By Melissa Antoinette Garza
I was one of the few who didn’t hate the original UNFRIENDED (2014). Well, maybe there was more than just a few as we did end up with a sequel; but pretty much everything gets a follow-up nowadays.
The production opens when Matias (Colin Woodell) starts messing with a computer he stole from lost-and-found at a cyber-cafe he works at.
While on skype with his friends, he soon gets notifications from the owner’s Facebook account and figures out the original owner is up to no good. One of the contacts, tells him to meet him on the river, which is the name of a link in a folder on the computer. When he clicks on it, it brings him into the dark web.
He shares his screens with his friends as one of the individuals ask him to torture and murder a woman for ten million dollars that was already sent in cryptocurrency to the computer owner’s account.
The owner quickly finds out Matias has the computer and shows up at his girlfriend, Amaya’s (Stephanie Nogueras) house. He threatens to kill her if Matias doesn’t give back the laptop. Matias agrees, but pretty soon, the other deviants from the dark web know that the computer is in the wrong hands and targets everyone who could compromise their criminal activities or expose their crimes or identities.
The dark web could be a terrifying topic to build a horror film around. The existence of it scares the hell out of me so I should be a legit mark for this movie. Sadly, it just didn’t expand on any of the initial concepts.
For the second time in the last month, I saw the game CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY in a horror film. The other time was in TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 (2018). I’ve never played the game and after watching these movies, I never want to. It seems like a dumb man’s SCRUPLES. Now, A QUESTION OF SCRUPLES was a game of moral and ethical dilemmas that was risque and fun. It wasn’t a crude version of MAD LIBS advertised in movies as a way to say, “How do you do, fellow kids?” If you want to capture the interest of people (including the teen demo you’re going for) don’t pander to them by promoting things you think they already love, introduce them to things they don’t know about and will fall in love with. Grab some of the old 60s, 70s and 80s board-games and you’ll get my age group nostalgic and your demos interested in something they don’t know about.
As for UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB, it isn’t terrible. It’s watchable, but other than a few genuinely unsettling scenes that use graphic language in describing torture, the filmmakers don’t capitalize on the most frightening aspect of it, the dark web, itself.
The ending is more impressive than the overall film. Some of the characters are smarter than they seem and do work out plans to try to beat the murderers. To its credit, the film did make the protagonists sympathetic. In so many recent movies, the individuals one is supposed to be rooting for is such a contemptible piece of trash, you find yourself not caring about them. Here, the worst crime is that Matias stole a computer. That’s not nice, but it’s forgivable.
For those, who have seen most horror films and are looking for something new to try, this is far from the worst choice. I would definitely suggest renting this one if possible rather than buying it. It’s a time-waster and a forgettable film, but it’s not dreadful. I found it in Redbox and would recommend you look there as well.
Scared Stiff Rating: 4.5/10
