Unfriended

Unfriended is a 2014 screenlife supernatural horror film directed by Levan Gabriadze and produced by Timur Bekmambetov. Set on a computer screen, it is produced in the so-called Screenlife format. The film stars Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz, Jacob Wysocki, and Courtney Halverson as six high school students in a Skype conversation which is haunted by a student, played by Heather Sossaman, who was bullied by them and committed suicide. The film is told almost entirely through a screencast of a MacBook. The film premiered at the Fantasia Festival on July 20, 2014, and was theatrically released by Universal Pictures in the United States on April 17, 2015. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a massive box-office success, grossing $62 million against a $1 million budget. A stand-alone sequel, Unfriended: Dark Web, was released in 2018. Plot In Fresno, CA, high school student Laura Barns commits suicide by gunshot after an anonymous user uploads a video of her passing out and defecating at an unsupervised party, making it go viral. One year later, her former childhood best friend Blaire Lily is chatting with her boyfriend Mitch Roussel on Skype, during which they agree to lose their virginities to each other on prom night. Soon after they are joined by their friends and classmates Jess Felton, Ken Smith, and Adam Sewell, and an unknown user known as "billie227." The group of friends tries various ways to get rid of the intruder but are unsuccessful each time. Blaire looks up the account and realizes that it belonged to Laura Barns, revealing "billie227" as Laura even though the friends are still incredulous about this possibility. The group suspects that a classmate, Val Rommel, is pranking them. After they invite Val to their chat, Jess' Facebook page is updated with embarrassing photos of Val at a party. Jess denies uploading the photos and deletes them from her account, but the pictures instantly reappear on Adam's account. Val receives a message of a picture not visible to the others, but which she considers a threat. Angry, she calls 911 to report that she is being harassed, and abruptly leaves the chat. The group receives a photo of Val and Laura's Facebook messages from before Laura's death, with Val telling Laura to kill herself. Val reappears on the chat, sitting motionless and silent next to a bottle of bleach before collapsing.