While I certainly wouldn’t want to watch many movies like
Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended, a film that consists of one long take of a
computer screen that constantly reconfigures itself depending on the number of
people participating in what becomes the video chat from hell, it does prove to
be an intriguing visualization of the dangers of on-line chatting. While one would think that such an approach
would result in a static exercise, the film’s taut 82-minute running time,
enthusiastic cast and imaginative script prevent this from happening. The result is an effective cautionary tale
for the 21st century as the young protagonists learn a hard lesson
about the dangers of cyber-bullying and come to the realization that the sense
of anonymity and safety that comes from sitting alone in front of a computer
screen is nothing but an illusion.
The film gets off to a quiet start as we see All-American
girl Blair (Shelley Hennig) and her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm) flirt
via Skype and speak of a very big date that’s coming up before being
interrupted by their friends Jess, Adam, Val and Ken (Renee Olstead, Will Peltz,
Courtney Halverson & Jacob Wysocki) who crash their call and join their
on-line chat. Piggybacking on their call
is another participant whose video feed is disabled yet is able to communicate
with the others via typed messages that become increasingly threatening as the
night goes on. The intruder claims to be
Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), a classmate of theirs who committed suicide a
year earlier. Seems an embarrassing
video of her was posted on-line and out of shame, she killed herself in a
public forum, an act that was also caught on camera.
Initially, the six soon-to-be-ex-friends think this is
nothing more than a tasteless joke, but it soon becomes evident that this ghost
in the machine has an ulterior motive. It forces them to play various deadly
games in which they are each forced to reveal various sordid secrets they’re
harboring. If they refuse, they’re
killed in particularly gruesome manner.
If they play along and confess to their sins, a wave of shame storming
and ridicule descends upon them, putting them in the same situation Laura found
herself in.
This is an interesting premise and the only reason it works
is because of the work of the young cast.
Playing off no one, simply reacting to video feeds they would have to
imagine, the six principals throw themselves into their roles with an abandon
that’s admirable. Each begins with the
overbearing, cocky attitude that only a teenager can truly inhabit only to be
reduced to angry, blubbering fools who don’t have the moral fortitude to face
up to their mistakes. Gabriadze utilizes
many long takes for each separate screen that appears allowing the actors to
fully explore the range of emotions without having to pause and regroup for
numerous takes. This allows the suspense
to grow organically on-screen and the result is amazing, both in terms of the
emotional reactions on display and the ever-mounting sense of terror the
audience is subjected to. All in all,
this is a very effective approach.
That’s not to say that the film is without its faults. The
grisly fates that befall these amoral bullies, while suggesting that a
supernatural entity is at work, defy logic with some of them obviously staged
simply for effect. Had these been
anchored a bit more in reality, Gabriadze would have had a classic on his
hands. As it is, Unfriended is a solid
thriller that speaks to the dangers of on-line communications. As is pointed out to one of the characters,
what appears in cyberspace stays there forever; it can never be removed, erased
or forgotten, much like the shame of sins that won’t be acknowledged and atoned
for.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.
