Unfriended (2014) and Toxicity in the Digital Age
As many of us horror fans know by now, horror is the perfect playground to explore social issues. It always has been and always will be. Even in subgenres like found footage, which isn’t the most respected horror subgenre, can have something deep to offer. If you hop into a time machine and go back to the 2010s, Unfriended (2014) hit the scene when the Paranormal Activity franchise was dominating the found footage scene. But that franchise is astronomically different from this film.
In regard to the plot of Unfriended, it’s relatively straightforward. The film follows Blaire (Shelley Hennig) and her friends, who are terrorized by the ghost of their classmate who killed herself. It takes place over a Skype call, and the intriguing format does lend to the cyberbullying plot and how real it actually is. And since the friend group is so terrible to each other and others, it leaves very little room to feel bad for them when shit hits the fan.
From the beginning of the film, there’s an immediate sense of dread when we witness Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) commit suicide in public. And then we jump ahead to one year later with the friend group we’re following. Everyone has relatively negative feelings towards Laura, as she was very much a bully. However, the video that led to her suicide was very humiliating as it was of her having shat herself in a drunken state. Unfriended not only explores how out of control and dangerous cyberbullying can get. It also shows a more insidious side to social media.
The time in which Unfriended was released is around the time of cases of cyberbullying that made the news, like Audrie Pott. A teenage girl who was sexually assaulted at a party, had nudes posted on the internet, and was bullied to the point where she committed suicide. Undoubtedly that inspired the film to some degree, and it’s unsettling to think about how online behavior has only gotten worse. There are even more social media platforms and folks can be even more so anonymous than before. Young people don’t necessarily use Facebook like they used to anymore. It’s mostly Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram where such behavior takes place primarily.
Throughout the film it’s revealed who had a hand in Laura committing suicide. Facebook messages from the “mean girl” of the friend group Val (Courtney Halverson) to Laura are revealed where she told Laura to kill herself. Naturally, Laura wasn’t an innocent victim, but she wasn’t always a bully. And that’s shown to be true through her former best friend Blaire. What makes that worse is the fact that Blaire is the one who filmed the video. And her boyfriend was the one who posted it. And her boyfriend posted it. Toxic and fake friend groups can leak out in the digital world. People posting and circulating humiliating content of folks they know is more commonplace now. And when things go viral, they never really go away because screenshots exist as does reposting.
A bullied person getting revenge isn’t a new concept in horror because we’ve seen it in films like Carrie (1976). Though the film being in screenlife format, rather than a typical filming style, lends to the themes within it. We are watching lives and secrets unravel through a screen, just like Laura’s life unraveled across the internet. Unpacking themes of cruelty on social media might not seem that deep at the end of the day. But aside from the ghost killing objectively horrible people, all while being horrible herself, everything else is believable. Yet the internet hasn’t learned and people continue to perpetuate these very behaviors.