Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)
(On Cable TV, May 2019) Surprisingly acceptable sequel-in-theme-only to the 2014 movie-on-a-laptop-screen, Unfriended: Dark Web manages to ditch the supernatural element (perhaps—see “sufficiently advanced technology, magical indistinguishability”) and keeps finding new hoops to jump through. Like the original, it takes place almost entirely from a computer screen, with our protagonist stumbling upon a laptop of evil and it taking over his friends’ lives for the next 90 minutes. Given that it’s a horror film, you can probably guess how it ends, but the point of the film is the journey to get there. Despite the recourse to the quasi-magical dark web and omniscient antagonists of omnipotent capabilities, the film does remain anchored in some kind of reality, and its characters are much more likable than in the first film. As someone who’s keenly interested in non-traditional narrative filmmaking, Unfriended: Dark Web does hit one of my sweet spots—and seeing Betty Gabriel pop up in even a secondary role is just a welcome bonus. I’m not particularly taken by other aspects of writer-director Stephen Susco’s film—it does try to be a bit too cool early on with a self-conscious and blatantly in-your-face choice of music; the protagonist is a bit of an idiot for just taking a laptop; and I’m never fond of the overdone nihilism of everybody-dies movies. But generally speaking, I still liked quite a bit of Unfriended: Dark Web, perhaps more as an exercise in non-traditional storytelling than a story, although it is compelling and the High-Density on-screen nature of the film’s plot development means that you have to pay attention to the film throughout its duration, which is something you can’t really say about much traditional horror movies. It’s not quite as good as Searching, which managed to do something ultimately uplifting and far more dramatically intriguing with the same format, but it holds its own. By my count, we’re now up to four movies in the on-screen subgenre (everyone keeps forgetting about Open Windows) and I’m starting to be surprised at how much staying power this gimmick still has. Now let’s wait a few years and see what the sequel will use on-screen.