Unfriended Dark Web Review

Heads up, this review does contain spoilers so please don’t read if you’re not interested in that!

I’m pretty sure I didn’t know that ‘Unfriended’ was getting a sequel until I got a trailer in front of a YouTube video I was watching to advertise this movie. It caught my attention so instead of skipping it like I do with most YouTube ads I watched it and was immediately intrigued. I liked that this time they weren’t going for the supernatural element but for the whole hacker dark web thing instead. I’d say it was more realistic but I’m not sure that’s the right word – it just wasn’t supernatural like the first one.

I’m not really sure what I thought of the first one, I like the idea of it and how it’s done but I think the overall storyline could’ve been a bit better. I watched it at home with Becca once and she hated every character and only really liked Val (the mean one, typical Becca) which made me realise that actually none of the characters were particularly likeable. I think that was part of the point by the end but it was just also a bit pointless.

This wasn’t really the case with ‘Unfriended Dark Web’. I actually liked the characters, especially Serena and Nari. The only character I wasn’t sure about was Matias which was a bit annoying as he was the main character. All he seemed to do was make stupid decisions and I’m just not sure I liked him that much.

I’m getting ahead of myself – for those who haven’t seen the trailer, ‘Unfriended Dark Web’ is about a young man, Matias, who takes a laptop after he notices it’s been sitting in lost and found in his local web café for a few weeks. He manages to log into the laptop and begins skyping his friends but notices the system keeps crashing so his friend advises him the laptop might be full. Matias investigates and finds a series of sinister videos and messages which creeps him and his friends out. Before long the group notices they’re being watched by the original owner of the laptop who warns them that if they disconnect or contact the authorities they will die.

Some aspects of the film were a little unrealistic. Matias tries to convince the group that the scary videos and messages were part of a game he was developing in the hopes their lives will be spared but the group are sent a video of one of their friends being pushed off the top of a building. Matias finally finds a way to warn the group that the whole thing is real and the group return to their game night in the hopes of convincing the hackers that they’re unaware of the truth. None of them seem too panicked that their friend is now dead at this point.

Also, I liked the ending and I like the idea but it also seems a bit… Coincidental? How did they know he would take the laptop and go home and skype a group of friends? Sure I skype my friends occasionally but only really when we’re planning something and none of us like doing face cam so we only have the mics on. What if a lonely pensioner had taken the laptop instead of Matias, would they just have stolen it back immediately? It was really very dependent on Matias taking it and I just don’t know how they could’ve predicted that he would. This paragraph probably only makes sense if you’ve watched the film but I didn’t want to spoil the ending.

Equally, Matias was given the opportunity to return the laptop but didn’t because he found a message that intrigued him and that’s how he discovered the videos in the first place. What if the message hadn’t caught his attention though and he’d just shut it down and taken it back? Would the events still have happened or not?

While we’re at it I think logic went a bit out the window at some points. The owner’s email address and password is saved for most websites but Matias deletes this and logs into his own Facebook account – yet he gets pop up Facebook messages for the owners account even though he’s not logged in? Everyone has logged into their own Facebook on a friends computer before and that just doesn’t happen. I suppose it could be argued that the hackers did this to trick Matias in the first place but he didn’t even seem surprised that he was getting notifications for an account he wasn’t logged into.

I’m going off on a tangent here. Regardless of the logic and coincidental unfolding of events I did actually enjoy the movie. It made a lot more sense than the first Unfriended and I’m actually glad they made the sequel this way instead of going for another supernatural movie. This one seemed more like a thriller film than a horror and it worked so much better.

My piece of trivia for this horror review is that in the original plotline the movie was set to follow on from the events of the first movie and revolve around Laura Barns targeting college freshman for their role in her suicide. I’m very glad they didn’t go down that route and instead went with this.

Overall, I did like the movie and I would definitely go and see it again. I recommend it for any horror fan and you don’t need to have seen the original to get this one. In fact, don’t watch the original ‘cos that one pretty much sucked anyway. But go and see this one!

Unfriended: Review by Holly Bareham

Right, I watched this film like last week but I’ve been so busy this past week that I haven’t had the chance to write the review. And maybe I needed some time to decide what my opinion of this film actually was…

I found out about this film because my friend Andrea showed me and Janie the trailer in English and we all thought that it looked amazing so I was practically counting down the days until this film came out. And now I’m really not sure what to think.

The idea was pretty good and the way that the whole film was filmed on a computer screen was an interesting way to film it. I read on iMDB that originally they were filming it scene-by-scene until the actors decided to try and do the whole film in one take and the film was one of the full takes. I thought that was pretty interesting and I guess it made the film look more realistic. I also read that the film was filmed in one house and every actor was just in a different room. I don’t know, I thought all the trivia about the film was interesting.

I’m not entirely sure if we were supposed to feel sorry/like any of the characters because the more I think about it, there wasn’t a single character that I liked. I guess during the film I thought there were a couple of okay characters but then by the end I realised I didn’t like any of them. Was that the point? I’ll never know.

Personally, I thought the film did a good job at keeping the suspense. Maybe sometimes it was overdone. For example, she’d type out a message and sit there for about two minutes straight deciding whether or not to send it until you wanted to scream at her to just make a decision already! It was the same whenever she got a Skype call, she’d definitely take her time deciding if she wanted to accept it or not.

I did like the bit where they were playing ‘never have I ever’ and I loved the tension building between the friends. Also, the scene where Blaire and Adam (I think) both got a piece of paper – which sounds completely uninteresting but if you watch it then it’s a lot better than you think.

I did find it pretty scary though and that’s obviously the intention of the film so maybe overall it was a success. The last ten seconds or so did annoy me because I feel like it took away some of the scares that I had been enjoying for most of the film. I guess you’ll have to judge that for yourself though. If you’re looking to be relatively scared and want to see a new take on the horror genre then I’d recommend this film. I don’t think it’ll knock your socks off or anything though.