Movie Review: Unfriended

Revenge finds its way online in this found footage horror. A group of teens are terrorized by an online presence seeking vengeance for the death of a classmate they shamed into suicide a year earlier. Told through a series of quickly shifting chat windows and social-media screens, our troupe of believable (and slightly unbearable) teens are picked off one by one. A cyber-bullying victim who was driven to turn a gun on herself after a hounding on social media extracts a gruesome digital revenge when her malevolent spirit returns a year after her death. She literally pops up via Skype on the computer screens of the six high school buddies and manipulates their deaths one-by-one as the others look on in horror. 

Unfriended is ingenious cybernatural thriller that unfolds through Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.  It's a ludicrous concept and there's not much about the film that won't seem predictable, but the enjoyment and terror comes in the execution. Unfriended is another example of a modern horror film that is more interesting than it is entertaining or well, scary. There is some spark of creativity and vision here in that we are as isolated and helpless as the protagonist while her friends are subjected to the unseen hand of brutal righteous vengeance. 

Easily stands alongside the original Blair Witch Project and the best of the Paranormal Activity films as a prime example of using household technology to intervene a nerve-jangling frightfest. For all its flaws, by injecting the evil into something we are all familiar with. Unfriended manages to deliver a uniquely unnerving tone in a surprisingly traditional way. Overall, Unfriended is fresh, original and genuinely innovative and experimental. 

My Verdict: 3.5/5