Sure, they got me. The movie was loud, of course I jumped! But the thing that absolutely wrecked me was at the very, very end of the movie, all of Blaire’s friends are now dead, She’s the only one still alive, maybe, you think, she’ll get out of this alive. But then the lights in her house turn off, and everything is silent. Everything is silent for too long. And you know the suspense feeling, I’m sure. It’s been quiet too long, you assume that it’s safe to stare right at the screen. And then it happens, and it ruined me. Her bedroom door creaks open, and then it’s silent again for far too long. That’s it. It was that creak that ruined me the most. I felt like something was crawling up my back, ready to twist my neck, or worse. Her scream after the silence was nothing compared to the creak, for me. Even though the jumpscare was loud and bright and very, very flashy, it was over in seconds. But that creak could happen any time and remind me of that one moment in the film.
It was very intriguing, very scary, and very, very good. Since I am no connoisseur of horrors, and have not watched a great deal of them, I would have to say this is my favourite one. I would watch it again, mostly because this time around I would be much braver. Myself and my friends had a good time discussing it in the cinema and as we left, picking up on the foreshadowing, taking the movie apart, saying what we thought was good, and also saying what we missed because we were too scared to look at the screen.
The only thing I found unrealistic about the film, and something I’m not surprised that I picked up on, was the fact that on Blaire’s computer, she didn’t have “Press Enter to Send” ticked on her Facebook. I don’t know why that piqued my interest, but I think I just noticed it because, well, who really has that button unticked?
Overall Unfriended was very good and I enjoyed it a lot.