NELSON Greaves has concocted a screenplay for director Leo Gabriadze to deliver on a PC monitor.  

A year ago Laura Barns, beleaguered by incessant abuse on social media, killed herself. Today, after watching the YouTube record of the suicide, Laura’s closest pal Blaire calls boyfriend Mitch on Skype to talk about Laura’s prognostication that Blaire and Mitch will exchange virginities on the anniversary of Laura’s death.

Still with me? Three of their chums join in the chat. So does a stranger, Billie227. And no matter how hard Blaire and her chums, using every trick in the Facebook armoury, try to disconnect Billie227 in that and every other session, Billie227 hangs in there and becomes increasingly unfriendly.

Billie227 is vengeful because of Laura’s death. A suspicion develops that he/she is Val (Courtney Halverson). None of Blaire and her chums likes Val, the film’s best-formed character but not its villain.

“Unfriended” (its US title is “Cybernatural”) is not a horror film, although its ideas and images are often horrid. This often hysterical pseudo-thriller converts the cinema screen into a giant monitor on which its foul-mouthed, intellectually and emotionally far-from-fully-developed adolescent characters appear mostly head and shoulders only.

As the means by which they play out their fears and dislikes and occasionally find common ground, the film invites our consideration of the array of hi-tech goodies that indulgent parents presumably have provided. The notion of a computer monitor displaying the internet as the film’s principal location bespeaks a mote of creative courage, but the plot doesn’t justify that innovation.

Shelley Hennig as Blaire poses an unusual problem. She’s an attractive young woman whose facial expression of pleasure, amusement, anger or terror doesn’t vary, thus making it difficult to evaluate the emotions that the plot and dialogue expect the film’s main character to be feeling.

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