Unfriended
Unfriended (originally titled Cybernatural) is a 2014 American screenlife supernatural horror film directed by Levan Gabriadze and produced by Timur Bekmambetov.Set on a computer screen, the film stars Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, and Courtney Halverson as six high school students in a Skype conversation which is haunted by a student, played by Heather Sossaman, who was bullied by them and committed suicide.In Fresno, California, high school student Laura Barns commits suicide by gunshot after an anonymous user uploads a video of her passing out and defecating at an unsupervised party, making it go viral.One year later, her former childhood best friend Blaire Lily is chatting with her boyfriend Mitch Roussel on Skype, during which they agree to lose their virginities to each other on prom night.Soon after they are joined by their friends and classmates Jess Felton, Ken Smith, and Adam Sewell, and an unknown user known as "billie227."Police officers arrive shortly after; the friends eavesdrop and learn that Val died from a presumed suicide.Laura then sends each of the friends a personalized message proving intimate knowledge of their secrets; in Blaire's case, which is the one visible to the audience, this turns out to be several pictures revealing that she had an affair with Adam.Tensions flare and a drunken Adam finally loses his temper and uses the game to force Blaire to reveal that she is no longer a virgin, having slept with him twice behind Mitch's back.Shelley Hennig, who portrayed Blaire, found that this proved difficult for the energy and motivation needed from her and the other actors.Shortly after, on February 6, 2015, the film was screened at Playlist Live, a popular convention for internet celebrities from Vine and YouTube.The site's critical consensus reads, "Unfriended subverts found-footage horror clichés to deliver a surprisingly scary entry in the teen slasher genre with a technological twist.[32] Dread Central also praised the film overall, but stated that they felt that the movie's one major flaw was "the fashion in which we are trafficked to each scare through multi-screen clicking, copying, pasting and re-sizing, basically all-around multi-tasking.[35] Irish film critic Donald Clarke, writing for The Irish Times, gave the film a very positive review, describing it as "genuinely unsettling" and praising the filmmakers' "uncanny grasp of the complicated dynamics of contemporary interaction" and how they succeeded in retaining "a position on the moral high ground while bloody mayhem rages around their feet".[37] In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave Unfriended an average grade of "C", on an A+ to F scale.