I think this is one of the strangest product placement movies I’ve seen in a while considering all the murder and mayhem that results from the group of idiots that star in the film. Let’s just fire up this stolen Apple MacBook, log onto my Spotify account, and sign this person off of Facebook so I can check my messages. Oh, I better log into Skype to video chat with all of my other moron friends from around the globe with no issues. They then go on about how clear the video is on the new laptop. Subtle.
This movie takes place entirely over the desktop of the main character (Let’s call him Geoff), who apparently has stolen a nice laptop to work on an application that helps him sign to his deaf girlfriend. The closeups of his face are, by far, the scariest part of this movie.
While signing out of the original owner’s accounts, Geoff starts getting Facebook Messenger messages from people trying to reach that person. Any normal miscreant would have immediately signed out of the account and never thought about it again. Geoff is not that cunning, though. He not only keeps reading the messages (so everyone can see they are marked as read), he even starts responding! Unfortunately for him, the laptop’s owner is one of the people, and he’s pissed. Geoff agrees to return the laptop to the coffee shop from where he lifted it.
Geoff is not alone in his little adventure. His group of cackling friends are usually tittering away in the background, and there are a lot of groups to check off the diverse friends list: The comedic relief conspiracy theory guy (with a YouTube channel, there’s anther one), the hot mix-race couple lesbians (they’re engaged! One of their mom’s has cancer! 🙁 ), the super smart British computer guy with a server in the background, and the Asian woman. They are in various states of cackling on the screen. That is unless Geoff has them muted while he’s getting yelled at by his deaf girlfriend for reasons we are supposed to care about. When she’s not being mad at him for literally creating a program that has video of him signing to her, he’s desperately trying to message her. It’s not a good look even for someone of Geoff’s station in life. Get it together, man.
Like an idiot Geoff doesn’t return the laptop as promised, and stumbles across videos taken by the laptop owner of women being spied on, tortured, and killed. He then shows the rest of the gang, thus getting them roped into his idiocy. It turns out the laptop owner is an assassin who gets hired in the very SCARY dark web. When you operate on the dark web you also apparently possess the power to hack into and control every computer system in any part of the world immediately. You also can sneak into the deaf girl’s house and threaten to kill her if anyone calls the police. This is pretty much the only reason she is deaf. It creates artificial drama because she’s under threat, but she can’t hear the super assassin while she’s busy signing how disappointed she is in Geoff over video chat.
Through a series of events too droll to account for here, the gang starts getting eliminated one by one while the rest of them watch on the crystal clear video only a quality application like Skype can provide. I think that’s the message. Anyway, you would think that they would have abandoned the don’t call the police part of the bargain at this point because they’re getting murdered anyway. Damn millennials are too lazy to dial 911. Can’t even lift their heads up from their screens to do that. Get a job! How’s that liberal arts degree treating you now on the DARK WEB? (Woah, sorry. Turned into an old man there for a second. Well, an even older man.)
Imagine if the gang from Scooby Doo operated only on the Internet, but instead of solving crimes they played Cards Against Humanity (almost forgot one!) over Skype on their Apple MacBooks while getting slaughtered, and we all yawn with indifference.
Unfriended: Dark Web:
