Aahana Swrup
Directed by Levan Gabriadze, ‘Unfriended’ is a 2014 found-footage horror film that takes place entirely within the protagonist’s computer through Skype calls, iMessage DMs, and Facebook posts. The film revolves around Blaire, her boyfriend, Mitch, and their friends, who hop on a Skype call on the night of their classmate Laura Barns’ tragic suicide. However, another anonymous user hijacks their call, seeking the culprit behind the video posted on the internet that pushed Laura toward her bitter end. Consequently, as the anonymous user’s threats bleed out of the computer screen and into real life, Blaire and her friends find themselves in for a reckoning.
The film optimizes its found-footage format to the extreme to immerse the audience in the predicaments of the central characters. Therefore, through realistic, era-relevant themes of cyberbullying and internet safety, the film efficiently steeps the tragedy and following retribution of Laura Barns in a realistic light. For the same reason, fans may be compelled to question the reality behind her character and her story.
Unfriended: Loose Inspiration in the Writers’ Real-Life Experiences
While the overall narrative of ‘Unfriended,’ revolving around the vengeful cyber-spirit of Laura Barns, is a work of fiction, the story’s inception retains a partial inspiration from reality. In 2012, screenwriter Nelson Greaves received an email from an old friend who had bizarrely enough recently committed suicide. Naturally, the strange occurrence left a troubling impression on the filmmaker. “It’s such a simple thing, but it made me stop and say, this is like something out of a scary movie,” the writer told Wired. From there, he began thinking about the risks that the internet presented during the early 2010s through anonymous chatrooms and various privacy invasion methods.
Consequently, as Greaves collaborated with Levan Gabriadze—who had long fancied the idea of a film that unfolds inside a computer screen in real-time—it inevitably led to the creation of ‘Unfriended.’ Still, the film needed several other elements to be fully actualized. As such, the writer/director duo created the characters of Blaire and her friends alongside their adversary, Laura Barns. Therefore, Laura’s story remains confined within the film’s fictionalized narrative, lacking a real-life counterpart in real life.
Interestingly enough, following the release of the film’s trailer, several people on the internet began pretending to be Laura Barns across various platforms, most famously including Disqus. Even though those spoof accounts were born as a response to the film and its intriguing premise, it led to some online confusion about the character’s basis in reality. Nevertheless, Laura Barns is ultimately a fictional character. Still, her story —of a teen driven to suicide due to mass online bullying—is reflective of a real-life issue that largely molds the film’s sense of realism.
Unfriended Taps Into The Realistic Threat of Cyberbullying
Although the characters and instances depicted within ‘Unfriended’ are fictionalized, the film maintains its relationship to reality through its most prominent themes. It equips a supernatural element to exponentiate the story’s horror and deliver a chilling narrative. Even so, the story’s concentrated focus on the theme of cyberbullying—a concept that has gotten even more relevant since the film’s release—becomes the primary fatalistic impetus for the doom of Blaire and her friends. Greaves discussed the same in a conversation with Daily Dot, saying, “It’s a very serious issue that’s not quite on people’s minds. People don’t really know what to do about it. What’s interesting about cyberbullying is that it’s kind of the democratization of bullying.”
Furthermore, the story distinguishes itself within the realm of bullying-centered movies by opting to focus on the point of view of the tormentors rather than the tormented. In doing so, the narrative finds the opportunity to scrutinize the menacing reality of cyberbullying and how it takes hold over specific groups. “We all have stories that we’re sharing on the computer, and most of these stories relate to experiences that we have in private,” Greaves elaborated. “‘Unfriended’ exposes these stories in a manner similar to how actual people express themselves in an online public forum while also holding back certain details, and it allows viewers to see all sides of their own experience come to life on the big screen. People are going to connect to the movie because of that.”
Thus, by delving into the pitfalls of the internet and social media, ‘Unfriended’ presents a chilling story that seamlessly reflects reality through its themes. Consequently, even though its more supernatural elements cement the narrative in fictionality, viewers will inevitably find the characters and their situations relatable—sometimes horrifically so. Ultimately, though a fictional story, ‘Unfriended’ maintains realistic ties to real-life issues.
Read More: Unfriended Ending, Explained
