What do cyberbulling, suicide, and ghosts have in common? The answer is Unfriended.
On Friday, April 17th, one of the most anticipated scary movies dropped into theaters. Unfriended features six high school students who are terrorized on the anniversary of a friend’s suicide through Skype by an unknown presence that wants revenge.
Unfriended has an interesting concept with a modern twist and carries it in an innovative new angle with technology and social media driving the storytelling. This was a good and bad thing, however. There were 5 to 7 minute stints of just reading text off the screen from Facebook, Youtube, Instagram captions and comments, iMessage or Skype which became overwhelming, exasperating and even tiring. Most of the time Youtube videos were placed on the screen to give insight on character backgrounds.
I do highly recommend the movie for its ability to relate to teens of today and tackle the very serious issues of cyber bullying, the online realm of peer pressure and the growing number of suicides.
This movie may not be as pleasing to horror movie lovers because not much explanation of how Laura’s dead body came back to haunt the characters was given. In addition, the jump scares and graphic images were few and far between and most scary scenes were actually in the trailer. That didn’t take away from the overall story, so pure imagination allowed it to be believable.
This movie offered an hour and 22 minutes of entertainment, and although it probably will not earn a Golden Globe or an Academy Award, it has a bigger message behind it and should not be overlooked in the new struggles of today’s teens.
Social media can be the worst weapon and things you say online can come back to haunt you, literally.
