Film: Jessica Kellgren-Hayes

The horror of social media

A few weeks ago in this column I wrote about horror films and how they have adapted to suit the modern world (what do directors do when every character has a mobile phone and is capable of calling for help or just Googling how to stop the demon?) and in the latest PostFeature we reviewed new horror Unfriended. Zombies and Vampires are no longer the threat- it’s 2015 and there are far scarier things among us: Snapchat, awkward Facebook photos, trolling, Skype calls when you’re not looking your best…

Unfriended is a Millennial-friendly slickly scary flick that anyone over the age of 40 will struggle to understand but, should they be parents, should certainly scare their socks off! We open with a YouTube video of one time high-school queen Laura Barnes shooting herself in the head after prolonged online public shaming. It is the one-year-anniversary of her suicide and of course her ghost, as all ghosts do, pays close attention to the calendar.

Possibly you’re thinking that this doesn’t sound too radical or exciting yet but Unfriended is novel in that it consists of one long, beautifully faked shot of a girl’s computer screen. Within that screen there are texts, instant messages and Skype boxes containing the faces of main character Blaire’s five closest friends- her boyfriend, his best friend, a fat guy, a pouty blonde, and a sensitive redhead- and one dead ex-friend. The internet might have killed Laura Barnes but now that she’s dead she’ll use it to her advantage.
With no soundtrack the score consists of only songs played by the characters on their computers and a lot of clacking typing that evokes the weird clicking sounds coming out of vengeful Japanese/Korean wraiths in theRing and Grudge films. At times the picture fragments as the streaming lags and images pixelate. Characters heads ghost across the screen. The message of the film- other than ‘if you bully someone online, their ghost will use the internet to dismember you’- may be that whilst social media connects us, it also fragments us… These six friends sit alone in separate houses and that may ultimately be their downfall as they are unable to help each other or work as a team.

Watching Unfriended on a laptop will be too meta for words but that is how this film is most likely to be seen by its teen audience. The point is that those of us who spend our evenings keeping tabs on one another via Skype, Facebook and other social media tools will perfectly understand the syntax of the film. It’s almost laugh—out-loud funny when what is often known as “the spinning wheel of death” denotes just that.

For more on Unfriended and other films out this week, tune in to PostFeature at 6.30pm on Wednesday or check the listings in this magazine for your catch up options.

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