"Unfriended" Not Scary But Creepy

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“Unfriended” More Creepy Than Scary

By Skip Sheffield

“Unfriended” is billed as a horror movie. It’s horrible all right, but it is more creepy than scary- really yucky too.

“Unfriended” is about bullying; cyber-bullying to be more specific. The film is super low-budget with no name stars and only 80 minutes long. That’s plenty.

Like so many low-budget horror films, “Unfriended” involves clueless, cruel, selfish and sex-mad teenagers. The relentless cyber and real-time bullying of a girl named Laura (Heather Sessaman) has goaded her into committing suicide.

Bad stuff like this has happened in real life, which adds to the creepiness. Writer Nelson Greaves’ setup is that a group of high school friends in a chat room are visited by a Skype message from beyond, allegedly from Laura, seeking vengeance.

Spoiler alert: she gets it. All horror films rely on suspension of disbelief. This one needs total suspension of logic.

All of us have experienced annoying spam and destructive viruses on our computers. Most of us know how to avoid them. But these clueless teens, headed by Shelley Henning’s scheming Blaire, have forgotten if all else fails you can always pull the plug. But what if the image won’t go away?

Director Levan Gabriadze is from Russia. Perhaps he intended this film as propaganda on how wicked, ruthless and awful American teens are. I would hope he is wrong. If nothing else this movie warns Internet users of any age to be careful of what you post. If you don’t want the whole world to see it forever, don’t do it.