By: JWBM
This mixes emotional interactions with digital connections. To some who frequently use the medium—video chat, social media, instant messaging—it's going to hit home in the way it exploits flaws and advantages of this new age of communication. To others who get a little more sunshine, they are going to feel somewhat disconnected with the experience.
This is the kind of horror brewed up for the sole intent to keep you up at night. Its ploy is to be relatable with a group of friends who've moved into different avenues with their lives, but are still making the effort to connect through game nights over video chat. Though it creeps up, and before you know it you're neck deep into the muck, helpless to its treachery. The entire film is shot through the perspective of the main character's home screen: with various video feeds and searches to keep the senses busy. It's realistic to Internet surfing, though at times it's also just as annoying to how fidgety we can be with the next click of the mouse, or impulsive change to something else more tantalizing.
The premise is a neat, inventive idea regarding a secret league of bad guys out there to get the upper hand through new means. Yet, for the normal folks, it's a lesson in being as powerless as a deer in headlights with grass stuck in your teeth. There's no real back and forth here, just mostly a continuous slow motion stab in the gut with your hands tied behind your back for the sake of sport. Easy targets. Why? Because. The experience has memorable imagery and jarring ideas, though underneath of it all, the story is somewhat easy and straightforward. Its goal seems to want to be an impossible nightmare that hits you where you feel safest: in your around-the-house clothes while resting in that sweet spot of your favorite chair.
Once the heat gets turned up, the events unfolding managed to keep a steady amount of tension and intrigue going on. At times it tried too hard to be crafty or dramatic, at other times it was just enough to get under your skin. How the formula is set up requires a careful eye to see what's flashing this way or that over the screen; mysterious one moment, to as tedious as looking over the shoulder of someone browsing the web at their own pace.
"Unfriended: Dark Web" felt more than just a gimmick compared to other horror features that only have an inventive idea with no backbone to stand up and walk. As out there as it is, it works to a degree. While it had some kinks, and at times reduced its characters they built up to unsuspecting victims, or outright bawlers, it still leaves room for one to be curious to how intricate or dark this section of the web can actually get.
Rating: 6/10
Director: Stephen Susco
Actors: Colin Woodell, Stephanie Nogueras, Betty Gabriel, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Andrew Lees, Connor Del Rio, Savira Windyani
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: Youtube link
No comments:
Post a Comment