The Internet has been a part of my life for almost 20 years. I remember the first time I used AOL Instant Messenger, putting up thinly veiled song lyrics about my crushes in my profile. I remember the first time my mother told me to get off the computer so she could make a phone call (yes kids, back in my day, you couldn’t Internet AND make phone calls at the same time).
It’s impossible not to incorporate technology and Internet into a modern day movie. Part of the lure of directors and writers’ recent 80’s nostalgia in film, other than people who grew up then, is the ability to get rid of the “why didn’t they just Google it?” or “why didn’t they just text someone?’ plot hole.
Two films have come out in the last two months that use the Internet and technology in fairly unique ways. Unfriended: Dark Web, a horror sequel that shares little but the name and shooting style of the first film, and Searching, the tale of a father who is trying to find his missing daughter, each create a modern film about technology that never moves the viewer’s perspective away from a screen.
The first Unfriended was a horror movie about a killer ghost shot entirely from the perspective of a single computer screen and its webcam. I found it to be quite forgettable, but the way the movie was shot and designed seemed new and innovative. Unfriended: Dark Web uses the same style, showing the webcam of our protagonist, Matias, and his computer screen during a video chat game night with his friends. Matias has stolen a MacBook from a local Internet café (they still have those?) and he quickly finds out he has inherited more than just a new computer. Since it is a horror movie, I don’t need to tell you, but things quickly go south for him and his group of friends.
There’s something riveting about watching the movie unfold on a computer screen. Matias is getting iMessages, he’s reading articles, he’s using Spotify (the only soundtrack in the movie). The computer mouse moves like you yourself are there and you can spot little interesting things in each corner of the screen. For most of us that spend our days on our computer, it’s easy enough to follow. I’m not sure how someone of my parent’s generation (in their 70’s), would handle watching this style and I can’t blame someone for finding it too different than what they are used to in a film to enjoy it.
Unfriended: Dark Web is decidedly dark. It shies away from most violence on camera, but the movie showcases all of the purportedly terrible things that happen on the “dark web”. People kidnapped and tortured for others entertainment, murder, it’s all there. The bad guys use Bitcoin to pay for things and remain anonymous (as someone who knows a little about cryptocurrency, this is a bit naïve and frustrating), and even reference the second most popular crypto, Ethereum. It’s a movie doing its best to let you know that all the evil things you’ve heard about the “dark web” and “cryptocurrency” are true.
These aren’t particularly fair criticisms. Horror movies are made for entertainment, not for accuracy. I don’t get angry when a teenager stabs Michael Myers and Myers pretends nothing happened as he chokes the life out of a couple of kids trying to get laid.
Searching opened in limited release last week. My theater was about half full on a Saturday showing, and the audience didn’t make a sound the whole movie. The film starts with a montage of a life through technology; the beginning of a marriage, a child, and an eventual death. It’s told all through the computer screen; videos of a mother and daughter cooking, first day of school photos, even a funny bit of nostalgia when someone clicks a popup on addictinggames.com and crashes their whole computer. 15 years of exposition told in a five-minute montage in a new creative way we haven’t seen before.
John Cho is the lead of the film and he does a fantastic job of a father slowly losing his cool as he realizes his daughter has disappeared. It starts with a couple texts, a phone call, and then he is going through his daughter’s entire list of phone contacts and Facebook friends to figure out what the hell is going on. Debra Messing is the lead detective in the search for Cho’s daughter.
Most of Searching is told on the computer screen, but there are inventive ways to inject information; news reports, YouTube videos, surveillance footage. The movie uses these in a way that never feels like it’s cheating.
I will not spoil anything about Searching, but it is not as decidedly brutal as Unfriended: Dark Web. There are no videos of awful torture for Cho’s character to find. There is no entity or organization that kills for fun. The real villain is something more horrifying; the loneliness that someone can feel despite the fact they are a click away from billions of people. The horrible things that people can say on the Internet that hurt others in ways they couldn’t imagine. The awful comments that takes seconds to post but leave impacts for years.
Searching and Unfriended: Dark Web both use technology to present their plots, but the subjects they handle could not be more different. There are a few laughs to be had in Searching, but whatever laughs I got from UDW came from a lack of understanding of the “dark web” or cryptocurrency. Searching opens nationwide today and I recommend you see it. Unfriended: Dark Web will soon enough be on a streaming service and it’s not a bad way to kill a rainy Saturday or lazy Sunday. Either way, I’d recommend you put something over that laptop camera and take a second before you post that hateful Facebook comment on your friend’s post. You never know who may be watching.
Selected Thoughts and Other Interesting Things 