It's time for an experiment. After hearing me complain about the upcoming (at the time) film Unfriended: Dark Web for about the umpteenth time, my brother suggested that I watch the trailer and then write the review (or at least the plot synopsis) based solely on that, and then see how much I got right or wrong when I saw the actual film. Well, several months later (because, perhaps in an act of mercy, my local cinemas decided not to carry the film - but then again, they've decided to do the same for the Suspiria remake, so it's a double-edged sword...) I can finally reveal the notes I made when watching the trailer.
A bunch of 20somethings with more disposable income than they really should have get together online via Skype for a gaming night. One of them has a new laptop that he lifted from his work's Lost and Found; it connects to a mysterious network called "The River" and has lots of videos of captive and abused women. It's a Dark Web snuff network! Other members of the network 'hack' the Skype call and start stalking and attacking the group. "I want to play a game," one of them types. Get out of here, John Kramer; this isn't your franchise. The snuff network kills or kidnaps everyone because they're just that powerful, efficient and well-connected. Honestly, the laptop was probably a honey trap.
Now that I've seen the whole film, I can say that the trailer tells a rather different story than the actual film. My John Kramer joke, for example, would have made no sense in the context of the actual film as that moment only happens in the trailer, and a lot of the events and pacing are switched around considerably in the film itself. Whether or not I was right about the film's "twist" I'll leave up to you to discover, however - although I will say that Unfriended: Dark Web doesn't really do too much that's original or groundbreaking plotwise. Frankly, I'm just glad they don't go with their original plan, which was the vengeful cyber ghost of Laura Barns going after another group of teens who had a hand in her humiliation and eventual suicide.
So Unfriended: Dark Web is a Sequel In Name Only (SINO), which can only improve things because the premise of the last film was really, really silly and had a terrible ending. Having the antagonists be (allegedly - I'll get to that) regular humans who just like a bit of the old ultra-violence and snuff film trading is a more grounded hook to hang the film on, and is therefore much easier to watch. And this film even seemed to have fixed some of the biggest problems that the first film had, like everyone stopping talking whenever our protagonist alt-tabbed and cutting down on the digital graphics glitches that just gave me a headache. I was actually starting to think I was going to have to take back much of the things I'd predicted and said about this film.
Unfortunately, at about the halfway mark the digital graphics glitches make their return with a vengeance, and in perhaps the silliest method possible - the original owner of the laptop, who's stalking the group to get it back (and later the rest of the snuff film cabal), apparently generates something that interferes with live camera feeds whenever he's near them to distort his image and so whenever he's on or even near the screen it becomes a glitch-a-palooza. And there's no explanation given for this ability either. Is he wearing an EMP suit? Is he related to Slenderman? The entire conceit behind this gimmick appears to be to just hide his appearance from the audience - but hey, he's already wearing a hoodie and could just as easily wear a mask as well and that would be just as, if not more, effective in terms of tension and creep factor. I suspect that at some point during the film's planning, someone remembered that digital tearing had been a big part of the first film and so it had to be a big part of this film as well, and who cares if it makes no sense.
At least most of the characters in this film were more sympathetic than the ones in the previous film. Our protagonist is Matias, and when we meet him we discover that he's been building a program to help him communicate with his deaf girlfriend via ASL easier, and that's a really humanising touch as well as an original one (as well as leading to Chekov's ASL Skills towards the end of the film). There's also a lesbian couple that I found to be incredibly sweet (and one of them was played by Betty Gabriel, who was also in The Purge: Election Year and Get Out). On the other hand, there's also AJ, played by a millennial Judd Nelson and who unironically uses the term "sheeple" at one point, and I could not count down the minutes until his inevitable demise fast enough.
Once again, Unfriended: Dark Web attempts to get with the zeitgeist by jumping on some of the most relevant internet topics of the day - most obvious is the use of the Dark Web as the ultimate internet boogeyman, as well as the myth of the highly organised and connected snuff movie community (previously seen in The Den) able to trace, track, hack,manipulate and kill people all over the globe on a moment's notice without leaving a single trace or contradictory piece of forensic evidence, but there's also a case of Swatting, just to broaden the internet culture sweep. I'm just surprised that AJ didn't have a Pepe poster in his room/basement, to be honest.
In the end... Yes. Unfriended: Dark Web is a much better film than the first one. There are moments of genuine tension in this film, even if its attempts to have a more "grounded" story are still pretty far-fetched. Its protagonists are also far more sympathetic and likeable as well, which goes a long way in making a film more watchable. It still has some pretty ridiculous moments, however, which run the risk of obliterating all the kudos and tension the film has managed to claw back for itself. If there's going to be a third instalment of this series, can I suggest that the whole digital tearing thing just be dropped altogether? Either that or just bite the bullet and cross it over with Marble Hornets.