Hallowatch 2026 No. 12: Unfriended (2014)

Wikipedia; I will not be gingerly tiptoeing around spoilers.

This movie rips. As someone who came up on largely unmoderated "wild west" internet, where I would get randomly jumpscared by gore, this does a great job of recreating the vibe of hanging out on a chat client with friends and even speedruns the absolutely cursed backstabbing vibe of a friendgroup falling apart on those platforms. It's also extremely goofy; truly the entire time I watched this I was thinking of the Tyler the Creator tweet

This was essentially watching a very creative version of russian roulette; I think Ken killing himself with a blender is going to be sticking with me like the al qaeda beheading videos I saw at an impressionably young age. The sinking feeling I got of pre-"need your consent to tag you" facebook where photos were being posted was something I'm not sure could really be duplicated for people that weren't on the platform at that time. This evoked in me a feeling of dread I haven't known in a decade.

There's also goofier parts. The ending spirit attacking.... they could've shown some restraint and just had the laptop close, the end no moral. Jess with the curling iron in her mouth... I'm sure that's a complete nightmare for some people who have more hair to contend with than yours truly but it landed goofy for me. The printer doing the "If you reveal this note [person] will die" notes brought one of my favorite gags in a Scream movie to mind, the fax machine threats. It did also make me think about how most of the living situations I had in my late teens and early 20s were not terribly far removed from a Final Destination scenario.

I really enjoyed seeing all the old interfaces for everything, that was a neat and unexpectedly nostalgic time capsule. The only aspect of the time period that I felt was missing was someone scrambling around unable to find their laptop charger; maybe that's in the sequels.

Rewatch? Oh I'll definitely be showing this to people, I think this movie absolutely hits for a millenial audience.

Sequels? I'm in no rush

Remake? I'm very curious what the raised-on-zoom cohort would do with this premise.

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