In the 1997 cinematic masterpiece “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” a group of teens accidentally kill a stranger only to fall one by one through an elaborate revenge-inspired plot. In 2009’s “Sorority Row,” a prank between sorority sisters goes horribly wrong and a girl gets killed. Once again, the perpetrators are brought to cold merciless justice by someone seeking revenge. Now, a low-budget film – to be released by Universal – has taken that core idea of young people getting their comeuppance and brought it into the social media age.
Presented on a computer screen and seen through the lenses of camera phones and webcams, “Unfriended” centers on a group of friends who are taken down one-by-one by an unseen and unknown figure who’s seeking vengeance for a shaming video that led a vicious bully to kill herself a year earlier. Produced by genre vets Timur Bekmambetov and Jason Blum, the film seems to be following in the footsteps of films like “V/H/S: Viral” with regards to what appears to be the next step of the found footage genre: the frame mimicking a computer screen as opposed to a traditionally cinematic style.
“Unfriended” will hit theaters on April 17th. Watch the trailer below.
