Never Pick Up A Laptop from Lost and Found

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

I’ll be quick with this one: Mattias works at a café, finds a left-behind laptop, much better quality than his current one, and sees it as an opportunity to communicate with his deaf girlfriend. He wants to use an app he can talk into that pulls up the words for Amaya, but Mattias soon realizes that a global dark web cult called Charon exists, and they choose victims to torment and kill in an internet game. Mattias has a group of friends he skypes with and they are soon pulled into this death game, the supposed owner of the “stolen laptop” (later revealed to be a setup) wants it back in exchange for Amaya. But this is all an elaborate torture game that none of those unfortunate young adults chosen (one a political activist, a second a tech genius, a third a lesbian couple preparing to wed, with Mattias needing to first trick them into believing he’s the creator of the game, then later informing them that without their help Amaya would die). This dark web mastermind, Charon I, is the spider as Mattias and his friends are the flies eventually stuck in an inescapable web. The further Mattias would go into the laptop, the more he realizes how deep the rabbit hole is. Soon you have bitcoin millions transferred, Amaya “encouraged” to meet Mattias where they first kissed, locating recorded video (particularly of a missing girl), with all of the friends eventually succumbing to violent ends just due by association with Mattias. Pushed off a building, pushed into a train, lynched in a hall, shot by police when a call the victim didn’t make brought the police with guns to outside his door, cut off life support, obviously off screen blunt force trauma, and car collision into middle of road. The end shows the mastermind looking into his monitors at his handiwork as his fellow Charon look into webcams in celebration. Moral of the story: just leave the laptop where it is…don’t fuck with it. I commend the director and his team for all the computer tech involved and the figures who work in the shadows emerging like specters with pixelation and noise, wearing black hoodies. This film tells you that the Dark Web has a lot of tools at their disposal and can destroy you. That does provide a gulp in the throat, but I realized that folks behind laptops and computer devices, typing and clicking, just isn't for me when watching a film...still Reality Horror / Found Footage fans might dig it. Nothing could feel more powerless than being unable to stop a hacker genius intrude on your personal information and use it against you. The victims are first mentally and emotionally assaulted then literally killed...falsely framed, too. 

**/*****