Latest / What's Your Favorite Scary Movie | The Cozy Horror Podcast / Unfriended

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Unfriended · What's Your Favorite Scary Movie | The Cozy Horror Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Max, use your money.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Who is that?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I just tried to hang up on him.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Can we get rid of this person?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is probably a glitch.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the glitch just tight.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Who is doing this?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: This is Laura's account.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Who would hack into a dead girl's account?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's Laura.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, everyone, hands up right now.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who's doing this?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Sydney.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, hi.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Who is this?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's your killer host! My name is Parker, your resident horror fanatic.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Caroline.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, hey there.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: This week Caroline and Ian are away, and I thought, what if me and you just had a little alone time together?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe a little dinner.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe a movie.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, hey, I've been really wanting to watch Unfriended.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should uh pop that on the TV and snuggle up.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, by the way, welcome to What's your favorite scary movie?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: What's your favorite scary movie is a horror film podcast where we're on a journey to find our favorite scary movie one at a time.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you hate them or love them, join us and discover yours.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Spoilers ahead, so plan your movie screening every weekend before the episode release.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Howdy everyone.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to a new edition of What's Your Favorite Scary Movie, where again, it is just me and you, the two of us on a fun, socially distant date to talk about a horror film.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I am talking, if you have not guessed already, about the 2015 horror thriller Unfriended.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And slightly towards the end, I'll mention the sequel, Unfriended Dark Web.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Unfriended originally hit the festival circuits in 2014, but was released in 2015 wide.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was directed and produced by Levin Gabriadzzi, which, alrighty, apologies for some of these names.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: They are not ones that I am confident pronouncing currently.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was written by Nelson Greaves, who also wrote episodes of Sleepy Hollow and 24 Legacy.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was produced by Timur Beck Mambitov.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I usually don't mention producers unless they are important.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, this guy is important.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: A little more on him later, but just the base facts.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: He directed Wanted, the Angelina Joe Lee film from 2008, and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter from 2012, which I have not seen since high school, but I remember slightly slapping, so maybe I should check that out again soon.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: He has also produced other computer screen movies like Profile and Searching, both from 2018, and has recently made news for his new World War II film, V2 Escape from Hell, which will have a vertical cut to be watched on smartphones, and because of coronavirus, recently uh finished filming in a video game simulation instead of in real planes in the air.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly a man who knows how to work a computer screen.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Unfriended stars Shelly Hennig as Blair, Moses Storm, uh Radname as Mitch, Will Peltz as Adam, Renee Olstead as Jess, and Jacob Waisaki as Ken.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: The Rotten Tomatoes critic score is 62%, the audience score a very low 37%, and the critics consensus says Unfriended subverts found footage horror cliches to deliver a surprisingly scary entry in the teen slasher genre with a technological twist.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Slasher, it is not.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, digging into the actual scene by scene.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It starts with a really fun, crackly effect on the universal logo, and this effect is used throughout the movie.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of lag and fuzzy, distorted imagery is a lot of what the movie uses to do jump scares and um some of the tension building.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't necessarily love that because I get really frustrated when that happens on my computer, and seeing it and knowing that it was being used as a tool to trick me was a little frustrated because sometimes I just want to see what I'm looking at.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I understand why they did it, because sometimes when you do see what you're looking at in this movie, it's not so hot.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: For example, when Kenneth is possessed by Laura Barnes, he plunges his hand into a blender, and you have this brief, brief image of him with his hand in the blender, and he's doing like a like electrocution, my hands being ground off thing, and um it was a little silly.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand why they use this technique, and I appreciate in the big picture that they're trying to use this technological element, uh, the screen life genre to really encapsulate the entire premise of the movie and all of the uh gimmicks that that comes with, but just for me personally, it was not something that I enjoyed seeing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, back to the breakdown so that we can really dig into the contents here.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves observing the laptop screen of a young woman named Blair, who is watching the suicide video of a high school student named Laura Barnes.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: An embarrassing video, which we only see about half of, had been posted on YouTube.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I thought she was personally chanting, She's gonna eat my ass, everyone.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she was not, unfortunately.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was posted by an anonymous author, and subsequent bullying led to her ultimate death.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately for Blair, we have also just tuned into her computer screen in time for her boyfriend Mitch to uh Skype in for a little boob time with her.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: After a much longer than necessary sequence of pretty cringy high schoolers talking about sex and some aggressive knife play, a crew of their friends call and are somehow allowed into their chat without their knowledge, along with a mysterious faceless participant.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And here's a quick hint it's not a glitch.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: As the movie progresses, the characters receive messages from the Facebook account of the deceased Laura Barnes, and Mitch even shares a website with Blair about the dangers of receiving digital messages from ghosts.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Blair is sure to wiggle her cursor over and highlight important words as she is reading in a way that I personally would never do unless I perhaps had the idea that a movie audience was observing my screen.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Their air quotes friend Val joins the chat and some true bitchery ensues as they discover the unknown chat member is under Laura Barnes' account.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Val tries to contact the authorities.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a pretty neat sequence, I think, as they think Val's camera is frozen, but when Blair calls her cell phone, uh it vibrates its way across her desk and into the camera.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, Val has to be possessed by some digital ghost.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Her camera is annoyingly knocked to the floor, so we don't actually get to see what happens, but she was sitting next to a bottle of bleach, so maybe she was just trying to cure her case of coronavirus.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: The crew starts understanding that shit is getting real.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, shit is real!
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: As the Laura Barnes account asked them to play a game.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Computer genius Ken tries to pull a quick one and boot the hacker from their chat, but sadly is punished by grinding with the wrong end of a blender, which we of course only see a couple of glimpses of.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: The big game Laura wanted to play is Never Have I Ever in classic high school fashion, and this is where the film starts getting a little more creative with its sound score.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: The only music we hear in the film is when Blair chooses to play a song here or there on iTunes.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Besides that, I actually really enjoyed the creative way that it builds tension with the little bloop of a Skype notification or other various tech sound effects.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: We see the rest of the Laura Barnes bullying video, which culminates in her unconscious body on the ground with an unknown substance between her legs, and the title card, Leaky Laura, Kill Yourself.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when I first saw this, I was really uncomfortable with it the moment because I thought it was blood that was in between her legs and it was uh suggesting that she'd been raped.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I've seen from Asking Friends and various sources online that uh they claim it is poop.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So either way, I think it's pretty cruel, but overall, between perhaps this Blair's friend Adam's admission that he roofied and raped a girl at a party and allusions later that Laura's uncle had abused her, I think a lot of dark situations are being thrown around in unfriended that I personally do not love.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the game of Never Have I Ever really blows up as the friends discover they all suck, and Mitch finds out that Blair cheated on him with his best friend Adam.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of screaming later.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Laura Barnes possesses Adam and Blair's printers, and Mitch thinks it uh that they must be faxing each other some secrets because that really would make sense in 2015.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out they both say that if they reveal the paper, the other will be killed, and Blair is pretty easily convinced to show hers, and Adam shoots himself in the face.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and this is actually a death that I enjoy.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: More shenanigans as Blair tries to find help on Omagle that ends with her friend Jess having a curling iron shoved down her throat.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the movie's logic breaks a bit here because it seems Laura was trying to keep the terror between the friends and cover her tracks so uh it would look like uh they either did everything to themselves or each other.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: But she uploads a photo of Jess's mutilated corpse to Facebook and captions it with uh looks like she finally STFU, which for those who don't know means shut the fuck up.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uncharacteristic, Laura, you're getting sloppy posting these photos on Facebook.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's just Blair and Mitch left.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Mitch is suddenly very forgiving of Blair's affair when Laura asks, Never have I ever uploaded the video of Laura Barnes, but Blair spills the tea that Mitch did it, and he is stabbed through the eye with something.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, the countdown continues and after some what why is this happening to me?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: From Blair, it is revealed through an extended cut that Laura uploads to Facebook that Blair filmed the video of Laura.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Blair sees everyone commenting that this was her fault and she too should kill herself.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would love if this was the sad and dark ending, but instead the screen capture illusion is broken as a pair of hands slam Blair's laptop shut and attack her in typical blurry fashion.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, I am not a fan of the kills in this movie and seeing them all through glitchy eyes.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, perhaps you're thinking to yourself, a ghost possessing people's computers and inevitably killing them, um, either through possession or physical manifestation is pretty silly.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: To that I might say, yeah, it is pretty silly.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the movie does a fairly good job of treating it seriously and making it seem as scary as it can be.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, overall, I appreciate the concept of the sequel, Unfriended Dark Web, uh, that I'll talk about a little bit later.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dive in a little deeper.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, my first reaction to this film, it was not my first time seeing this film, but I was immediately struck by the visual elements that this movie has.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really impressive the way that it has used technology to establish story and context so efficiently.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm talking about how we're looking at Blair's computer screen for the entire movie, and we're seeing um, you know, things about her character, like what music she listens to.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see her typing a message, and then she'll think twice about it and maybe type something a little less intimate.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're also seeing the uh computer screen show us elements of the story about uh Laura Barnes, who is the character who is haunting them, who has committed suicide a year earlier, and we're seeing the video that embarrassed her and you know caused her to commit suicide.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing her Facebook profile, we're seeing other people commenting on it, so we're seeing kind of the larger social reaction to this.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was really exciting and fun.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when I looked up this type of movie, which is a kind of spin-off of found footage, which the producer Timur Beck Mambotov, I really hope I'm somewhere close to pronouncing that correctly, he calls this a screen movie or the kind of trademark term it seems that he is his uh production crew has come up with, production crew, I meant production company, has come up with is a screen life movie, which he says was uh named because of the term screencast, which means capturing the contents of someone's computer screen.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: But this movie was at least the first kind of widespread mainstream big theater hit in this subgenre of found footage films.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there have been other smaller movies that have done similar things, but this was kind of the first one that really made it around to general audiences.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I really applaud it for this, you know, interesting technological development that it created.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I also love the performances in this movie.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would probably be really difficult to just be sitting uh looking at who knows what they were looking at on their computer screens, but having to do so much face acting, there's a lot of crying, there's a lot of screaming.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I thought that it immediately kind of created a sense of intimacy and sympathy with the characters that I really enjoyed.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what I did not love was the characters.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: There is sympathy and affection for these characters, and you see like you're you feel like you're seeing them in a more um, you know, vulnerable situation than normal.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing some less flattering angles, some less flattering lighting, and film quality than you might for a normal movie.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is set up for us to like these characters.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: They have a fun rapport with each other.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they seem a little bitchy with some characters and with each other sometimes, but who isn't?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I immediately started liking them.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: As the developments of the movie continues, it's strange because their emotions rise.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: We start to feel empathy for them, and I, you know, wanted them to not die because um, you know, there's sympathy for these characters.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: But it's slowly revealed over the course of the movie that these characters actually suck.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they've done horrible things.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: They've been cheating on each other, they've been roofing girls, they've been raping those girls, apparently, and uh forcing them to get abortions, they've been crashing each other's mom's cars, they've been spreading rumors about eating disorders, they've been uh, in the end, posting videos then bullying people into committing suicide and doing this all through the anonymity of the internet.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: What was hard for me is that, like I said, I like these characters initially because of the performances and because of what I'm seeing these characters do.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I just did not necessarily appreciate that for the most part we are just told uh towards the end of the movie that they've done bad things and maybe they yell at each other.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, a few of them, like we see with the main character Blair, actually it's revealed in the final moments that she took the video of Laura Barnes that caused her to kill herself.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, we slight we see a few things that they've done that aren't so cool, but it just seems so uh contradictory to what I felt inside.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought the movie was not very successful at kind of controlling the storytelling there.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the main kind of set piece of the film is this Skype conversation with the friends, where they have an unknown visitor in their Skype conversation that will not get out.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that that seemed a little relevant to today's time when before cur the coronavirus pandemic, I had never even heard of Zoom.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: But now, Zoom is like top dog in the video conferencing platform.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what happened to Skype or Google Hangouts or all these things, because I'm just not educated on like business video conferencing.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: But Zoom has kind of hit the top and then quickly descended because we have found out about security issues with Zoom and how it is easy for hackers to kind of jump into conversations, and they have been doing that and apparently really wrecking people's um, you know, Zoom business dealings on there.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the idea of cyber safety has been an issue for a really long time, pretty much ever since the internet started.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: People have been like, you know, don't share too much information online in the 90s.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was like be careful who you're chatting with on Instant Messenger, and that's kind of gone on as Facebook and social media have developed.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I think that's something that is really scary right now.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people always say, leave a piece of tape over your uh computer camera.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've even heard that the director of the CIA covers his camera too, because apparently people can watch you and you don't know that you're being watched.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in kind of self-isolation, the idea that the internet is our only means of communication, but also can be such uh, you know, an insidious enemy right now, I think is really frightening.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And 2015 Unfriended was just ahead of its time, showing us that, you know, it's not always just a glitch or something that you just are, you know, can toss off as I don't understand technology.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there are malicious forces out there on the computer on the internet looking to get at us.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of one of the main reasons that I chose this film.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when this movie was released, there was a small attempt at kind of a Blair Witch-like style marketing scheme where they were kind of releasing clips online and on smartphones through different apps like Snapchat, I'm pretty sure was a big one.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's a total lie.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Even 2014 is too old for me because this was on Kick Messenger.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you could have conversations with Laura Barnes on Kick Messenger, get some automated responses.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they were f uh fooling anyone like Blair, which apparently fooled people back then.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Even there were Facebook accounts, I believe, created for Laura Barnes and company.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as I said earlier, the producer of this film, Timur Bek Mambitov, let's see how many times I can get myself to say that name in this episode.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he seems to be kind of the leader of this screen life movement, subgenre of found footage films.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he even has a piece on Movie Maker, and I'll link all of these articles in the show notes if you want to look further in.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: But he has kind of bullet points for what defines a screen movie or a screen life film.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: He says that a computer screen film should take place on one specific screen, never move outside of the screen.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: He says the camera work should resemble the behavior of the device's camera, and all the action should take place in real time without any visible transitions, and all sounds should originate from the computer.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those are kind of the main bullet points from what he thinks could define this.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, he says something about how these rules create the limitations for which you can play in and even break, because the end of this film does break those rules.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the sequel, Unfriended Dark Web, it is the same setup where it is somebody's computer screen, but this time it is about somebody who has stolen a computer and finds that this computer has been used for some dark black market trading of videos of people being murdered.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, but that the murderers have access to his computer and his Skype date with all of his friends game night, and uh it turns into this whole thing about how people are tracking him down to get back this computer, and there's this dark circle of like computer gods who are seeking him out.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: It is less supernatural and more just people who are video hackers.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I really enjoyed the sequel actually a bit more than the first one because I thought that the storytelling was a little bit more refined because I was sympathetic with these characters, and that was never broken.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of built a trust.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: With me, and so then the deaths were a bit more devastating.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I also think this movie came out in 2018, so obviously the technology is a little bit more up to date.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't an issue for me in the 2014 Unfriended, but in this new one, it's a little bit more exciting to see familiar versions of Facebook and FaceTime and Skype and whatnot.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Even though apparently Skype is already out.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: But like I mentioned uh a couple seconds ago, I do think that the whole screen life computer capture subgenre lends itself much better to real human threats because there are so many fears around cybersecurity and what you know we submit online that people can find and use to track us down and you know kill us.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought the Unfriended Dark Web was much more effective than the first one because the idea of a supernatural ghost possessing us through the computer is a lot less believable and a lot less scary.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I would definitely recommend checking out the sequel Unfriended Dark Web because I mean it didn't slap, but uh I enjoyed it a lot more than the first.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: I want to take a quick look at how this movie hits home during the coronavirus pandemic.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, as I mentioned earlier, we are all on online right now and are pretty desperately looking for ways to connect with other people.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: In an article that Beck Mambitov did uh with Vulture, he says, Why are the characters not just switching off the computer to avoid death?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Today that's no longer a question because you can't shut down your computer because then you will be absolutely isolated.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I forgot to mention that this is an article that came out just this month about his uh filmmaking techniques in coronavirus.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this was really interesting because one, valid question about these films, but two, there is this idea even outside of coronavirus that we aren't turning off our computers.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I never shut down my laptop, I just close it when I go to bed.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: My phone is always on, just on a cycle of me charging and then taking it off and charging, taking it off.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And especially right now, we're not turning off.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're even more connected to the internet than we already were.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Another idea about this is that if people were in peril, there's nothing we can do about it right now because we're so distant from each other.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I actually had the idea to cover this movie because I was on a Zoom call with my family, and uh my mom and dad were on one of the screens.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have two sisters, they're on the others.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: My mom ate a chip and had a little choke on it, but I mean it wasn't anything dramatic, but I just thought, you know, she's fine, she's with my dad, but what if I started choking or something horrible was happening to me, and my family would just have to watch it happen and wouldn't be able to do anything about it right now because, you know, we don't even live in the same state as each other.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of where this all started for me.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, duh, unfriended is something I should be watching right now on the podcast.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: My other thought is I wanted to see if there were some hard facts on how coronavirus and being so online right now, even more people than usually are.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Young children are on for school, older people are on trying to, you know, order things off of Amazon or from local grocery delivery services, all the way down to, like I said, everyone on Zoom calls with their families trying to stay sane when they're not seeing other people.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to know if all of this increase in computer and internet and social media use was affecting uh bullying.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously a huge theme of unfriended is bullying and how our actions affect other people, especially when we can be anonymous online.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there is an interesting article or quote from the same Vulture article, Beck Mambitov said The slogan for our screen movie Unfriended, perhaps the first real screen movie in history, is online your memories last forever, but so do your mistakes, and this is no accident.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So this idea that whatever we post online, even if it is anonymous, is always there.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: In Unfriended Dark Web, there are really spooky sequences of um the kind of antagonists of the film going through different websites and tracking different elements of different pictures to find the people's uh physical locations.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of had like a moment of like, wow, it would be really easy to find me and kill me right now.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Not an invitation, but this idea that not only are horrible things that you do logged online, but just our whole lives are logged online and everybody has access to that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: I also was looking at an article from the Cyberbullying Research Center, and it says that as screen time increases and students are stressed, isolated, and lacking their usual guidance, the author expects that cyberbullying will increase.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, it might be more of the same, but as students are expected to use the internet in new capacities and perhaps in new systems, and of course to larger extents, they might be quick to up hostility.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: I could find no hard facts on if there's been an uprise in cyberbullying, but as this kind of alludes to, I think that it definitely makes room during self-isolation and quarantine for there to be more cyberbullying.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh now that's always been an issue on Twitter and Facebook that a lot of uh organizations and parents and people are trying to combat, you know, everybody wants a little more civility online.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, now when we're all pent up and getting a little jack torrent-y, it could potentially get worse.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: The author of this article on the Cyberbullying Research Center also mentions specifically racism.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: She says, or she, I don't know, they say, that they're an Asian person and that the idea that this is an Asian virus and that people are specifically saying like Chinese virus is really offensive and kind of fueling this widespread uh hatred that's being thrown around.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, on this subject, Beck Mambatov says, if I can find somebody's movie online and nobody will catch me, I will watch it, which means you can steal.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can hurt people.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: The internet was okay when it was only half of our life, but today it's 90% of our life.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: We will really need to organize a new moral landscape.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought this was a really interesting call to action that he himself, somebody who is really plugged in to the internet and using it to make movies, is kind of, you know, telling everyone that, like, you think we're just going to be able to switch our ways of life completely and not do anything about it.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: But really, all moral codes that have been established throughout history, that has established our culture of moral and um civility and kindness, and all of that kind of goes away when we have a new way of life.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know any answers, and I'm curious to see how things do change, and if things do change, I'm choosing to stay positive about the future, and I hope everyone else is too.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, there's been a lot written about the future of movie making and how things look a little bit bleak.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking, I was reading a really interesting article in the New York Times, kind of giving a rundown of season by season how coronavirus might affect this year in film and movie theaters and awards season and things of that nature.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a pretty bleak article, and being, you know, the host of a movie podcast, I'm always really excited to see new horror movies and be able to cover new horror movies for you listeners.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: But that's all very uncertain right now.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Even our schedule for what we cover on the podcast is very much in flux because, you know, like Candyman and um the big releases of this, you know, first half of the year have been pushed back to September and later.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So everything's in flux.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what Big Bambatov says about this, specifically in relationship to his brand of screen life films in the unfriended found footage subgenre.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: For me, lockdown has been more active because we are producing more movies, having more negotiations, more creative meetings, more business meetings.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: We are growing very fast because suddenly there is no other way to tell stories from filmmakers.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: In this case, we have more possibilities to find the best writers, directors, casts, and we decided that we have a mission because now we can save filmmaking.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: We can provide them with some new tools and they can keep telling stories.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, his production company called the Basilevs Group has developed Screen Life into a full brand that fosters new filmmaking and is producing and distributing new movies from young filmmakers, and um even creating tools like programs for recording and capturing uh computer screens for big screen imagery.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was really cool.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Not only is are these the movies that he's interested in making, but he's helping everybody make these movies right now when it's kind of the only type of movie that we can make.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, to wrap up Unfriended, first question, as usual, is what is the most memorable murder from Unfriended?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm tempted to pull a twist like last week on We Sum in the Darkness and say none of them because I truly just did not enjoy the kills in this movie.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: However, there was one kill that when I fired up this movie on HBO because it is streaming right now, I remembered from my first viewing years ago, and that I was waiting for the whole time, and that would be Ken's hand in the blender.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So ding ding ding, Ken, you are the winner.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's a tough, tough um well, I guess not much competition, but you are the image that has stuck with me over time.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: On a scary scale of one to five, I would give Unfriended about a two, two and a half.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are some jumps, there are some kills, uh, you know, things of that nature that are typical of horror movies, but I do think that there is a psychological element in this film that I'm just a little unsettled by.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I'm not totally sure what was going on with Laura in that video, and there are a lot of dark things that have happened in these characters past that I just have not settled very well with me.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of the psychological situation of high schoolers one being a lot more cruel and uh I don't even know what to call them, uh, than I was in high school.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would not have been speaking as freely and openly about sex as Mitch and Blair was at the beginning, but also, you know, I was a closeted gay, so of course not I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Side note, side note.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I don't even remember what I was talking about.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I would rate this pretty low.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: However, unfriended dark web, I would rate like a four because that freaked me out.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: I laid in bed and was like somebody's watching me on my laptop.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's not the movie we're covering today.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, would I give Unfriended a smash or a slash?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely going to give Unfriended a smash.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: As silly as I said it was, and as much as many problems as I have with some of the storytelling and the developments and the character building that I have, I still think that this is a really cool movie and really topical right now, kind of ahead of its time, because the internet now is, you know, our lives, and kind of the idea of the distraction of the internet or being unsafe in the only kind of haven that we have right now is really scary and not necessarily pleasant to think about.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, if you were to ask me of the season two movies we've watched, what is my favorite scary movie?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is definitely not unfriended, it is still Scream 4.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Next time on What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I will be joined again by comedian Cody Wimmer, who has covered with me it chapter 2 and The Invisible Man.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really looking forward to having him back, especially because we'll be covering Drumroll Please, Reanimator.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: But until next time, you can head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: That would be extremely helpful, of course, as always, for helping us spread the good news of what's your favorite scary movie and keep this podcast going because it brings me a lot of joy, especially right now, and um I hope it brings you a little bit of joy too.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you need a little example, a hopeless romantics booklandia uh left us a five-star review that says, My fave movie pod.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Same girl.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: She says, Oh, I don't know why I keep gendering people.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: They say, I was looking for episodes on The Conjuring to listen to, and I loved the What's Your Favorite Scary Movie title, so I decided to check it out, and I'm so glad I did because I absolutely loved this podcast.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: It has quickly become my favorite movie podcast, and I binge listened to all the ups of the movies I had seen and even some of the ones I hadn't, because I just wasn't ready to stop listening.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, stop it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're too kind.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Not only does Parker's excitement, Ian's wit and Caroline's soothing presence, whatever, but Parker's excitement always make for a fun episode, but no matter what they're talking about, I take away something new that I'd never thought about before.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: I love how objective and fair they are, and they've made me appreciate horror movies so much more.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: I highly, highly recommend this podcast.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, thank you so much a hopeless romantics booklandia.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is one of the nicest things anyone said to me, and it means a lot when people reach out and say things like that to me because I work really hard on this podcast and I love it so much, and it warms my cold horror soul.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Horror soul, not horror soul.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, slide into my DMs to hear people loving it as much as I do.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: And for everybody who's like, oh, I miss Caroline and Ian so much.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there is opportunity to hear them.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: All you have to do is head on over to Patreon.com slash scary moviepod, where, like I've mentioned before, April has been kind of a shit show for us with the whole pandemic and moving out of our apartment.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: But in May, we will be having episodes every other week with Caroline and Ian back on board.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a bit of a tough time scheduling them, which is why the main feed podcast right now has been kind of back and forth with me by myself or guests, but I know you love me.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: There will be more Caroline and Ian in the future.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: The gang back together.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, my name is Parker Heron.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Letterboxd, and the slash wrap at Parker Delray.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you can find the podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at ScarymoviePod.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can find our calendar at scarymoviepod.com, and you can send us any feedback, thoughts, whatever you want, whatever your heart desires.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nudes, I take them at scarymoviepod at gmail.com.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't send me nudes.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, like I just said, head on over to patreon.com slash scary moviepod, where for just five dollars a month you can get some rad bonus content.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: I promise it slaps.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: You are not unfriended from my soul.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: We are still in love.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: I L Y L O L T Y L