If
all you knew about the internet was what you saw in movies, you would think the
world would be better off if it rolled back the digital revolution, returning
to analog card catalogs and mimeograph machines. Probably the last time
something good happened on-screen because of a computer was when Matthew
Broderick raised Ally Sheedy’s grades in WarGames—but
subsequent events got rather complicated for them. In this case, things go from
bad to worse for a group of friends skyping together in Stephen Susco’s Blumhouse-produced
Unfriended: Dark Web (trailer here), which opens today
in theaters.
After
weeks of eyeing a sleek new laptop in his coffee shop’s lost-and-found, Matias,
a poor aspiring game-designer finally succumbed to temptation. Obviously, that
last sentence has multiple believability issues, but let’s continue anyway.
When it starts acting buggy during a skype session friends, the nebbish gamer
discovers a cache of hidden violent surveillance videos and an interface for
dark web communication modeled after the mythological Styx River.
Matias
quickly deduces the previous owner was an agent of “The Circle,” who abducts
and murders victims for their viewing pleasure. More ominously, he knows that
Matias knows, which puts him and his friends in jeopardy. Soon, he is sending
Matias ultimatums, demanding the return of his laptops, or else he and his deaf
girlfriend Amaya (not on the group chat), along with the rest of his friends, will
suffer the consequences.
Frankly,
Unfriended: Dark Web (a loose
thematic sequel to the 2014 movie, just plain Unfriended) suffers badly in comparison to Aneesh Chaganty’s forthcoming
Searching (known as just plain Search at this year’s Sundance). It too
uses the movie-via-digital-screens-and-face-time concept, but its narrative is
much more inventive. Chaganty’s protagonist figures out ways to use the
technology that very likely contributed to his daughter’s disappearance in his
desperate attempt to find her. In contrast, Susco’s Dark Web follows an undeviating line straight to Hell. Do not pass
go, do not collect $200, do not give us any hope or build up any real suspense.
Even
though Blumhouse regular Betty Gabriel is on-board as Nari, the cop fiancé of
Matias’s pal Kelly, the cast of skypers are problematically bland and
forgettable. Only Stephanie Nogueras registers to any extent as the sensitive
Amaya, who has understandably had enough of Matias’s immaturity. Nor is there a
really distinctive villain to focus our attention on. The Circle is certainly disturbing
as an idea, but whenever the conspirators appear on-screen, they use digital signal
distorters, so basically this film reduces down to empty-headed hipsters
getting murdered by static. On the plus side (for Blumhouse), this had to be
incredibly cheap to produce.
