When I saw the trailer for this film, it didn’t appear to me that the entire film happened on Skype, but it does. By the way, that is the only real spoiler I am giving out on this movie, but I consider it a public service to help you to avoid this disaster at all costs.

Old movie producers making movies about things they think kids like is nothing new. It has been going on since the days of James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause. This movie is just the newest attempt to point entertainment directly at the newest generation in the same vein as the horrendous Christmas song “Text Me Merry Christmas.” Seriously, there is a Christmas song about texting.

The one thing I wanted to avoid was sounding like an uncool old coot who dismisses things that kids like because kids like them. What helps me is that I actually embrace technology and was able to follow what was going on. Unfortunately, my understanding of the premise of Unfriended did not help me to enjoy it in the least bit.

I don’t care who you are, it is difficult to keep up with this movie when all of the small text starts appearing in Facebook posts and on Skype. The makers of this movie obviously expected it to go straight to television (it was originally made to be debuted on MTV) because there are important plot elements you cannot read because they show up as tiny little blurs on a huge screen. Even the two pick-up trucks full of teenage girls in the row ahead of us who were parked at such angles as to insure cosmetic damage to both pick-ups when leaving the drive-in indicated they could not read some of the stuff that was on the screen.

To be totally truthful, the wife and I found this movie to be hilarious. I am not sure if it was the ineffective use of the Skype platform or the premise of the film, but we actually laughed out loud a few times and were never really put in suspense at all. This would be the second movie of the summer, out of two, that we would have left early had I not had an obligation to review it. My dedication to my audience knows no bounds.

There is no character development in this movie and the plot has been done at least a dozen times before. The notion that this movie is somehow groundbreaking because it happens entirely online is about as useful as a French horn at an Iron Maiden concert. In other words, it doesn’t matter at all.

Movie makers have got to stop relying on gimmicks to make movies. Thank God the whole idea of trying to sell tickets to a movie just because it is in 3D has started to subside because that was killing the movie industry. Now we have to deal with movie makers who are fascinated with the “found footage” and “it happened online” genres. Stop, already! Just make a good movie, for crying out loud.

I am trying to be nice to this movie, I really am. But there are already parodies of this movie online made by people who actually look like teenagers and probably understand the Internet a lot better than the producers of Unfriended. This movie is a feeble attempt at launching a new movie genre that should be squashed before it even gets started. It is bad enough that we are overrun with bad Blair Witch Project knock-offs and other “found footage” movies, but please do not torture us with movies that take place completely on the Internet.

As the old movie critic joke goes, the best part of this movie was the end credits…and the wife and I didn’t even stick around for them. Do yourself a favor and just avoid a movie that actually made me wish I had seen Paul Blart 2 instead.

Rating: ½ out of 5

+George N Root III is a drive-in maniac who was actually bored at the drive-in this weekend. His reviews appear every week on the Internet, but that is by design.

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