Unfriended

Director: Levan Gabriadze (2014)

Starring: Heather Sossaman, Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson

Find it: IMDB

As I rapidly approach what will be my thirtieth birthday - hello grey hairs and groaning whenever I sit down or stand up - I find myself feeling increasingly out of touch with the 'kids' and their antics in the movies I watch. Case in point, Unfriended, which is best described as a series of conversations between dickheads on Skype, Facebook and iMessage. Watching this felt like that one time I accidentally stumbled upon a sibling's MSN chat history, or my morning commute to work, where I often find myself surrounded by vapid imbeciles and their social media.

It won't appear on (m)any 'best of' lists come the end of the year, but if it's superlatives you're looking for, Unfriended might just be the most annoying horror film of 2015. Its squad of chums are the ones getting terrorised, but I was left feeling like the ultimate victim - trapped in a Skype conversation that just won't shut down with arseholes who just won't shut up.

Most of my least favourite sounds in the world are social media related - the Skype ringtone - Facebook notifications - anything that tells me I have a 'new message' - (make of that what you will, and stop talking to me) so Unfriended was always going to set me on edge. The rest tipped me over it, from the pre-horror banter to the hysterical screaming and wailing which comes during (although I did cheer during at least two murders). 'Why don't they put down the camera?' is a question I've always asked of found footage. Here I find myself begging that they hang up Skype and turn the fucking thing off.  Kids and their technology, I guess.

This all being ghost vengeance for a cyberbullying crime which ended in a girl killing herself. It's a very real issue and, frankly, the movie does a great job of selling just how awful cyberbullies are. In that respect, Unfriended is a resounding success. It commits to its concept and it commits hard; unlike the (far superior) The Den and (wacky but still better) Open Windows, there's no cheating - the entire thing takes place in real time, on one person's desktop. I don't like it (Facebook reference) but there's a surprising amount of respect there, for a movie I hated every single moment of.