Unfriended

Director: Levan Gabriadze
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 2.0

A group of plugged-in high school students (including Shelley Hennig and Moses Storm) try having a conversation via video chat one night but there is a mysterious "hacker" that joins the chat (uninvited) and ends up being the cyber-spectre (?) of a former bullied "friend" of theirs that wants revenge. Truly innovative from a technical point of view - horror in the age of social media! - with some realistic rendering glitches anyone who's ever used Skype should be aware of, but the gimmick actually proves to be its own undoing: it becomes tedious once their juvenile issues ("cheating," backstabbing, rumor-mongering) come to the forefront and it's only a matter of time before the rather unpleasant characters start dying/"committing suicide" in silly fashion. It's intended as a 'hip' PSA against cyber-bulling which, sadly, has led to young people taking their own lives ... although forgive my bluntness, but the video posted of Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) having soiled herself, while embarrassing, is nothing out of the ordinary from what I've seen from a simple trip through the Internet. Coincidentally, the optimum way to screen this is not in a movie theatre, but on one's own laptop, in a dark bedroom, wearing headphones.