Unfriended
3 Waffles!

In Unfriended, it has been one year since the horrible suicide of teenager Laura Barnes (Heather Sossaman). On the evening of the anniversary, Blaire (Shelley Hennig) and her pals are spending the night together on Skype, when a strange, anonymous figure joins the conversation.

This troublemaker seems to have hacked into Laura’s old accounts, and wants to play some games to reveal the dirty little secrets each kid has been trying to hide, especially their role in the embarrassing video posted on YouTube that led to Laura being ridiculed and cyberbullied.

Is anyone innocent?

Can anyone escape?

Who is this stranger?

Unfriended might sound like a lame attempt to appropriate modern technology to desperately appeal to younger people, but director Levan Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves show they can make the movie more than a cheap stunt. They meld modern technology with traditional suspense and thrills to make this a movie worth checking out, even if no one will ever mistake you for a millennial.

Some of Unfriended might sound gimmicky as the entire movie plays out as if we are watching Blaire’s computer screen. In a twist on the found footage genre, we see the different windows she opens, the searches she conducts, the web pages she reads and more in a first person perspective.

Gabriadze skillfully uses this canvass to give the audience a great deal of visual stimulation, but, also, some intellectual and emotional stimulation as well as we are invited to see the snarky comments being sent to the gang, find ourselves teased with half played videos to make us wonder what comes next, and hear the classic bumps in the middle of the night as we fear what is making noise behind a character or notice movements in the dark. Even how Blaire edits the responses she types to different characters gives us a whole new way to understand what is happening in her mind.

Greaves also adds another layer reminiscent of classic horror movies. Despite the teens’ constant protestations that they are, “good people,” every twist and turn kind of makes you wonder if these kids are getting some sort of comeuppance or paying for a sin they have committed.

Granted, each one might be paying too high of a price, but it wouldn’t be a horror movie if the penalty fit the crime. This added question of ethics and morality is just the right spice of complexity to make Unfriended better than the average horror movie about teens in peril.

Unfriended could be more intense. Gabriadze needs to provide a few more shocks and scares, but the cast keeps the intensity level up as we watch each individual reaction and the changing looks on their faces as things get real.

Unfriended is rated R for violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality, and drug and alcohol use - all involving teens.