HORROR; 1hr 23min
STARRING: Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, Heather Sossaman
Skype fright: Hennig
As its most debased, the Internet plumbs vile depths. No headline news there — but what about murderous transmissions from beyond the grave? Running in real time, Unfriended is the apparent online haunting by a vindictive, dead teenage girl of her former classmates. Literally bullied to death, Laura (Sossaman) shot herself one year before — of course it was captured on YouTube. On the macabre anniversary of her demise, Blaire (Hennig), Mitch (Storm), Jess (Olstead), Ken (Wysocki) and Adam (Peltz) are interrupted in a Skype schmooze by the anonymous billie227, claiming to be Laura and single-mindedly intent on getting her own back.
Pitched squarely at the compu-savvy, the entire, hyper creepshow is staged on Blaire’s multi-paned computer screen, which had to be a handful of juggling balls for director Levan Gabriadze. Computers create an automatic remove, for one thing, let alone for a cast repeatedly reduced to postage stamp–sized head shots while clicking and emoting for their lives. The charged ensemble roars through the gamut of panic, taking puzzlement to unbridled hysteria in bite-sized leaps and bounds. The fractured and isolated sight of them, bound in inconceivable horror yet irredeemably alone, is a consummate jigsaw of cyberhell.
