Saturday 1 September 2018

UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB

Starring: Colin Woodell, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Betty Gabriel
Writer: Stephen Susco
Director: Stephen Susco



After an amusing opening sequence in which an unseen user attempts to log in to a computer with a series of passwords - some all too familiar, some obscurely rude - we then see the webcam become active and discover said user is Matias (Woodell) who is glad that his new laptop is way better than the previous "piece of crap" he had, mostly because he can continue working on an app he's been developing which will help him communicate better with deaf girlfriend Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras).

Setting up a game night (which was apparently the working title of this flick and I'm guessing was ditched when the Bateman/McAdams comedy/thriller of the same name got there first) on Skype with a group of his friends, Matias is also trying to smooth things out with Amaya as their relationship has hit a rocky patch partly because he isn't really committing to learning sign language.

Things, however, are going to get a lot whole worse than a potential break-up when Matias starts to receive strange messages directed at the previous owner of the laptop and it's not long before the previous owner of the laptop themselves gets in touch to say that it was stolen from them and they really want it back. Now don't you go hunting around that hard drive, Matias...whoops, too late...

I'm not going to give any more away of Dark Web because it heads off in some creepy and interesting directions which may not exactly be groundbreaking in terms of the horror genre but provide some solid chills and a couple of satisfying twists as Matias, his friends and even Amaya inevitably find themselves in danger.

The format is very much that of the original Unfriended, with Messenger conversations aplenty and characters appearing on - and occasionally disappearing from - video chat screens. There's buffering - referred to at one point as "the beach ball of death" - as the technology grinds to a halt, image resolutions break down, there's handy interference which obscures potentially awful things which may or may not be about to happen. In short, the usual ticks and tropes of social media which were exploited fairly well by the original movie.

Dark Web uses all of the above but also layers in an old school bulletin board which has a background animation straight from a level of the first release of Doom and then heads to the other end of the tech spectrum by including a subplot about a cryptocurrency account. These touches are smart without being smart-arsed.

Director (and writer) Stephen Susco is confident enough in the material not to play it for cheap scares, choosing instead to build the suspense slowly and carefully so that by act three the tension has ratcheted up to a genuinely impressive level. Placing each of the characters in their own window heightens the claustrophobia, as well as giving us just enough of their surroundings in the background to familiarise ourselves with their locations but not quite enough to see what might be lurking outside the view of the webcam.

It's probably not too much of a spoiler to reveal that people die in this one. And without reverting to gratuitous gore, what cruel, nasty deaths they are, ushered in by means of a hacked history of the poor victim's online highlights before their fate is engineered in a suitably awful manner. This both sets up the viewer for the kill scene and sets them on edge as to how it will play out.

Assured and accomplished, Unfriended: Dark Web may not ultimately trouble anyone's all-time list of horror highs but it delivers its chills in an efficient, enjoyable, entertaining manner and has no qualms about dispatching characters it's taken the trouble to make you care about. Definitely worth making the connection.

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