Hot take, I don’t like the first Paranormal Activity.
This will not be a review roasting that movie per se, but I think it has more problems than it does in adding anything good to the found footage genre. It drags, Micah is such a douchebag, the origins of the demon following Katie around are fine, but as the series progresses, it all gets so dumb and convoluted that it really ruins the first one. Paranormal Activity is fine, but it’s not fun. If you want to watch a vengeful spirit kill a bunch of assholes in found footage style, Paranormal Activity is not the movie for you.
Unfriended is.
Ten years ago, no joke, my life forever changed when I saw Unfriended in theatres. Firstly, it was the first time I went to a theatre where you ordered food and then they delivered it to your seats. So that was really cool and set the standard for seeing movies for me from then on out. Secondly, this was the first time in a theatre I was watching a movie that was a good slasher – not a far cry from the ‘wild teenagers have party and are murdered by masked killer’, Unfriended tells the story of six friends all having a Skype call when a seventh caller mysteriously joins, claiming to be their deceased friend Laura Barnes—and it also happens to be the anniversary of when she took her own life. Before they are allowed off the call, Laura has some questions they have to answer, or they will feel her deadly wrath. Unfriended all takes place on Blair’s (one of the friends, played by Shelley Hennig) laptop, and is one of the best found footage movies of all time.
You heard me right, of all time.
All of the friends, Laura herself, are some of the biggest douchebags on Earth, doing such deplorable shit that it’s outlandish to believe these kids are in high school. And while I just complained about this with Micah in the first Paranormal Activity, it works in Unfriended as we are not meant to root for these people. When bad things start happening to them, you kind of don’t care and can just enjoy the over the top way these kids start getting taken out (spoilers: one kid gets shoved into a blender, another gets a straightening iron shoved down her throat) And while the whole concept is goofy, the acting is sublime – these kids are genuinely so scared of this internet ghost that it drives the story forward and makes for a compelling watch. The thing about goofy concepts, as my former acting coach once told me, is that you cannot react to the goofiness around you. You have to play it straight, and that makes a good story. That is exactly the case here. It is amazing how these unlikable people, all being seen on a glitchy skype call from the perspective of a laptop make such a compelling movie but holy shit, this is a ride. The first time I saw this, I laughed, I cheered, I couldn’t help but wonder where the story would go next – I felt like one of those kids in Scream watching a Stab movie. The theatre was alive in a way I really haven’t seen at a horror movie either before or after. Unfriended, unintentionally or not, is really an homage to traditional B-movie slashers from the seventies and eighties. It’s got goofy lore, it’s kind of spooky, but it’s really just a fun time. This is the update to kids throwing a party in a cabin for the twenty-first century; a bunch of assholes making fun of someone on the internet and the internet fighting back. Laura Barnes, as she kills these people off, uses memes, drinking games, and inside jokes to do it and it’s the perfect way for her to deliver these kills. Unfriended is so unserious, it’s just concerned with giving you a body count and a good time. Are the scenes of Blair reading screens a little monotonous? Sure, but it’s also a great tool to deliver exposition, and it adds to the immersion for the audience.
Unfriended isn’t good, but it is great and it is one of my favourite “horror” movies of all time. An internet ghost is inherently a stupid concept, but it’s also a really fun one.
And I’m here for shutting my brain off and just having a good time at the movies sometimes. Not everything can be Oppenheimer, and that’s a good thing. So often we as a society shit on movies that don’t stand for anything. Movies can be both, and I’m here for a good time.
More ghosts making memes, I beg of you, Hollywood.