Antisocial (2013)★★★★☆

I thought I’d start my 366 days of horror with a movie about New Year’s Eve…and the dangers of social media.

Okay, so it’s mostly about the latter and only minimally about the former, but it’s great. Take several young, relatively unknown actors with a decent amount of talent and working chemistry, add in a virus that turns its infected into raving murderers and is spread by…well, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

There are some neat effects, particularly when you start seeing what the infected see, and a great scene with a string of Christmas lights.

My favorite line? “911 isn’t supposed to have an answering machine.”

Much of the exposition is done via videos the main characters watch on a fictional live streaming site and video chats with friends around town via the same site, which is an interesting method that helps hide the mostly terrible dialogue and almost total lack of sympathetic character development throughout. The major reveal goes just a bit beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief, but they don’t dwell on it and the movie had built up enough nail-biting suspense in me that I finished the movie still engaged, entertained, and totally up for a sequel.