Forgive the lack of posts lately, April has been kind of a hectic month for me both professionally and emotionally, plus the lack of any real stand out movies in the past little while have left me with not much to watch. I’ve been on a bit of a dvd binge plus I’ve been doing a little table top gaming and man I should really stop trying to avoid talking about today’s review Unfriended. Fuck it let’s get it over with.
Plot Summary - On the anniversary of the suicide of a student named Laura Barns, Six friends are connected together via Skype Call by an unknown person, who starts threatening to kill them if they do not reveal who posted an embarrassing video of Laura that ultimately led to her suicide. At first thinking it’s all a joke, the mystery person slowly reveals to them just how real it all actually is.
Pros - The only thing I can positively comment on (and I use the term loosely) is the acting and the dialogue. From what I’ve heard it’s mostly ad libbed so while at some points it just devolves into loud swearing it does feel realistic and the cast does do well convincing you that they are indeed terrified.
Cons (SPOILER ALERTS) - First: The elephant in the room of “But it’s social commentary it can’t be that bad right?” Yes it can. See the thing about social commentary is you can say whatever point you want with your story, but if you end up actually either undermining or lessening the impact of your message with the way you tell your story, you can end up rendering it altogether mute. At the end of the film the video poster is revealed and the killer says that they have to now live with what they have done forever, a very powerful and effective move and where the film should have ended…….but then they add in one more cheap jump scare that is basically the person getting killed. That is an ending the SCREAMS studio mandate and if the filmmakers really cared about their message they would’ve told the studio to fuck off and not have added that stupid ending.
Second: The way the film is seen, while interesting in theory, is really stupid. You basically are watching the desktop of one of the people (who if you look around enough on the screen will also tell you who posted the video) and while they try to keep it from going stale by changing what we see, you’re still watching someone fuck around on their computer.
Third: The movie is afraid to go all out with the carnage. If you’ve seen the trailer you’ve seen the goriest part of the film already. Most of the kills are off screen with a couple of quick flashes every few seconds. It’s fucking boring.
Fourth: The killer is hinted to be the ghost of Laura. And while I get that killing people through their computers if they tend to use them a lot would be an easy way of doing, it’s still really fucking stupid.
Fifth and Final: it takes 45 minutes for someone to die in a 90 minute movie, and you don’t even get to see how they die. Waste of fucking time.
Final Solution - 1/10
The two things it does well are so overshadowed by just how mind numbingly dumb and stupid the rest of it is. Unless you’re a fan of lame jump scares avoid it.
I can actually tell you what the next review is going to be and when. The documentary film Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. I have the day off Monday and that’s when it happens to be playing.
So until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment