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Hi, my name is Jonathan Denard McNeair and I grew up in Lexington, North Carolina, also known as Pig City...Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha...The town is mostly known for its barbeque where they often throw barbeque festivals every October. In my chosen career, I am a self-published author of fiction.

Friday, July 27, 2018

Unfriended (2015)






Long time, no see. So in the wake of the sequel coming out on July 20, Here is the review of Unfriended:


Boy, this was a real stinker. I'm not usually a fan of found-footage movies, but I do tend to enjoy the more atmospheric ones such as The Blair Witch Project. I'm not a huge, huge fan of that movie but I do appreciate the effort by the filmmakers. As for this movie, most of it takes place in skype form. It's a pretty neat concept if it's done with great acting and interesting characters. But unfortunately, it doesn't have that.
Throughout eighty minutes of this movie, we have to deal with the most unpleasant protagonists ever put on film. I know this movie is trying to project the dangers of cyberbullying yet it's done in the most over-the-top way. The kids never get to act like human beings. So what, are teenagers just apathetic? devoid of any emotion?
Nobody is sympathetic, the chain of events unfold like a shitty teen drama, the deaths are silly, the acting is atrocious. It just astounds me how much praise this movie has gotten.
The Story: A group of narcissistic, sociopathic teens are being haunted by a ghost while on a live Skype chat. That ghost reveals herself to be a girl they tormented into suicide a year ago, turning the tables and taking the lives of each perpetrator one by one.




The cast was not so great. Look, I don't mind having unlikeable characters in horror films unless you give them just one ounce of humanity for the audience to empathize with them. But I'm honestly telling you guys, these characters are borderline sociopaths. Not only that but they are blandly written. They are just your everyday typical teenage stock horror characters: you have the main girl and her boyfriend, the aggressive jock, the dumb blond, the mean girl and the goofball. That's it. Not only they are horrible but they are just plain uninteresting.


First, you have Val (pictured in them in the middle), who is the bitchy one in the group. All she pretty much does throughout the whole skype conversation is scowl at the camera and act petty. She and Laura had the most beef since they were very competitive against each other. So of course, she was the one who told Laura to kill herself, not that that was the final blow or anything but it did cause a boomerang effect on her end.


Then you have Kenny (pictured left), the jokester of the group, who is also known to be a drug dealer. Geez, what else is new. He shows absolutely no remorse over Laura Barnes' suicide and even after her death, he still clowns her. See what I mean, the sociopath level is getting at a high here.




Adam is the typical hothead jock of the group, who has a habit of date-raping girls on the side. How quaint.



We soon find out that Adam had a little rendezvous with his friend's girlfriend and not at all apologetic. He has no indoor voice and is constantly waving his gun around to prove his fragile male ego.



Tess is the superficial vapid ditz, who seems to be obsessed with flat ironing her hair. Not only is she a notorious gossip who spread rumors about her friend's eating disorder, she also was the one who defaced Laura Barnes' grave, which is a bit extreme, even for a teen bully. She is quite the kleptomaniac, as it is revealed that she stole $800 from Adam, who she supposedly has a crush on. Okay, first of all, who the hell would have $800 dollars laying around and secondly, how the hell would she have excess to that kind of money? Is she some sort of super hacker or something?


And then we have Mitch, the main character's boyfriend. Since his dear o'l buddy Adam seems to have a love of guns, Mitch has something of a knife fetish. Soon, Laura's ghost exposes him for making out with her at a party while supposedly in a relationship with Claire, which is why he decided to bully Laura along everybody else to get off the hook. Not only that, but he frames his best friend by planting drugs in his car. Wow, these kids are all and out criminals, it's a miracle they're not in a jail cell.



Now it's finally time to save the worst for last. Claire, our 'lovely' protagonist. Oh my god, where to begin? Oh and this is also a spoiler warning, so get prepared:


She is the real culprit in the humiliation of Laura Barnes, thus putting the blame on her so-called friends. On top of that, she cheated on her boyfriend (whom she was saving her virginity to) with his best friend Adam. Her only explanation for this is...it was an accident. How fucking dumb is this girl? what, did she 'accidentally' fell on his penis? lol. It also seems that she doesn't know how to program a computer when it's obvious that she literally spends all her time on social media, even though she has no clue how an anti-virus software works. Our final girl, ladies and gentlemen.


But the high level of stupidity happens when a friend is in trouble. Instead of calling the police like a normal person, she decides to go on chat roulette and make a complete fool of herself. God, how I wanted to smack this girl in the face for being so idiotic. And even after all her friends die, she still proceeds to lie and not fess up. What else does this girl have to lose? Can she be less of a terrible person if her life depends on it?


Okay, let's focus on the directing and suspense, which is pretty lackluster. Although I liked at least one scene in the movie involving this weird esoteric website the characters stumbling across, most of it is just click and point scenes of a teenage girl surfing the web, chatting with her friends, and browsing on social media. A lot of facebook and youtube product placement in this movie. I just found most of the directing boring to be honest.






I find the death scenes to be pretty laughable and poorly executed. Yeah, they're incredibly gory but it's horribly staged at the point of being borderline fake. And just like I said, most of the suspense seems to be focused on Claire's lack of technical skills when it comes to computer engineering. Will Claire be able to get rid of the virus on time? Oh no!
There's just nothing else I can say about this movie. It's pretty much a time waster and there's nothing inventive about it all. It's a dumb teen horror that seems to use social media as a way to get bucks at the box office, nothing more, nothing less.
My Last Word: Don't waste your time on this piece of crap. I highly doubt the sequel would be anything noteworthy either.