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Two decades ago, communication consisted of passing notes in class and calling friends on their family’s landline. Now, we’re constantly bombarded by various forms of communication: texts, chats, tweets, Facebook posts, and so much more. And while that’s great for keeping in touch, it also comes with its share of dangers—as a group of teens discover in the cyberthriller Unfriended.
Unfriended takes place entirely on a teenage girl’s computer screen. Blaire (Shelley Hennig) is chatting with her boyfriend, Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm), and four other friends when they all begin receiving strange messages from someone claiming to be a classmate who killed herself exactly one year ago. At first, it seems like just a cruel joke, but the mysterious cyberstalker seems intent on revealing their dark secrets and making them pay for the horrible things they’ve done. And when the first of the six dies in a horrible way, the others begin to realize that they’re experiencing something darker and deadlier than a teenage prank.
The idea behind Unfriended is a brilliant one. Cyberbullying is an important issue—one that affects the lives of multitudes of teens every single day. And the use of video chats, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and instant messages to offer up this cautionary tale is certainly unique.
Unfortunately, though, the finished product simply isn’t all that interesting. Perhaps younger audiences will relate to the timely topic. Maybe they’ll enjoy the clever but gimmicky twist on found footage filmmaking. But the R rating could limit the target audience—and, for older viewers, there just isn’t much to love about this tedious teen thriller.
The characters here are all thoughtless and self-absorbed. Though they’re supposed to be friends, they’re quick to stab each other in the back. And the more their dark secrets are revealed, the less likable they all become—and the less audiences will care about their fate. Even the bullied dead girl was a bully—which means that her vengeful ghost isn’t an especially sympathetic character, either.
The characters’ various methods of communication, meanwhile, may be realistic, but that doesn’t make them even the slightest bit thrilling. So much time is spent clicking from one window to another, typing and retyping, copying and pasting, and maximizing various video feeds that the story drags. Very little happens—and even when one of the characters finally meets his or her final log-out, it isn’t nearly as terrifying as it could have been.
To be fair, the young cast does an impressive job of selling the story; they all seem perfectly natural in their roles. But while they do their best to make the film believable, they can’t make it any less annoying.
Though it’s built on a clever—and noteworthy—concept, Unfriended is little more than a dull teen drama that’s seasoned with the occasional snippet of horror. In the end, it’s most likely even less absorbing than your last attempt at a video chat with your parents.
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