Tag: Jacob Wysocki

Unfriended

One word, relatively new, much fear.

Unfriended. How could someone be so cruel? Don’t you know they’re human too? …I’m gonna watch it anyways.

Sure, one could look at the title of the movie and the plot and think, “Yep, just another shitty modern horror.”

But for some odd reason I found it drawing. I thought it could have been made for me. But then again, I enjoyed the movie Smiley, which was also about modern tech things and a killer. Unfriended is already such a cold term, I can’t wait to see how they make fun of it.

And if you hate the title, you have to admit that it is better than the original name for the movie: Cybernatural.

Evil
Who would have thought the new face of evil was previously a sign of laziness?

Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman) killed herself. She was a pretty, relatively popular high school girl. But then she got super drunk one night at a party as a junior. Someone posted a video of her drunk, including the embarrassing after math and suggested she kill herself. Sure enough, she did it.

But that is old news. That is the past. That was a year ago today.

We should instead talk about sex. Because what is the point of skype if not helping take your long distance relationship to the next level? Or close distance relationship with over protective parents. Blaire Lilly (Shelley Hennig) and Mitch Roussel (Moses Jacob Storm) are teasing each other when they get forced into a giant Skype call with all of their friends. Fatass Ken (Jacob Wysocki), prep looking Adam (Will Peltz), and party girl Jess (Renee Olstead).

But hey, there is some glitchy other user in their chat. Some billie person. It can’t get kicked out, it stays when they restart the call, and it has no profile picture. Oh well, must be a glitch.

What is not a glitch is Laura randomly messaging a few people. Someone must have hacked her account and is trying to scare her friends. That’s not cool. Unless of course, it is a spirit doing all of this, and wanting to possess the group of friends into committing suicide. But that’d be awkward. Also there is Val (Courtney Halverson), as the random stuck up bitch other popular girl.

Sexy Time
Sexting is so middle school.

Did I mention this entire movie takes place on Blaire’s computer screen? She has a mac of course, a nice laptop. Has the Spotify, the Skypes, the iMessage, the Facebooks, the ChatRoulette. She has it all. And the entire film, again, is through the screen. You might be thinking one of two things: Modern Family did it first. And that sounds terrible.

Technically, the Modern Family episode came out before this one, but this film was released a long time ago in film festivals. So who knows if Modern Family even knew that. As for the other fact, no, it is totally entertaining. Mostly thanks to the directors incredible attention to detail.

First of all, the movie is set in real time. The clock in the top right corner moves every minute, and by golly, it matches a real minute. The computer screen is incredibly realistic, as are Blaire’s typing speed, cursor movements, and literally just tabs open/search history. Everything. It feels realistic as fuck. Shit, there are even a couple hidden jokes I found in it.

At the same time, some of the attention to detail seems to be a bit lazy. For instance, previous messages randomly disappearing despite tabs never actually getting closed. There was one moment when Blaire had to share her screen in the Skype, which I guess is doable. Cool. But she never unshared it then did some awkward things after the fact, but it had closed by that point and that didn’t become a plot point for her being dumb. Long amounts of time with no one talking on Skype while Blaire does something else. Maybe she takes off her headphones during these moments, I don’t know. Things like that. The details are both infuriating at times and almost awe-inspiring. A lot of them they can just blame on computer ghost/hacker shit though, I guess.

Oh yeah, and this movie would have scared the poop out of me if I didn’t already poop four times that day. A huge part of it is the noise I would say. So many scares come from sudden noises. Incoming messages, Skype calls, wall posts, typing noises. All of it. Ahh. I never really want to hear a Skype call noise ever again, so I hope I can change it. I had to sit with my hands over my face so many times thanks to knowing that something fucked up was about to happen and I didn’t think my body could handle it.

Unfriended is new and modern, it has a unique enough twist, it is perfect at its 80something minute length, it is scary and tense, and it is overall a frightening time. Now excuse me while I burn the laptop that I wrote this review on.

3 out of 4.

Terri

I hope everyone reading this review thinks the same thing I am thinking of. First, check out what Terri is. Hopefully your first thought is: Hey, is this the sequel to Angus?

Angus
Look at that bitches face on the left. She is shocked at the connection between the two movies as well.
That connection being fat people.

Okay so this movie has nothing to do with Angus. My bad.

Terri (played by Jacob Wysocki) is a very large 15 year old kid. Given his size, it should be obvious he doesn’t fit in and gets teased. It doesn’t help that his home life is a mess. Knowing nothing about his parents, he has to live with his old senile uncle. Creed Bratton of The Office! At this point he is only wearing his pajamas to school, and showing up late, while remaining super apathetic. Enter John C. Reilly, school principal.

John also ends up being kind of a guidance counselor, and sets up weekly meetings to meet with Terri. He also meets with other kids who are fucked up. Including Chad. Something is wrong with Chad. I hate Chad. If you watch this movie, Chad will make you sick too.

Thankfully (?) Terri also gets a friend, the hottie of the school, because no one else wants to talk to her after she got fingered in Home Ec.

Fingered Flynn
Forcefully fingered.

The movie is full of awkward events, that make you hate and like the characters. It shows you that the people who try to help aren’t perfect. It shows that even the main characters can have deep seeded issues. And it really makes you hate Chad. Damn Chad. Just wanted to punch him in the face. But what makes this movie good? Despite being slow, it does in fact make you feel.

2 out of 4