Unfriended, one of the best horror movies streaming on Netflix, is leaving the platform before Halloween. Watch it on a laptop or tablet for further immersion.
Cinema’s screenlife subgenre, where the events of a movie largely take place online, and the story plays out on a computer, tablet, or smartphone screen, has become an emerging method to depict the unique anxieties of modern life. The format — something of a descendent of and replacement for the found-footage fad — is especially well-suited to thrillers and horror stories, as seen in 2023’s great mystery Missing, a follow-up to 2018’s Searching.
While screenlife fiction really started at the turn of the century (the 2000 Franco-Belgian film Thomas in Love is generally considered the first screenlife feature), it was the 2014 horror hit Unfriended (produced by Night Watch and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, who coined the term “screenlife”) that really brought this style of filmmaking into the mainstream.
