Like its predecessor, Unfriended: Dark Web is ostensibly a one-shot film. All the while, Matias is trying to patch together his failing relationship with Amaya, his hard-of-hearing girlfriend who’s frustrated with his lack of dedication to learning ASL. When Matias brings home a MacBook that’s been sitting in his workplace lost and found, he slowly finds out its previous owner had an unconventional occupation freelancing snuff videos for high-paying darknetizens. Stephen Susco builds off this established cinematic language in his sequel, Unfriended: Dark Web, which pits a new pack of Skyping friends against the nefarious, unknown depths of the darknet.

Nick Pinkerton refers to it as “desktop mise-en-scene” and cites its roots in Thomas In Love and Lisa Kudrow‘s web series Web Therapy (and a host of other fringe visual media), but for the multiplex, d irector Leo Gabriadze turned the moving of a cursor into on-screen deliberation, gave every click a weight of consequence and each open window its own unique vernacular. A half dozen friends’ Skype hangout-cum-nightmare via a static shot of one friend’s MacBook desktop, using authentic interfaces and apps (Skype, Spotify, iMessage, etc.), became a life-like simulation of navigating online communications. The 2014 tech-horror flick Unfriended articulated for the medium a human language that had yet to be adapted to mainstream cinema.

Unfriended dark web spotify playlist