Don’t mess with IT people. Anybody who works in an office learns that one right up front. However clever you can get with the computer, don’t screw with those who can make your screen life Hell. Speaking of screen life Hell, Unfriended is back to teach you another lesson about messin’ with computer things you don’t understand. That lesson being: don’t do it.
Matias (Colin Woodell) seems like a pretty clever kid – he’s making a special app for his deaf girlfriend, Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras). The app translates spoken words to written words directly onto their screen chat. As if that’s not good enough, he has videotaped himself signing every word. The ASL stuff plays concurrently should she choose that view the hand gestures instead. The key words in the above were “good enough” and every person who has bent over backwards to please a S.O. only to get not the reaction they were hoping for will find a sympathetic figure in Matias. Amaya is right that his app will only help her understand him, which can be translated as fairly selfish if looked at from a certain perspective – or she can see this as a significant step in bridging their communication divide. Guess which she chooses.
Our love for Matias, his skills, and his password-breaking abilities, is short-lived when we learn he’s stolen the laptop he’s using. Frustrated with constructing his app from an inferior machine, he took a chance at one in the lost and found at the local meme palace or wherever it is kids hang out in these days. This all comes out while Matias is playing a skype game of Cards Against Humanity with his friends during which random strangers keep contacting “Norah C. IV,” the true owner of the laptop. And then Norah C. contacts Matias directly demanding the laptop back. Meanwhile, one of the strangers gives Matias the heads up that a payment has been made to the owner of the laptop. Well, you’ve got a choice, my friend. You can shut off the computer and return it, no harm done, or you can climb into the wormhole of that payment. I just know you’re gonna do the wrong thing here. Good boy.
And thus is unleashed the power and frustration with the entire Unfriended franchise – the bad guys are omniscient and omnipotent – They know what you’ve done; they know where you’ve been. They’re also anonymous, which is –again- both strength and weakness. The deadly unknown makes a great villain – we don’t know who you are, where you are, what you’re capable of, or how you will respond. As Unfriended: Dark Web moves on, it’s crystal clear that Matias is in waaaaay over his head against people with an intensely amoral agenda.
The entire film is told through computer screen. i.e. all we see is either what computers see or what’s on a computer screen. Most of the time, it’s Matias’ face on screen reacting to the latest. This is not an easy phone-in and the young actors here seem up to the challenge. This format, of course, will only work with certain audiences. There has to be a certain amount of either computer savvy or millennial generationhood that goes with understanding what’s going on. Dude, before you kill me, how about a selfie? Could you at least backup my hard drive?
Unfriended: Dark Web started slow, but got right into nastiness 
before long. The film gave us some of the usual paranoia-laden messages: don’t talk to strangers, don’t poke a bear, don’t steal shit, don’t feed them after midnight, etc. This film had my attention throughout and yet I was still disheartened by the all-stick-no-carrot routine: horror requires rules. Without rules, there’s no point to free will, there’s just fate. If Matias isn’t allowed to redeem himself or his friends, the film just comes off as cruel. Not instructive.
I’m not quite sure the name “Unfriended” matches this franchise. The people involved don’t conclude a need to “unfriend” somebody as they simply … conclude. These jokers die long before any kind of unfriending process takes place. Points off for cashing in on an empty catchphrase.
A computer did Matias purloin
In order to make insightful rejoin
But he lifted from mugs
Who hate system bugs
Now his life isn’t worth a bitcoin
Rated R, 88 Minutes
Director: Stephen Susco
Writer: Stephen Susco
Genre: Movies Against Humanity
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who like to skype and read Stephen King novels
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who don’t believe there’s a Dark Web. (There is. It’s the “Deep State” that doesn’t exist.)
