Unfriended: Dark Web

Charon Cross Rowed

Unfriended: Dark Web
2018 USA Directed by Stephen Susco
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah, I’m going to have spoilers in here.

Well, this film is pretty horrible.

It’s also quite effectively put together but, due to the choice of specific subject matter, that all adds up to a movie where I really didn’t have a good time at the cinema, to be honest. Although I think some people will probably like it.

The film is set up, in terms of the title and marketing (to some extent), as a sequel to the 2015 movie Unfriended (reviewed here), which is a bit unusual because the only link that it has to the first movie, other than it having the social media term Unfriended in the title, is the format in which the movie is expressed as a continual, real time event taking place purely on the laptop screen of one of the characters... in this case the newly acquired Macbook of the main protagonist Matias, played by Colin Woodell.

None of the original characters or story links are back for this one and even the genre of the film is, somewhat, a different proposition in that the first movie at least had a ‘ghost in the machine’ to denote it as some kind of horror movie. Unfriended: Dark Web, however, isn’t really a horror film at all... it’s just, as I said before, horrible. A horrible thriller, if pushed.

So, with the title shout out and the format in which the story is expressed being the only things similar to the original, one wonders why this wasn’t just released as a new stand alone movie in the style of that newish ‘desktop thriller’ genre instead of labelling it a close cousin of the first. Honestly, I don’t even remember anyone actually unfriending someone in this current movie so I really can’t figure out the relevance of the title here. The film details the last hour and a half in the lives of Matias and his friends played by Rebecca Rittenhouse, Betty Gabriel, Chelsea Alden, Andrew Lees, Stephanie Nogueras and Savira Windyani as they try to survive a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a circle of game playing killers and their audience on the dark web. The killers in question are all called Charon (followed by a different number for each Charon) and the dark web is manifested in this case as a version of the River Styx where you have to row down it to get in contact with the various Charons to be found there.

The film is nicely put together but somewhat grim in the details of its ideas and though the graphic nature of the violence on display is somewhat held back due to seeing it on grainy window screens as part of the full on ‘computer’ experience... you do tend to feel it more in its impact rather than actually seeing anything too unpleasant. Even the aftermath of a much anticipated trepanning towards the end of the film is somewhat less raw and troublesome than the actual talking about it earlier in the movie.

One of the big problems with the first film was that all the people on the skype call were pretty much brats who you didn’t care about... so when the deaths started happening it really wasn’t a concern. In this one, although I personally don’t think I could stand being in the same room with the majority of theses people for the length of a round of drinks, there are at least one or two characters who have a nicer personae and who are easier to sympathise with. That being said, I really couldn’t identify with any of them enough to feel anything more than numb at the racking up of each person in the various Charons’ body count so I wouldn’t say this movie was working that well on me and although some scenes are, as I said at the beginning, quite effective, I was puzzled at the use of a ‘stinger heavy’ underscore, bearing in mind the ‘cinéma vérité’ nature of the ‘observed footage’ of the movie. The score kind of breaks the fourth wall all by itself here.

This is a short review for a competently disturbing movie involving things I would rather not be worried about given the uncertain nature of modern day cyber crime, to be fair. It’s possibly a little better than the first but, ultimately, the characters failed to engage me to the extent where I would actually care about them, although the convoluted storyline is complex enough... just... to keep the movie from getting too old before its hour and a half running time is complete. If you want to see this kind of ‘desktop movie’ done better and in a much more successfully ambitious way by, as it turns out, some of the same production team, then you’re much better off waiting for a couple of weeks until Searching, which I reviewed here, is released into UK cinemas (a couple of weeks after its US debut). In the meantime, if you are into seeing hooded thugs perpetrate mean spirited murders on, mostly innocent, victims then Unfriended: Dark Web might be your thing.