Friday morning, bright and early, time for an Aven-. Wait. Uh-oh. Yep, it’s like that. I watched a movie like two Tuesdays ago, and its review has sat languishing in my brain ever since. In my defense, I’ve been swamped between work and social time and trying[1] to watch a stupid amount of TV before the release of that other movie I’m not reviewing yet. Mostly work. And commuting to work. I miss not commuting to work, or at least I miss my commute not being from the bedroom to the TV room.

Enough about me. This is about Unfriended, a movie that does its level best to remind you that it’s time to trim down your facebook account by at least a third[2] of the people in it that you have not thought about in the past year. Well, it’s probably only tangentially about that? What it is about is a very rough night experienced in approximately real time by a group of highschoolers whose classmate committed suicide last year due to cyberbullying. Probably also regular bullying, but the cyber part is certainly more relevant in a modern movie about antisocial media.

Plotwise, it’s a by-the-numbers revenge mystery, which, y’know, cool enough. What makes it stand out is the format, which is entirely comprised of a first person perspective of the main character’s computer screen. There’s still plenty of footage and people/events to look at, because, after all, skype is a thing. But I find that the focus on chat windows, music programs, web research, troubleshooting, and so forth was very cinéma vérité in a way that so few films with computers have ever been[3]. These kids live on their computers, and the movie was made for that audience, by someone who knows exactly what it looks like. By-the-numbers horror or not, that’s a hell of an accomplishment.

[1] And failing.
[2] AT LEAST. If this is untrue, you are either lying or you really have basically no #friends. Or no facebook account, which I applaud.
[3] It is a tragedy that the blonde kid in Jurassic Park has been so roundly mocked for saying, “This is a UNIX system. I know this!” I mean, it straight up was, and hardly anyone else has gotten computers on screen right before or since.