It’s hard to remember what the late 1990s were like. But give it a shot: A two-term Democrat was finishing his run at the White House. Internet companies you’d never heard of were suddenly worth enormous amounts of money. And a cheap, innovative horror movie captured the country’s imagination.
“Unfriended”: The Blair Witch Visits a Google Hangout
“If this movie makes even a little money, get ready for a glut of every terrible version of the format in 2016.”
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
So go ahead and debate whether we’re in a new bubble if you want, but that’s boring. Much more interesting: Is “Unfriended” the new “Blair Witch Project”?
Here’s all you need to know: The big innovation of “Blair Witch” was that it took a camcorder’s point of view, which was wildly innovative at the time and is now ho-hum.
The POV of “Unfriended” is a Google Hangout, or something very similar. I don’t know whether the movie, which debuts in April, will catch kids’ imagination — maybe they’ll be too busy Snapchatting? — or if it’s the 2015 version of “Hackers” or “The Lawnmower Man” — movies about tech that got tech all wrong, and also got ignored by their intended audience.
CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen, who pointed out “Unfriended” to me, calls it a “screencap movie,” which baffled me for a minute and now makes perfect sense.
So does his prediction: “If this movie makes even a little money, get ready for a glut of every terrible version of the format in 2016.”
Oh. What’s it about? It’s a horror movie. You’ll figure it out in the first few seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgj4GjqCFlY
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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