On the first night of the 2015 SXSW Film Festival, Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended premiered in front of a packed audience. Daily Dead had the opportunity to catch up with Gabriadze as well as screenwriter Nelson Greaves and producer Jason Blum the following day to talk about the film and the horrific realities of cyberbullying.
I’d love to start off talking about the premise behind Unfriended because when you look at where the horror genre is at these days, not many films are tackling the concept of bullying straight on like you do here or even fully exploring the dangers of social media, or being too ‘connected’ in this world. What inspired you to take on these issues then?
Levan Gabriadze: A lot of this came from Timur (Bekmambetov, Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) originally because he spends so much time doing business on Skype. Because he lives in Moscow and has to do a lot of business in LA, he’s always doing video conferencing and so making a movie that was contained completely ‘online’ was an idea he began talking about 10 years ago. Then, Nelson got involved with the project and they talked about this idea of taking the concept and making it into a horror movie.
Nelson Greaves: Yeah, the concept of cyberbullying by itself is such a crazy and terrible thing that’s harming our society presently so that was a terrifying concept to explore on its own. It’s gotten out of control and when we started working on this film two years ago, it was a problem then but it has gotten much worse. It’s to the point that bullies used to be these big guys who had to come and say something to your face; these days, anyone who lives anywhere can be a bully. It’s not so exclusive.
Levan Gabriadze: And the whole world is a witness- it’s also something that never goes away.
And Jason, at what point did you get involved with Unfriended; was this something they brought to you before production or did you hop on after?
Jason Blum: Yeah, I didn’t have anything directly to do with making it. Timur brought it right to us. He had actually shown it to an executive at Universal who then suggested to him that he should get Blumhouse involved with it. I saw it in the summer and I just loved it. What I was saying at the premiere was that the version that’s going to be released in theaters isn’t terribly different than the version I first screened originally. So I really recognized it for that and we’re really hoping audiences enjoy it as well.
How cool is it for you guys (at Blumhouse) to get involved with projects like this that don’t feel like every other theatrical horror movie these days, films that can crawl under your skin but also have something a bit deeper on its mind too?
Jason Blum: Yeah, I always try and look for different things. The first thing I’m always looking for is whether or not it’s actually scary and if there’s a message in there too, that’s fantastic. I think we had that a bit with The Purge too where it was this visceral and scary experience but it tried to explore some deeper themes at the same time. And in most cases, what really scares audiences these days is what’s real so we hope that kids when they see this get freaked out but also get something more out of it.
Levan Gabriadze: When you look at it, how many kids have ever experiences something like The Cabin in the Woods? This movie is something that reflects experiences they are living each and every day.
When you’re creating a film like this, where your story is contained within the confines of a computer screen, what kind of challenges does that present to you as you’re trying to film it and keeping the visuals interesting at the same time?
Levan Gabriadze: As a filmmaker, in most instances you can look back on over 100 years of filmmaking to get a sense of the rules established and use those as a guideline. On a movie like Unfriended, where there really aren’t any precedents, that allows you to be able to make up the rules in some ways as your filming. We didn’t really have anyone around to teach us so that meant we had to be resourceful independently and challenge ourselves.
Nelson Greaves: Yeah, we were in post-production on this for about a year and a half because so much of what you see on the screen is the filmmaking language so we had to make sure we paid a lot of attention to those elements. In many instances, just watching letters being typed onto the screen or as someone’s mouse moves from one side of the screen to the other ended up being some of the most thrilling parts of the movie.
Because most of our lives these days are spent in front of a computer, I think what this movie does is tells a compelling story that in some way we can all relate too, whether or not you’ve been harassed online or in real life.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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