BEWARE: Unfriended WILL Terrorize You!

Directed by Leo Gabriadze, and produced by Jason Blum, Unfriende is an Internet horror movie which stars Shelley Hennig as one of the six friends who find themselves haunted, abused, threatened, terrorized and tormented online by an anonymous Skype user. The film explores the effects of cyber bullying realistically. The entire movie takes place on a computer screen as Shelley browses the Internet, checks her Facebook, and chats with her friends about the anonymous assailant.

After a video of drunken Laura Barns’ mischief at a party is uploaded online, the slut-shaming by her six classmates on a group Skype chat causes Laura, the most popular girl in high school, to commit suicide. A year later, when the six chat on Skype, a seventh person logs onto Laura’s old Skype chat. The unwanted and unfriended person, who appears to be the ghost of Laura, threatens the group that if they log out or stop talking, someone will die. As the chat progresses, the truth regarding who had uploaded the scandalous video online and other secrets were revealed.

“I think scary movies work best when they’re relatable, and I think one of the scariest things to young people now is bullying. Either doing it, being on the other end of it, being caught doing it. What is bullying, what isn’t bullying, what’s a joke, what’s not a joke; all those things. So I think the reason the movie is scary is because it’s tackling this issue that’s on the front of people’s minds,” Jason told The Verge.

While the movie isn’t a game-changer for the genre, it does unleash terror and scares from the most basic elements of the Internet age.

Unfriended had its world premiere on July 20th, 2014 at the Fantasia International Film Festival, then titled Cybernatural. The film premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW) on March, Friday the 13th, 2015; it will receive its theatrical release on April 17th, 2015.