Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

"Why do you think Twitter and Facebook are free?"

Yes, I know; I use the above two social media platforms to plug this very blog. The irony is not lost on me although, unlike AJ, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories; Facebook and Twitter are free because your personal info is the product, and advertisers are the customer, not you. All conspiracy theories are dangerous bollocks that leads to the election of dodgy demagogue. Vaccinate your kids. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There is no Illuminati. The real world cannot be boiled down to such simplistic fantasies.

Anyway, this isn't a sequel in any meaningful sense. It doesn't feature any of the same characters and is made by different people. What it is, though, is another very clever example of the rather fresh and welcome new horror genre initiated by the first film, where all we see is one person's screen as something supernatural or weird unfolds and everybody dies. It's a fresh and, indeed, superior take on the found footage genre as the possibilities are much wider.

In this case the added ingredient is the current fashion for dark web boxes, more conspiracy theorist bollocks but great material for films like this. The conceit of Matias, through whose screen we see everything, having stolen the laptop through we see everything from a criminal network named after Greek underworld mythology which kidnaps and tortures young women while manipulating others into taking the blame, is deliciously evil and utterly gripping.

It's also good to see, for once, a serious attempt at a deaf character. It's well-written and structured and the characters are compelling. This is a superb and underrated film, and I for one prefer it to its predecessor.

Get Out (2017)

“With my genetic material, shit gonna go down.”

 This is an extraordinary film, still very recent and an instant horror classic. Like the best horror films it holds back its scares and relies on suspense rather than gore, and works superbly on that score. Better than that, it's actually about something.

I'm British, and aware that it is doubly true that some of the commentary about race relations here are specific to America, where the legacy of slavery is something that actually happened in America rather than being too hurriedly dismissed as something that happened in distant colonies, and also that a great deal of it is universal commentary on race relations that very much applies here too.

The film is seen from the perspective of Chris, a nice, likeable, ordinary black man who is nervous about meeting his white girlfriend's very white family and turns out to be very, very justified. And yet said family is not overtly racist- there are no white hoods here and I have absolutely no doubt that Dean Armitage would indeed have voted for Obama a third time if he could. These are people who would be genuinely upset to be thought of as racist and a little too anxious to prove their non-racism in not-very-subtle ways. And yet, as the film points out, these people have seldom met a black person who didn't work for them.

All this happens with a grainy picture an a directorial style which is at once superb and very much employing the unsettling visual grammar of the horror film. The intensity of the hypnotism scene is terrifying, as is the later framing of Georgina's face in a creepy and highly effective scene, a triumph of both actress and director. This is horror by unease rather than jump cuts.

Even the final reveal of what is going on works perfectly as metaphor; the family may want to lobotomise young black people so their grandparents can use their younger bodies, but the racism here is far from overt but more of a metaphor for cultural appropriation and all the subtle, unthinking exploitation that we white liberals almost certainly undertake all the time. An outstanding and thought provoking film.