Review of Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) by Luciusmcgibbon — 19 Oct 2018

First off, I was pleasantly surprised by the change in antagonists. It's obvious now that the hallmark of the Unfriended movies is not so much a supernatural bent (like the 1st one,) but simply that the whole story is told from the POV of a computer screen. Which is good, because this movie gets to go off on its own tangent instead of rehashing the first movie's ghostly plot.

The first act is always a bit of a bore, trying to establish the characters and set the scene with limited narrative resources... but once again, when the story picks up steam, the watchability goes way up. This one is all real-world shadow cult type stuff, and it does manage to tell a serviceable story. Most of it boils down to existing "they know who/where we are" fare, but there is some stuff in there that stands out. AJ's death was a nice, spicy meatball. The big finish was a bit of a cop-out, but it does wrap up the movie.

I didn't absolutely love it, but I do think it has its place. It wasn't bad for what it is, and as long as the inevitable next Unfriended movie is as anthological as the first two, I'm okay with these. It's just that this new screen-capture horror subgenre isn't for everybody, hence the bad reviews.