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Thirty Days & Seven Seas – Pirate Battle Board Game Starring Clarence, Jeff and Sumo

Games and Entertainment

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From the creators of "Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake"... Ahoy, mateys! Join Clarence and friends on...

Hopscotch: Learn to Code

Education and Games

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Hopscotch is a free, award-winning programming app for kids aged 9-13. Downloaded over 10 million...

Relax Meditation: Mindfulness, Sleep Sounds, Noise

Health & Fitness

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Happiness at your fingertips! Learning and practicing meditation as an integral part of your day...

The Fake Fall of Rome

Moose

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This text contains material that you cannot unread. Your thinking process will be permanently...

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Movie Metropolis (309 KP) rated Unfriended (2014) in Movies

Jun 11, 2019

Unfriended (2014)

2014 | Drama, Horror, Mystery

6.5

(11 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Deeply Unnerving

When was the last time you watched a genuinely scary horror film? For me, Sinister, The Conjuring and You’re Next are three of the most terrifying movies to grace the silver screen in the last few years.

However, for every Sinister, there’s a One Missed Call. Bland, forgettable films litter the genre and we’re still waiting for a 90s-esque resurgence to kick-in. Here, Universal Pictures starts its summer movie campaign with Unfriended, but will it have you watching through your fingers?

Unfriended takes place in real-time on the laptop of a high-school student named Blaire (Shelley Hennig). Blaire, along with her boyfriend (Moses Jacob Storm) and a group of other conventional American teenagers gather together on Skype to have a chat.

However, a sinister account belonging to their deceased friend appears to join in the conversation on the anniversary of her suicide. The ensuing horror not only tests the limits of their friendship, but also their strength as human beings.

Levan Gabriadze directs the film brilliantly and in only using social media and webcam chat services, manages to create a horror movie that is genuinely unique and also impossible to predict, playing on our continuous use of modern technology as a plot device.

The result of this static camera work and point of view shooting is a hideously claustrophobic atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re also a part of the group’s terror – though take your glasses along if you have trouble reading from afar like I do.

Casting reasonably unknown actors in the roles was also a master stroke by the production team. In doing so, they have created a film that feels much more real, and in turn a lot more scary, with the characters coming across as just normal kids caught up in something truly awful.

Of course, the lack of feature film experience is evident in the whole of the cast. Some of the acting is decidedly dodgy and

to fully immerse yourself in what’s going on requires a slight suspension of disbelief in these sequences.

What Unfriended does have in its favour however is a plot featuring different tones. As it begins, it appears to be a typical teen-slasher movie like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer – but the clever editing and story that picks up pace from around 20 minutes in throws you off the scent of what is really at work here.

Unfortunately, this intriguing premise isn’t explored to its full extent and with a length just shy of 85 minutes there just isn’t enough time to flesh out the characters.

Much like 2013’s The Purge, Unfriended has a story that’s different to every other mass-market horror flick out there, but it feels like the creators chickened out a little before the end and hastily added in unnecessary violence to make it feel a little more conventional which is a real shame.

Overall, Unfriended is a genuinely scary, if slightly too brief horror film that manages to play on our fears of the unknown and what technology can really do if it gets into the wrong hands. If there was to be a sequel, and a look to the past tells me there may well be, let’s hope it’s more like The Purge: Anarchy than Piranha 3DD.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2015/05/03/deeply-unnerving-unfriended-review/

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Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated The Invisible Man (2020) in Movies

Feb 27, 2020

The Invisible Man (2020)

2020 | Horror, Sci-Fi

7.5

(45 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss) is a woman living in fear. Despite living a life of wealth and privilege in a seaside home; she is ready to take drastic steps in her life.

Cecilia is trying to escape from her controlling and abusive husband who despite being considered a wealthy genius in the field of Optics; has made her life a living hell and forces her to make a daring escape that has her barely getting away with the help of her sister Alice (Harriett Dyer).
The film picks up two weeks later where Cecilia is hiding with a friend of her sister Officer James Lanier (Aldis Hodge) and his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). Cecilia is scared to even leave the house and do simple tasks such as checking the mailbox and is livid when her sister comes to visit as she is sure that her husband will find her by tracking her Sister.

Alice informs Cecilia that her husband has killed himself and she is now free to live without fear. Cecilia gets a letter informing her that she is to receive 100K a month to the sum of five million dollars as part of her husband’s will. The fact that nobody should have her mailing address does seem odd to her as does that fact that the estate is being handled by her ex’s brother Tom (Michael Dorman).

With her new wealth Cecilia gifts James and also sets up a school fund for Sydney and begins to emerge from her shell.

It is around this time that unusual things begin to happen to her. A lost item from the night of her escape shows up and a mysterious kitchen fire starts. Cecelia also wakes up to find the covers off the bed and what appears to be something unseen standing on the blankets when she attempts to pull them up.

When she expresses her concerns to James that her husband is alive and exacting revenge, both he and Tom ignore her and when things begin to escalate, Cecilia is the one who starts to look more and more unstable as the tormenting continues and her life spins out of control.

The film is Written and Directed by Leigh Whannell who rose to prominence as one of the co-creators of the “SAW” franchise. The film is the perfect example of how to do a film of this sort as it is very clever in how it is paced and allows for the suspense to build without relying on many of the standard Horror Film staples.
The film is also good about having things happen before it pulls back so it is not an extended series of intense moments but several incidents between the tension and setup.

The cast is very good and what is amazing is that the film was made for a $7 million dollar budget yet looks every bit of a major studio film.

There are some interesting twists along the way as while I was able to predict two of them; the others were a very nice surprise.
It is so refreshing to see a film like this come along as in many ways it can help redefine the Horror genre and proves that you can make a quality movie that is also scary and intense.

I for one hope we see more from this franchise in the near future.
4.5 stars out of 5.