#39 - Unfriended (2015)

 

Unfriended (2015)

(dir. Levan Gabriadze)

On the anniversary of their friend Laura's suicide, a group of friends are chatting online via Skype when a mysterious user joins their call. They are unable to kick the caller out, and soon it starts taking control of their computers and social media accounts to harass them. Basically, spooky internet ghost.

This is better than I expected, but I expected it to be bad so that's not saying much. It starts off fairly strong but gets kind of lame by the end. The internet stuff is sometimes realistic but more often does whatever the hell it wants for dramatic effect. Like you can be on a video call with 5 people and watch YouTube at the same time but when you load an image it goes line by line like you're on a 28k modem in the mid-90s? I know that's a dumb nitpick, but the movie is full of things like that and it's considerably less effective the farther it gets from reality.

As far as the genre of "horror movies that take place entirely on a computer desktop", this is pretty middle-of-the-road. It's much weaker than The Den or Host, but it's not totally awful either.