( Courtesy Universal Pictures) Blaire (Shelley Hennig, left) and Mitch (Moses Storm) try to unravel a terrifying mystery online, in the 2015 horror thriller "Unfriended."
For some people, social media is a vast and terrifying jungle filled with uncomfortable brushes with unsavory types. For others, it’s an extension of who they are — a place where you can meet more people with your shared interests than you would in the so-called “real” world.
The perils of social media are explored in the new movie “Ingrid Goes West,” opening Friday. The movie, which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, stars Aubrey Plaza as a loner who becomes dangerously obsessed with the Instagram-ready life of Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), an “influencer” who posts every breakfast and home-decor choice for her followers to see.
It’s not the first time filmmakers have explored the possibilities, and the downsides, of social media. Here, arranged chronologically, are seven movies that look at our plugged-in lives.
1. “Hard Candy” (2005)
A chat room brings together Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a 32-year-old photographer, and 14-year-old Hayley (Ellen Page). They meet in a coffee shop, but soon the flirtatious Hayley persuades Jeff to move the conversation to his place. Once there, it’s clear Hayley knows more about Jeff’s m.o. as a sexual predator than Jeff knows about her, as director David Slade’s shocking cat-and-mouse game plays out to its brutal conclusion.
2. “Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005)
Performance artist Miranda July creates characters searching for connection in this offbeat but beautiful movie, her debut as director and screenwriter. Some meet in chat rooms, where anonymity leads to strange encounters — like the middle-aged gallery owner who doesn’t know the person she’s meeting for a sexual liaison is actually a 7-year-old boy.
3. “We Live in Public” (2009)
Internet pioneer Josh Harris imagined people not just using social media, but living their lives on the Web. He tried to create a community in New York’s underground, with 100 volunteers being followed by webcams, until the NYPD shut it down. He tried again on a smaller scale, putting himself and his girlfriend under 24-hour web surveillance. (Unsurprisingly, the girlfriend left him after a few months.) This no-holds-barred documentary captures Harris’ vision and madness, and snagged director Ondi Timoner (“Dig!”) her second Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
4. “Catfish” (2010)
When Nev Schulman starts a relationship with a hottie over Facebook, his brother Ariel and Ariel’s filmmaking partner, Henry Joost, turn on the cameras to document the burgeoning romance. As they dig into the story, they find that Nev’s online girlfriend, Megan, isn’t what she seems to be. This fascinating, intimate documentary spawned the slang term “catfishing” and sparked accusations that the Schulmans and Joost (who adapted the movie into a popular MTV series) played fast and loose with the truth.
5. “The Social Network” (2010)
The world’s biggest social-media platform started as a combination of brains, luck, a willingness to screw over friends and an inability of college nerds to connect with women. That’s the upshot of this sleek, smartly paced drama, as director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (who won an Oscar) chronicle how Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his Harvard buddies launched Facebook — and how Zuckerberg ended up defending lawsuits from spoiled rich twins (both played by Armie Hammer) and his former friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield).
6. “Chef” (2014)
Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) directed, wrote and stars in this low-budget charmer as Carl Casper, a high-profile L.A. chef who is destroyed and resurrected by tweets. When a food critic (Oliver Platt) demolishes Carl’s work, Carl sends back a profane reply — not realizing what he wrote, being on Twitter, would be seen by all. An online battle culminates in a meltdown that goes viral and costs Carl his job. But he reinvents himself with a food truck, driving from Miami to New Orleans to Austin and back to L.A., with appreciative diners posting rapturous reviews on Twitter.
7. “Unfriended” (2015)
Horror movies have tried to capitalize on the internet, under the theory that if it’s new, it must be scary. “Unfriended” tries to mine terror out of the ether by having a group of friends on a group Skype chat being picked off, one by one, by some supernatural evil linked to a classmate who committed suicide a year earlier. The plot is nothing new in horror terms, but director Leo Gabriadze’s visual trick – showing the entire story from one friend’s laptop screen, with the action happening on various browser windows — reflects the way a web-savvy generation has trained its eyeballs.
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