Unfriended *** (2014, Shelley Hennig, Moses Jacob Storm, Renee Olstead, Jacob Wysocki, Will Peltz, Heather Sossaman, Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson) – Movie Review

Shelley Hennig stars as one of several online chat room friends who are haunted and terrorised by somebody or something using the account of their dead friend. The ‘unfriend’ plans to torment them online and then kill them one by one.

A variation on the found footage genre, the entire film is set in real time on the one character’s computer screen. Fresno, California, high school student Blaire Lily (Hennig) watches a recording of the suicide her childhood friend Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) after incessant online abuse from a YouTube video one year ago. She is then contacted over Skype by her boyfriend Mitch Roussel (Moses Jacob Storm).

Their sexy video call is interrupted by three of their friends: Jess Felton (Renee Olstead), Ken Smith (Jacob Wysocki), and Adam Sewell (Will Peltz), as well as an unnamed, faceless account with the screen name billie227.

Writer Nelson Greaves’s low-rent premise is fine, but, with only a computer screen to watch for an hour and a half, it feels like a bit of a waste of time going out to the cinema and the plot gets draggy and repetitive. Nevertheless, Leo Gabriadze’s cyber horror thriller is done with expertise and the courage of its conviction. The teen characters are all quite irritating, so you aren’t really much concerned with their survival, but they are well played by the actors.

Unfriended had its world premiere on July 20 2014 at the Fantasia Festival and screened on the film festival circuit under the title of Cybernatural. The $1million budget film has received some positive reviews and grossed over $25 million worldwide.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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