Unfriended (2014) Review

So last night I was waiting for my tea and messing around on the internet as a result I lost track of time and before I knew it I needed something to watch while I ate. So I flicked Sky movies on and picked the first “horror” film I saw, it happened to be this and the outcome was a pleasant surprise.

The film is all set from the screen of the main characters computer, as a result all we see is small video boxes of each character as they chat among themselves, along with various private chats through Facebook screens and imessaging thingy. At first I thought this was going to be off putting but once I got used to it I found it was a nice little feature.

The films view point is something I’ve not seen before

The story is about a bunch of friends who discover someone is logged into their little chat group and they can’t get rid of them. Eventually they start getting messages from the account of a dead girl, a girl who in fact committed suicide after a video of her in a rather unpleasant position was posted onto the internet. As the movie unfolds we realise that this group of seemingly innocent kids have a lot of dirty secrets some related to the suicide and some not, we eventually find out that they’re pretty much a bunch of arseholes.

The Good

The premise of the film is great, once you get used to the fact it all takes place from the screen of one persons laptop. As their filthy secrets are revealed the film gets more dramatic and kept me quite gripped looking forward to seeing how it all ended.

It was a nice touch to see peoples webcams stop and stutter occasionally

The acting was surprisingly good, I’ve read that quite a bit of it came from the actors not knowing what situation their character would be put in and and as such had to react on the spot. Whilst it wasn’t Oscar worthy, every character was very believable and played their part excellently.

The Bad

Personally I liked the view point of the film but I could understand if it annoyed some people. Other than that it’s just small things, I think they could have made the deaths more shocking and gruesome given that it’s done through the jerky and not fully clear view of a webcam there could have been more over the top kills in the film.

Another negative is that all great horror films are rewatchable over and over again. This However is a watch once and probably never again type of film!

Even features the stereotypical slightly pervy stoner us horror fans are very used to by now!

Overall I found this film to be a pleasant surprise, sure it could have been better but then so could most films. A few minor points dragged down the overall rating I’ll give this film, it was still very enjoyable and worth a watch! The fact that this film apparently cost only 1 million dollars to make and managed to gross around 30 million makes me hopeful that we may see a sequel of some sorts in the future.

Overall Score