Unfriended: Dark Web (Review)
In A Bizarre Twist, Unfriended: Dark Web is the Best New Movie In Theaters This Weekend.
I’ll admit that I wasn’t prepared to give Unfriended: Dark Web a fair chance on the big screen. After all, it’s a sequel to one of the least memorable modern horror films in recent memory (and I was a lot of them). Luckily, it has absolutely nothing to do with the original. Unluckily, I was so engrossed in the movie that I don’t have many notes for me to go off of for this reviews. In other words, it’s a taut horror film that sucks you in and makes it nearly impossible to tear your eyes away from it.
The concept for Unfriended: Dark Web is pretty basic at first glance. The entire film is a cat and mouse game between a few friends enjoying an online skype chat and some hackers trying to get their stolen computer back. It all seems very cut and dry in the first ten minutes of the movie or so. However, once the ball gets rolling, this movie starts a rapid descent into darkness. Where Unfriended: Dark Web succeeds is that it embraces the core concept of the horror genre, and that’s the slow build. Horror movies have never been about the moment a killer jumps out and stabs the stupid teenage counselor. It’s about the closed door behind the counselor that they seem oblivious to as it slowly starts to open. In essence, it’s the build-up to that jump scare that matters the most. If you get that right, then the audience will gasp every time.
The entire film is shown from the perspective of what’s on the screen of a laptop one of the friends is using. While it might seem like a gimmick that is growing disturbingly quickly in Hollywood, much like the found footage craze from the beginning of the millennium, instead director/ writer Stephen Susco uses it to narrow the focus of the movie until it’s laser sharp. This pays off tremendously as the stakes continue to rise over the course of Unfriended: Dark Web. It creates an almost claustrophobic sense of being trapped right along with the heroes which just manages to make you more and more empathetic for them. By the end, you start to genuinely care for the well being of this group of friends, even if some of them are a bit annoying and others are, well, laptop thieves.
So, how do you make a good movie out of what is basically the audience watching something unfold on a computer screen? You gather a pretty impressive group of actors, including the likes of Betty Gabriel who appeared earlier in one of my favorite film of 2018 so far. Joining her are Rebecca Ritten, Savira Windyani, Andrew Lees, Colin Woodell and Chelsea Alden. However, the most interesting character addition in the film is Stephanie Nogueras, who plays a deaf girl dealing with relationship issues with the protagonist (Woodell). At first, it seems weird that the two communicate over video chat and yet, Woodell can’t use fluent (or even passable) sign language. The two have been dating for what appears to be a year and he’s a bumbling idiot when it comes to communicating with her outside of texting. However, the purpose for this becomes all too clear and even brilliant by the end. Moreover, I’m ecstatic over the diversity of the group of friends, which includes POC’s, a gay couple, and, of course, a hearing-impaired character. This is a wonderful step in the right direction for the type of diversity we’re so desperate for in movies. It’s not perfect, but it’s still great to see.
What makes Unfriended: Dark Web so haunting is the creative ways in which the hackers torment the group of friends. One of them took a laptop that had been in a lost and found for weeks in order to use it for a noble project he’s been working on. However, the laptop is filled with disturbing custom made snuff films that the group has been selling on the darknet (the illegal internet). After uncovering the gut-wrenching footage (which only implies and never shows, another brilliant move by Susco) the group finds themselves hunted by the bad guys almost as though they were sharks circling them in the ocean. Susco goes on to show just how easily technology can be turned against people with a little bit of thinking outside the box. I really don’t want to spoil it for you, but trust me, the evil group of hackers shows the true scope of their abilities by displaying the steps in which they got after each of the friends by showing their methods to the others, who are forced to watch helplessly. I have to hand it to Susco again because the methods and concepts he grants his villains will make you squirm in your seat as you slowly realize what’s about to come next.
While Unfriended: Dark Web might not be a traditionally “good movie” it’s a pretty great horror movie, something we’ve been sorely lacking this year with the likes of Insidious: The Last Key and The First Purge. While it might be a far cry from Hereditary (the best new horror movie of 2018, so far), the big difference is that I actually enjoyed watching Unfriended: Dark Web and it’s definitely a movie I’ll be tempted to watch again in the future. More importantly, it’s introduced me to a director that I’m going to be keen to watch after he’s proven just what a brilliantly dark vision he has. To him, I say, “well done Mr. Susco. What do you have for us next?”
