MOVIE REVIEW - Unfriended

I have to hand it to Unfriended in one regard, you have never seen a movie like it.

Unfriended is a new teen slasher flick of sorts that can also serve a wake up call to parents about what their kids are doing online. More on that in a minute.  This movie is based in part in reality, and part in the supernatural. 

This movie right up front, is a one shot movie where you are watching on an angle that never changes.  You are watching 6 high school teens being terrorized by some unknown entity during a 6 way video chat online.  Yeah I know, that sounds silly and some of this is.  And some of this is eye opening.

A bit of back story, a young girl named Laura Barns commits suicide a year before our movie begins. She killed herself because of an insanely embarrassing video someone posted of her drunk, passed out and in the most vulnerable and humiliating position imaginable for a young woman.  Now as these 6 kids chat, an unknown person is tagging along in the chat, and actually controlling it. It appears to be the ghost of Laura Barns who is back to take her revenge.  She now becomes a real life cyber-bully, bent on killing these kids.

Look,  clearly not any of this really makes sense  - in a literal sense.  And of course ghosts don't come back and make kids kill themselves, or are killed by some unknown force.  But this does let us inside the lives of teens, and what they are doing online in their rooms when the door is closed.  It also makes a very strong case and point that once something is out there online, it it always out there. And there are consequences.

This movie is very tidy, checking in at about an hour-twenty.  And that's a good thing because you can only watch this one shot computer screen for so long.  This is imaginative movie making to be honest, but this falls a bit short, as this could have been much better if some of the decisions in the story would have been better, and a bit better told.

Word though to parents.  This movie allows us way inside teen chats, and showcases their computer savvy.  If you ever have wondered what might be really going on after bed time, this will make many consider pulling the plug on the computer in the room at night.  Even though this is an extreme scenario, there is a shred of truth to it all that cannot be denied.

Unfriended.  Teens will love this movie.