‘Unfriended: Dark Web’ Turns Skype Session Into Silly Bloodbath

Alci Rengifo

“Unfriended: Dark Web” isn’t even trying. It is the latest horror film to use something its viewers are probably all familiar with as a spook device, in this case Skype, but feels too much like one big gimmick. This year Blumhouse Productions has been churning out titles like clockwork, all featuring a campy sensibility. After dabbling with occult forces in “Truth or Dare,” artificial intelligence gone bad in the very entertaining “Upgrade,” and dystopian action with “The First Purge,” here comes the inevitable internet thriller. It’s billed as a sequel to 2014’s “Unfriended,” but it’s a stand-alone, so it doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen the original. The basic idea is the same, be careful what you do online, it might just kill you.

Told completely from the point of view of a computer screen, the movie focuses on a millennial, Matias (Colin Woodell), who is testing out a new laptop he claims to have found at a coffee shop lost and found bin (what luck!). Matias hopes this faster computer will help him use a sign language app to communicate with his deaf girlfriend, Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras), who deserves better considering Matias is too lazy to take a signing class. His relationship on the rocks, Matias still gets on a group Skype session with his buddies, Damon (Andrew Lees), an English programmer, Nari (Betty Gabriel), who is engaged to Serena (Rebecca Rittenhouse), Lexx (Savira Windyani), a DJ, and Aj (Connor Del Rio), a paranoid conspiracy theorist. While the group begins a game of Cards Against Humanity, Matias starts exploring the laptop’s contents and uncovers strange messages, a bizarre Facebook profile and file cache. When mysterious women start instant messaging him he gets curious, especially when a large amount of cryptocurrency starts being discussed. Soon enough, the laptop’s owner starts contacting Matias, threatening to kill his friends unless he gives back the computer.

The major challenge facing writer/director Stephen Susco is how to keep the entire movie going from the point of view the group’s Skype screens. Because of the film’s visual design, he decides to throw any and all logic out the window. Once Matias and his friends start watching as he uncovers strange links and “dark web” pages, led by some group naming itself after Charon, the ferryman of Hades, you would think someone in the group would say good night and dip out. But people are dangerously and stubbornly curious, you might say, indeed but once people start being killed someone will eventually turn off the computer and run or call the cops. Soon anonymous personas going by numbered Charons (I, II, III, etc.) pop up in the Skype conversation and begin picking off Matias’s friends. This is when the film spirals into utter, insane absurdity. Someone is killed by having his comments unknowingly recorded by the Charons, who then edit it at lightning speed into an incriminating collage for a 9-11 call which sends a SWAT team to the doomed soul’s house. But that’s not all, once the SWAT team is at the door, the villains hack into the victim’s home stereo system to emit the recording of a shotgun being loaded, you can then imagine the rest. And still, nobody logs off. It is easy to suspect Susco is pulling a fast one and meant all this to be a morbid comedy. How else to explain the hilarity of it all? In another scene the Charons manage to push someone into the path of an L.A. Metro train while at the same time unplugging someone from life support at the hospital. How does the group even see all of this? The nefarious Charon cult can simply transmit security camera footage to the Skype chat.

To be fair there is an interesting premise at the heart of “Dark Web,” that being the whole concept of what goes in the subterranean parts of the internet. But it is instead used for a goofy delivery employing material from the postmodern scary movie guide, such as mystical names and an assembly line of boo moments. There’s no atmosphere or dread, just semi-slasher mayhem. The cast itself is left with few avenues to do much, because for most of the movie they just sit in front of a screen looking shocked, sad or confused. There’s some eeriness when Matias uncovers strange footage of what appear to be captive women before the killing spree kicks off, but that’s the movies high point. The dialogue is either all exposition or uninteresting hipster chatter. Damon for example, does nothing more than explain everything (“that’s Charon mate, ferryman of the dead according to Greek mythology”). Once the bloodbath commences he just weeps and stares aghast at the screen. The relationship between Matias and Amaya is one of the oddest in recent horror flicks. He apparently never cared to learn sign language, believing an app will somehow solve of his relationship woes, she is obviously upset yet never complains about his constant, needy texting and hops on the Metro at a ridiculously late hour just because he demands she do it (without explaining why). It leaves us with little pity as she walks into the arms of danger.

Once the ending gives some kind of answer to who Charon is, it is so over the top that it completes turning the whole movie into a near-comedy. “Unfriended: Dark Web” delivers quite a few howlers, if few scares. It might not be a classic, but it could be a candidate for a fun drinking game.

“Unfriended: Dark Web” releases July 20 in theaters nationwide.