Unfriended (2014)★★★☆☆

I think this was one of the first movies to be told entirely through computer screens and instant messaging and video chat. Conceptually, that’s really neat! I love that filmmakers are using technologies to their advantage to tell new stories and new kinds of stories!

But this one fell pretty flat for me, on a number of levels.

(Probably spoilers, but it’s kind of predictable anyway…) First off, none of these characters are likable. They’re a bunch of bratty high schoolers who, it turns out, bullied a classmate into killing herself and have also just generally been terrible to each other for years.

I swear, the filmmakers wrote these characters to be the least sympathetic characters possible..but even as you’re rooting for their deaths, what you see on screen isn’t nearly as cathartic or satisfying as you’d hope. It’s just less scary to watch the Skype call freeze and then see an unmoving dead body than to actually see the gory death on screen?

Okay, okay, you get SOME of that, but it’s still peppered with screen freezes, call drops, and pixelation, so this is like “we’re sorry, we’re having some technical difficulties” the movie as opposed to “some bratty kids get what’s been coming to them.”

What it’s got going for it is that it’s short, it doesn’t really drag on, and the actors are believable. Some of the tech stuff isn’t believable, but for a quick background watch, this is suitable.