By Keri O’Shea and Ben Bussey
Given how Blumhouse Productions have come to more or less completely dominate theatrically released horror these last few years, and how frequently their output leans toward ghost stories and/or found footage, at a glance it’s easy to assume their latest release Unfriended might not offer anything new. However, your intrepid BAH editors were sufficiently intrigued by the trailer and premise for director Levan Gabriadze’s film to venture out to the cinema on opening night – and, happily enough, wound up pretty glad they did.
Read on for their largely spoiler-free reflections, conducted as ever in a Facebook message chat – which seemed a little too appropriate under the circumstances…
Ben
(Checking in first) Right then – ready when you are.
Are you there?
OMG WHY ARENT YOU REPLYING
STOP FREAKING ME OUT UGH
DO NOT ANSWER IT KERI! NOOOOO!!!
Keri
Ha ha! Sorry Ben, contrary to our young protagonists I just had to wash up. Right, then…
Ben
Ah yes, the key thing that sets us apart from them – responsibilities!
Keri
Indeed!
Ben
Beyond the social responsibilities so central to the film, of course.
Keri
Well, I think that brings us on to one of the strong suits of the film, personally. It did a good job of capturing lolspeak in its natural environment…
Ben
Definitely. While I don’t personally use Skype, everything else about how the action played out felt very true indeed to the contemporary online experience. Well, I haven’t been stalked by a ghost, but you get the drift.
Keri
As I’m talking to you, I’m skipping back and forth between Last.fm, Tumblr and Twitter, so although I’m more or less a generation older than those kids in the film, it all rings very true! It was a clever framework – having everything unfolding via the different sites and messages received by one girl. Multi-media horror.
Ben
So how do we class Unfriended – a genuinely new angle on found footage, or something all of its own?
Keri
I do think it’s a new angle, yeah, even if not a new genre altogether. It happens in real time for one thing, so it disposes of the whole ‘tapes found somewhere’ shtick which dogs a lot of movies. Also, although you have young people zipping around between Skype and other sites, it all occurs within the space confines of a laptop – which again, gets rid of a lot of tropes we’re tired with. (Well, I am.)
Ben
Yeah, you’re definitely not alone on having long since grown exhausted with the found footage routine. As you’re well aware, whenever we get the screener discs in for the latest straight-to-DVD found footage movie, it’s become like an unlucky dip for the BAH writing team; nobody wants them, but everyone has to take one for the team now and then. Sitting down to watch them, I’m invariably bored shitless within half an hour if not sooner. That’s what made Unfriended so very refreshing: I was honestly never bored, not for a moment. Annoyed occasionally, but definitely not bored.
Keri
Yep – it did have a good pace. It gave just enough in terms of characterisation for us to accept, then ploughed on with its story. So – what annoyed you then?
Ben
I guess once we reached the final act and all the adolescent drama came to the forefront. I accept that it was necessary for the narrative and central theme, but as someone once said, I’m too old for that shit. I just wanted to slap them all and say “wait until you’ve got bills to pay you little ingrates. And get off my lawn.”
Keri
They were definitely Valley brats, yeah.
Ben
Of course, having said all that – young people do genuinely get depressed, even suicidal over this kind of teenage drama, as petty as a lot of it might seem to us jaded old codgers. So Unfriended is definitely addressing pertinent issues in an effective way – and crucially, I think, not in a judgemental way. The sexual politics of this one sit a lot better with me than those of It Follows.
Keri
On that topic, another thing it did well was illustrate how all proportion can go out of the window with things of an online nature. I mean, even we see it – people who seem to live for FB, or on the reverse of that, people who have no bearing to their online persona, and seem genuinely surprised when it turns out someone’s none-too-pleased by their online actions. But the way in which a moment’s joking around for one person can be life-changing (and even life-ending) for another… I don’t think the internet and etiquette have really caught up to one another, try as we might to promote this.
Ben
Trial by social media doesn’t look likely to die out anytime soon, alas.
Keri
And as such, for a 17 year old, being shamed online not only has massive significance, but to the perpetrators it’s something and nothing a lot of the time. “I didn’t mean anything by it” etc. I think the film wove a moral in about that… like, how passively Blaire, the main character, is revisiting a Youtube clip of their old classmate’s suicide… We’re meant to be revulsed, surely.
Ben
I’m SO glad all this wasn’t around when I was a teen. Back then if we used the internet at all it was to wait an entire day for a Quicktime video to load only for it to freeze within 0.5 seconds.
Keri
Ha ha, halcyon days.
Ben
But I digress… yeah, the seemingly casual viewing of a suicide video – right down to the fact that Blaire stops watching almost as soon as the gun goes off, despite the fact that we see there’s another minute or so of footage left. That clinical sense of detachment the internet can provide, making it all seem less real somehow. In a way – and I can’t quite believe I’m about to make this comparison considering how I hate the film in question – it brings to mind Diary of the Dead, which regularly beats us over the head with the message of how this generation seems incapable of processing events without video footage. The difference is the makers of Unfriended quite clearly understand how modern social media works, whilst Romero didn’t seem to really connect with what he was trying to tackle at all.
Keri
It was an odd blend of old ghost fable and modern, wasn’t it? The whole ‘one year since’ idea is as old as the hills…
Ben
Yeah, it’s like Prom Night or any number of bog standard slashers all over again. That’s another reason I enjoyed the film so much more than I was expecting – that it took such a stock premise, and a semi-found footage approach, yet made it feel genuinely fresh and engaging.
Keri
It knew when to poke fun at itself too…which can be risky, as it can blow the suspense altogether. Here, though, seeing as how this is the internet we’re talking about, it fitted very well.
Ben
The use of music was quite good. Funny yet creepy, kind of in the same vein as a Freddy Krueger joke. I did wonder if some of the deaths were a little too goofy, though.
Keri
I personally found it a lot creepier when the footage just started to warp and then went out altogether. You have to admit, when it starts doing that it’s pretty horrible. Mind you, I had a terror of Max Headroom as a kid so any sort of looping or similar…..UGH OMG
Ben
I liked how they did the scrambling image on the Universal logo at the opening too. I’m sure we all thought for a second, “oh great, the digital projector’s fucked!”
Keri
Well considering where we were watching it..! Wasn’t beyond possibility. But yeah, good move by them. And then the Chatroulette scenes, ha ha – standard.
Ben
Not nearly enough cocks, surely?
Keri
Well – at least they were in some way representative!
Ben
Going back to the subject of where we were watching it – I suspect we were among the oldest people in the room, but even so it was a very well behaved young audience. This definitely had some bearing on my own enjoyment of Unfriended, as I know a big part of what puts a lot of more devoted horror fans off mainstream films is how frequently the screens seem to be full of – well – dickheads.
Keri
Yeah, spotty herberts on an endurance mission, or else people who couldn’t put their phones away if they tried. Which led to one of the funniest moments for me last night – when the film had a mobile buzzing on silent and at least ten teenagers jumped out of their skins thinking it was theirs!
Ben
Ha! I must have missed that.
Keri
Look, if that’s what it takes to get people to turn the fucking things off then I welcome the new wave of internet ghosts.
Ben
Yep. Turn it off or Laura Barns will get you. But going back to what I was saying about being engaged from start to finish – what I particularly enjoyed about Unfriended was how it demanded you pay attention throughout, not just listening and watching several screens but reading as well. Quite a feat when you consider how subtitle-averse the wider audience tends to be. Contrast that with the standard found footage approach, where there are so many lulls, so many protracted silences, it’s no wonder people in the audience get vocal, impatient and unruly.
Keri
True. And as you say, the written English was truncated and sometimes a bit of a challenge (for us, I mean), but you had to read and watch carefully. Plus no one once said ‘Why are you filming?’ which is always a plus…
Ben
Indeed – and little to no shakey cam!
Keri
There is a God.
Ben
Hallelujah, Hare Krishna.
Keri
So – I guess we have pretty much said all we might want about Unfriended.
Ben
Yeah, I think we’ve just about covered it. I haven’t been looking too closely at the reviews but I gather it’s been getting a bit of a lukewarm response – so once again, call us Contrary as Fuck.
That said – I’m not too encouraged to hear they’re already working on a sequel. I really feel this would work best as a one-off unless they’ve got something very special planned. We don’t need another Paranormal Activity, as Tina Turner might have once sung…
Keri
Overall, I liked it. Although it used a few elements I definitely don’t like usually (bratty teens, for one) it did enough with them to make it work. I think its frame was ingenious and by and large, used to good effect (a few quibbles about what was shown and what wasn’t notwithstanding). It would be difficult to repeat this success and engage viewers all over again.
(Moment of no activity)
Ben
Keri are you there?
Why aren’t you replying???
OMG WHATS HAPPENING ARGHHH
Keri
OMG IS THIS YOU
QUIT IT
Ben
Never have I ever… walked out of a Blumhouse film thinking “wow, that actually is one of the best new horrors I’ve seen for a while.”
Keri
Likewise! Besties.
Unfriended is in cinemas now, from Universal.