When I posted my initial review of Unfriended, it was just a couple of hours after seeing the movie. Being late at night and not giving time for the movie to really sink in, I mainly shared my initial thoughts of the movie. This was from seeing the movie the night before opening night. Now that the weekend is wrapping up, I can conclude that almost everyone who wanted to see this movie and then some has seen it. The feedback I'm seeing has been mostly negative, many admitting they went as far as walking out right in the middle of the movie. Now that the movie has sunk in, I still stand in actually enjoying the movie. It's innovative with the use of the computer screen, the dead background silence makes it much more eerie, and Laura is a badass. Plus I think Blaire is pretty hot but that's beside the point.
With all that said, I don't deny that this movie has its flaws, and they are major flaws at that. First of all, the characters - They suck. Blaire is OK. She gets props for being cute and only mildly annoying. She did turn out to be the one who brought all this upon everyone, but we don't find that out until the end. At least there was some substance to her. The other characters were extremely disposable and weren't killed off fast enough. When you're rooting for the villain to win, mainly because the characters suck so bad, that's a huge problem. In fact, the real crazy thing is I feel way way WAY worse for Laura dying than the other characters in the movie. It's like with her I was really hoping she wasn't dead, but with the others it was like "Yeah!".
Which brings me to my next point - I speculated whether Laura was really dead or not in the movie and it looks like that pretty much is the consensus - she really is dead but has come back as an evil ghost. Wha?? That is so STUPID. I guess that was the best way to do things in order to avoid explaining too much of what was happening. It's such a stereotypical move. I mean, I guess it makes more sense how the people die in the movie; she goes to all their houses and kills them. That's just SO CHEAP though. I thought my theory of what happened would have been much more original, much more creative, and while still far-fetched much more realistic. Plus, the use of computers to terrorize people would have been MUCH more plausible! I mean, being an evil ghost, she didn't even need to use the computer. Plus, how do ghosts use computers anyway?
To sum up my theory of what happened and what should have happened:
Laura didn't really die. The only evidence of her dying was the video, which she conned some people into filming and staging the whole thing with a blank. She disappears from home (which was abusive as evidenced by the movie) and the guys who helped film the video sneak her on a boat to India where she learns her 1337 hacking skills after already being a super genius to begin with. On top of being an elite hacker, she also discovers a way to hack into parts of a person's brain via satellite and other signals floating around in the air, which leads to the killings.
But of course I guess it would have been more like a comic book action flick rather than a horror flick, and the filmmakers were going for horror so they had to go the paranormal route instead. Hence the original name of the film: Cybernatural.
But here begs the question: will I see this movie again let alone buy it on DVD? You bet. Despite its flaws, Unfriended was a clever movie that is still enjoyable to watch. Sometimes it's so bad it's good and I think the villain ironically is the one that saves the movie from being a total bomb. So if you haven't seen it already, go check it out!
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
UNFRIENDED - The Review (Contains Spoilers)
UNFRIENDED
Not going to lie, this is one of the first times I've been really excited to see a movie in the theater, let alone a rare and obscure movie. Usually I will count down to when movies like Star Wars or The Hobbit come out. In fact, I only knew about this movie about a month before it came out - when I saw the preview for The Kingsman. I'm not into horror films, especially ones about paranormal activity, but this just looked very intriguing. Everyone knows what happens because the previews have been playing everywhere - a popular girl in high school named Laura Barns has a dirty video of her posted online, which causes people to post nasty things about her on the Internet. Three days later, she kills herself by turning a gun on herself in broad daylight out at her high school. One year after the suicide, she appears anonymously on a Skype group chat, and starts killing off the people on the chat until one tells her who posted the dirty video. This baffled me in so many ways. A computer that could kill people...like HAL 9000? No no no. Who was it pulling the strings? I had to know. As a computer geek, there were a lot of questions I had that needed answering! I couldn't wait to see the movie...
Luckly for me, the theater I live near had an advanced screening the night before the movie would premier in theaters everywhere. I drove to the near empty theater (Thursday night), grabbed my beer at the bar, and headed in where the movie was going to play, only seeing a few people in the audience. Later, more and more people showed - mainly college-aged kids including some hipsters. The previews reminded that I was about to watch a horror movie and hence they needed to show previews for upcoming horror movies.
AND NOW TO THE MOVIE
We see the Universal logo opening, which has a glitching twist to it, obviously referencing the movie we're about to watch.
The entire movie is viewed from the computer screen of the main character named Blaire, played by Shelley Hennig, who you might remember as the girl from Teen Wolf (a show I've never watched). In fact, one of the pages she has open on her browser is the MTV home page for Teen Wolf, which I guess is supposed to be some sort of promo or easter egg? I dunno. So anyways, the movie begins with Blaire viewing the suicide video everyone has seen in the previews, but this time unfiltered. Her fellow classmates are shouting from the background yelling at her to stop but she doesn't listen as we see her pull the trigger and fall over dead, with one person running over to her. Why they just video taped it and didn't, I don't know, interfere somehow, is beyond me. Would Laura have shot them if they interfered? Very possible considering what happens in this movie...
We then cut to Blaire talking to her boyfriend named Mitch on Skype webcam, which almost partook in webcam sex until, SURPRISE SURPRISE, their three other friends Adam, Jess and Ken log on and they partake in a group chat of sorts. However, there seems to be something slightly wrong as they see an anonymous user without video that's on and everyone is confused as to who it is. They all hang up to try to get rid of whoever it is but he won't go away. What's interesting is throughout the movie you'll see Blaire talking on Skype, sending texts on Skype chat and on Facebook, listening to music, searching websites, watching YouTube videos, etc. This entire movie seemed like one big product plug for popular Internet websites. Anyways, Mitch tells Blaire that he received a message from Laura Barns, which Blaire took as a bad joke at first until she received a message from Laura on Facebook. Thinking it's just some creep that somehow hacked into Laura's account, they start suspecting one another of a really tasteless prank. Blaire attempts to unfriend Laura only to find that the Unfriend option is greyed out. She refreshes the page and it shows that Laura has been unfriended, only for Laura to message her back saying "You shouldn't have done that".
They invite on another friend of theirs named Val, who apparently is their friend but not really their friend but some girl who has a bitch reputation...I don't know. Teen drama. They think that she's the one pulling the strings and ask her to quit her shenanigans, but we learn that it isn't her. Shit really starts hitting the fan as we see some dirty videos of Val posted on her Facebook wall, which was made to look like they were posted by Jess. Chaos starts to ensue as they accuse each other of making each other look bad online with dirty photos and the like. Val gets fed up and decides to call the cops. She logs off during this time only to later log on with just her standing very still by a bottle of open bleach, indicating that she swallowed some. She falls over when the cops arrive and they give codes, which Blaire looks up online and determines Val killed herself.
The problem was the whole time I was rooting for the villain Laura, and I guess that's because everyone on the Skype chat was so annoying that I couldn't wait for them to be killed off. Blaire was the only somewhat decent character. but that's not saying much. Things got serious when Laura said they were all going to die if they logged off and started making idle threats that became real. Ken (aka Chunky) was the next one to go. He was the computer geek of the group and had everyone install a trojan program that would rid all their computers of the Laura Virus, which seemed to work at first but only caused a more angry Laura to come back showing a screen, which turned out to be on the floor at Ken's house. We all know from the preview that Ken is a goner when he experiences death by blending machine, which was probably the most graphic scene in the movie. Things were really serious now that they know Laura was on to them and wasn't fooling around.
Laura had the remaining four on the chat play a game called "I never had", which got them to admit dirty little betrayal secrets such as stealing money from one another, ratting someone out, cheating on boyfriends, being a slut, etc., all which caused everyone to want to kill each other before Laura had the chance to. Adam was the next to go, by reading a piece of paper saying not to show it to the screen, which somehow gets him to put a bullet to his head. How...?
Well, now we're down to three. Blaire gets on some random chat site looking for someone random to talk to and finally gets to some guy-girl in Nevada and asks her to call the cops and send them to Jess's address to try to be "undercover" somehow. Well unfortunately that didn't work out all too well because Laura knew what was happening all along and Jess ended up frying herself with...a vibrator? Who knows? She's dead. Two left...
Apparently they're still playing the game from earlier, and the suspense is in the air when Laura starts the countdown for someone to give her an answer. Laura wants Blaire to come clean and tell her who posted the video. Blaire insisted that it wasn't any of them and that they were good people and made a mistake posting the mean comments to the video. Blaire gives in however and admits that Mitch was the one who posted the video, which leads to Mitch stabbing himself in the eye with his big knife and falling over dead, leaving only Blaire.
With only Blaire left, Laura revealed footage from the video that it really was Blaire who videotaped Laura passed out behind the shed and leaked out her nether-regions. It was complete betrayal since they were both best friends, and so Laura turned the tables on her and posted that video linked to Blaire's Facebook account, which led to people slamming her online. Laura logs out of the chat and closes the laptop, and we see Laura jump into the screen roaring before it cuts to black...and that was the end.
SO WHAT DID I THINK?
Well, I thought the movie was very creative, which most independent films usually are. It was a very innovative approach to film, having the whole film being viewed from Blaire's computer screen and showing all the texting she was doing, all the YouTube videos she was watching, all the sites she was looking up, etc. You could tell she was very proficient at using the computer because she moved through sites. The movie did very well by having mostly dead silence and no background music (other than some tunes that play on her computer from some Pandora-like online music player). Was the movie scary? Not really. In fact, like I said before, you're going to find yourself rooting for the villain because the characters in this movie are so douchey that you can't wait for them to get killed off.
The biggest problem I had with the movie is I went in with questions that I was looking forward to getting answered only for them to NOT get answered at all...for the most part. The movie did establish this: Laura really isn't dead, and that really was her causing all the chaos behind a computer. Still, this leaves a lot to be asked. Did Laura stage her whole death, or is she a poltergeist of some sort? Her roaring into the screen made no sense, but I guess the movie was trying to be subtle? Also, how did the people on the chat end up killing themselves? All were acts of suicide it looked like, but what caused them to do it. There are theories floating around that the human brain can be hacked into through a computer, but that possibility was NEVER even addressed in the movie. So I'm guessing the movie makers are indicating that there will be a sequel of some sort? Will we ever learn the answers to these questions, or will we go on forever and ever not knowing?
Maybe that's just the way it was meant to be and how the filmmakers intended for things to be. I definitely would like to see a sequel of some sort, preferably in the form of a TV series where things get more complicated like in the show Lost.
Not going to lie, this is one of the first times I've been really excited to see a movie in the theater, let alone a rare and obscure movie. Usually I will count down to when movies like Star Wars or The Hobbit come out. In fact, I only knew about this movie about a month before it came out - when I saw the preview for The Kingsman. I'm not into horror films, especially ones about paranormal activity, but this just looked very intriguing. Everyone knows what happens because the previews have been playing everywhere - a popular girl in high school named Laura Barns has a dirty video of her posted online, which causes people to post nasty things about her on the Internet. Three days later, she kills herself by turning a gun on herself in broad daylight out at her high school. One year after the suicide, she appears anonymously on a Skype group chat, and starts killing off the people on the chat until one tells her who posted the dirty video. This baffled me in so many ways. A computer that could kill people...like HAL 9000? No no no. Who was it pulling the strings? I had to know. As a computer geek, there were a lot of questions I had that needed answering! I couldn't wait to see the movie...
Luckly for me, the theater I live near had an advanced screening the night before the movie would premier in theaters everywhere. I drove to the near empty theater (Thursday night), grabbed my beer at the bar, and headed in where the movie was going to play, only seeing a few people in the audience. Later, more and more people showed - mainly college-aged kids including some hipsters. The previews reminded that I was about to watch a horror movie and hence they needed to show previews for upcoming horror movies.
AND NOW TO THE MOVIE
We see the Universal logo opening, which has a glitching twist to it, obviously referencing the movie we're about to watch.
The entire movie is viewed from the computer screen of the main character named Blaire, played by Shelley Hennig, who you might remember as the girl from Teen Wolf (a show I've never watched). In fact, one of the pages she has open on her browser is the MTV home page for Teen Wolf, which I guess is supposed to be some sort of promo or easter egg? I dunno. So anyways, the movie begins with Blaire viewing the suicide video everyone has seen in the previews, but this time unfiltered. Her fellow classmates are shouting from the background yelling at her to stop but she doesn't listen as we see her pull the trigger and fall over dead, with one person running over to her. Why they just video taped it and didn't, I don't know, interfere somehow, is beyond me. Would Laura have shot them if they interfered? Very possible considering what happens in this movie...
We then cut to Blaire talking to her boyfriend named Mitch on Skype webcam, which almost partook in webcam sex until, SURPRISE SURPRISE, their three other friends Adam, Jess and Ken log on and they partake in a group chat of sorts. However, there seems to be something slightly wrong as they see an anonymous user without video that's on and everyone is confused as to who it is. They all hang up to try to get rid of whoever it is but he won't go away. What's interesting is throughout the movie you'll see Blaire talking on Skype, sending texts on Skype chat and on Facebook, listening to music, searching websites, watching YouTube videos, etc. This entire movie seemed like one big product plug for popular Internet websites. Anyways, Mitch tells Blaire that he received a message from Laura Barns, which Blaire took as a bad joke at first until she received a message from Laura on Facebook. Thinking it's just some creep that somehow hacked into Laura's account, they start suspecting one another of a really tasteless prank. Blaire attempts to unfriend Laura only to find that the Unfriend option is greyed out. She refreshes the page and it shows that Laura has been unfriended, only for Laura to message her back saying "You shouldn't have done that".
They invite on another friend of theirs named Val, who apparently is their friend but not really their friend but some girl who has a bitch reputation...I don't know. Teen drama. They think that she's the one pulling the strings and ask her to quit her shenanigans, but we learn that it isn't her. Shit really starts hitting the fan as we see some dirty videos of Val posted on her Facebook wall, which was made to look like they were posted by Jess. Chaos starts to ensue as they accuse each other of making each other look bad online with dirty photos and the like. Val gets fed up and decides to call the cops. She logs off during this time only to later log on with just her standing very still by a bottle of open bleach, indicating that she swallowed some. She falls over when the cops arrive and they give codes, which Blaire looks up online and determines Val killed herself.
The problem was the whole time I was rooting for the villain Laura, and I guess that's because everyone on the Skype chat was so annoying that I couldn't wait for them to be killed off. Blaire was the only somewhat decent character. but that's not saying much. Things got serious when Laura said they were all going to die if they logged off and started making idle threats that became real. Ken (aka Chunky) was the next one to go. He was the computer geek of the group and had everyone install a trojan program that would rid all their computers of the Laura Virus, which seemed to work at first but only caused a more angry Laura to come back showing a screen, which turned out to be on the floor at Ken's house. We all know from the preview that Ken is a goner when he experiences death by blending machine, which was probably the most graphic scene in the movie. Things were really serious now that they know Laura was on to them and wasn't fooling around.
Laura had the remaining four on the chat play a game called "I never had", which got them to admit dirty little betrayal secrets such as stealing money from one another, ratting someone out, cheating on boyfriends, being a slut, etc., all which caused everyone to want to kill each other before Laura had the chance to. Adam was the next to go, by reading a piece of paper saying not to show it to the screen, which somehow gets him to put a bullet to his head. How...?
Well, now we're down to three. Blaire gets on some random chat site looking for someone random to talk to and finally gets to some guy-girl in Nevada and asks her to call the cops and send them to Jess's address to try to be "undercover" somehow. Well unfortunately that didn't work out all too well because Laura knew what was happening all along and Jess ended up frying herself with...a vibrator? Who knows? She's dead. Two left...
Apparently they're still playing the game from earlier, and the suspense is in the air when Laura starts the countdown for someone to give her an answer. Laura wants Blaire to come clean and tell her who posted the video. Blaire insisted that it wasn't any of them and that they were good people and made a mistake posting the mean comments to the video. Blaire gives in however and admits that Mitch was the one who posted the video, which leads to Mitch stabbing himself in the eye with his big knife and falling over dead, leaving only Blaire.
With only Blaire left, Laura revealed footage from the video that it really was Blaire who videotaped Laura passed out behind the shed and leaked out her nether-regions. It was complete betrayal since they were both best friends, and so Laura turned the tables on her and posted that video linked to Blaire's Facebook account, which led to people slamming her online. Laura logs out of the chat and closes the laptop, and we see Laura jump into the screen roaring before it cuts to black...and that was the end.
SO WHAT DID I THINK?
Well, I thought the movie was very creative, which most independent films usually are. It was a very innovative approach to film, having the whole film being viewed from Blaire's computer screen and showing all the texting she was doing, all the YouTube videos she was watching, all the sites she was looking up, etc. You could tell she was very proficient at using the computer because she moved through sites. The movie did very well by having mostly dead silence and no background music (other than some tunes that play on her computer from some Pandora-like online music player). Was the movie scary? Not really. In fact, like I said before, you're going to find yourself rooting for the villain because the characters in this movie are so douchey that you can't wait for them to get killed off.
The biggest problem I had with the movie is I went in with questions that I was looking forward to getting answered only for them to NOT get answered at all...for the most part. The movie did establish this: Laura really isn't dead, and that really was her causing all the chaos behind a computer. Still, this leaves a lot to be asked. Did Laura stage her whole death, or is she a poltergeist of some sort? Her roaring into the screen made no sense, but I guess the movie was trying to be subtle? Also, how did the people on the chat end up killing themselves? All were acts of suicide it looked like, but what caused them to do it. There are theories floating around that the human brain can be hacked into through a computer, but that possibility was NEVER even addressed in the movie. So I'm guessing the movie makers are indicating that there will be a sequel of some sort? Will we ever learn the answers to these questions, or will we go on forever and ever not knowing?
Maybe that's just the way it was meant to be and how the filmmakers intended for things to be. I definitely would like to see a sequel of some sort, preferably in the form of a TV series where things get more complicated like in the show Lost.
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