Headscratchers / Unfriended: Dark Web

• If the antagonist's computer is being used by Matias, how are they typing their messages?
  • Remote control software, VNC or Teamviewer. Or malware that grants remote control. If the laptop was deliberately left behind, they could've rigged it with malware to infect his friend's computers too.
• Alright, just let me get this out of my system. Why are the protagonists using Skype in 2018?
  • Why shouldn't they be using Skype in 2018?
  • What's the alternative? I don't even know if the average person uses Discord.
    • Yeah, I always thought Discord servers were created for a more specific purpose than merely keeping in contact with others, e.g. gaming, a fandom, or for LGBT people in a certain town or city.
    • Discord was popular in 2018 even for personal chats among friend groups, but it wasn't popular for video chatting in groups. As this friend group enjoyed video chatting for game nights, using Skype, while still rare, wouldn't be unheard of.
• Are there supposed to be tens of thousands of Charons spread all over the world, watching the "game" and ready to spring into action at a moment's notice if one or several victims happen to live nearby? Because if the "bait" laptop was left there to be picked up completely at random, and the baited victim could have connected with any number of friends from anywhere in the world (including no one at all, and just using it by their lonesome), then successfully running the "game" would require a mind-boggling amount of participants, all of them fit and able-bodied, capable of stealthily breaking into any kind of facility or location (within minutes), sometimes in pairs or in multiples, and not a single one of them making a mistake that would expose their entire operation.
  • The whole event was planned out. This group of friends and their game night had been targeted and agents had been placed in position well in advance. (The displayed montages of one friend's vlog rants, for example, would have required significant review to find the best audio snippets). The agent in the subway wasn't there just randomly or perpetually on station on the off-chance that the game would start then, but because the session was planned out and the decision tree had been well explored - "if this happens, we should have a guy here". This would also allow them lead time to compromise all participants computers or other hardware to assist with controlling them and help deter things such as 911 calls. The laptop was left in position for three weeks, the activation signal was Matias booting the machine and "Norah C. IV" becoming active online.
    • That makes the Game Night Charons extraordinarily, astonishingly lucky that a) the very specific mark they targeted indeed stole the laptop, b) that no one else did it, c) that he connected it to his Wifi before doing the smart thing and wiping it while offline, d) that he used it, and not his old one, to Skype into his friends' own game night, and e) that all of the marked friends participated. That goes beyond "doing a psych profile on a guy likely to steal the laptop" and veers into raw omniscience. (Nevermind that Nari could have successfully fended off her attacker and subdued him, instead of both of them getting killed by the train.)
    • Even as it occurs, this actually seems to be a pretty severe failure for the Charons. They probably didn't intend for a member of the Circle to die in the attack, even if Nari died as well, and likely just thought that she would be incapable of putting up a fight. It would have obviously been worse for them if she had survived, but it was still pretty bad.
    • Although one should remember that the world in which the film takes place, the Supernatural is real. The first film established that. If The Circle is utilizing supernatural powers in their hacking/criminal activities, that changes things considerably. Their software hacking tools could be more powerful than anything available in the real world or work differently. They could possibly even be able to affect the behavior and decision-making abilities of their victims to a degree. On the other hand, don't underestimate the power of gaslighting.
    • Another thing, Matias said his old laptop was shitty. Maybe they deliberately sabotaged it and did other things to make the bait laptop look more appealing to him. They may have done a lot preparation months in advance, which in and of itself would be fun for them.
    • The most unbelievable thing, at least for this troper is that the Circle somehow knew that Matias would beg for Erica to be safe and transfer the crypto currency to himself as a way to blackmail Norah. C IV. How could they have possibly predicted he would do that? How could they have known that he wasn’t some sick fuck like them who enjoyed it or that he simply wouldn’t care enough to try and make sure Erica would be okay? The idea that they planned this down to every single detail, especially that one is just too unbelievable.
    • Even if they didn't predict the exact scenario that their mark would move the money as a bargaining chip to save Erica, it's not unrealistic at all to predict that whoever got the laptop would move the money. The average person would have at least some motivation to get their hands on an easily accessible ten million dollars. Also, any person who took the laptop and started using it would arguably be even more likely than the average person to take the money since, if they took the laptop and logged into it, that shows that they're 1) willing to steal things and 2)are at least somewhat technically savvy.
• Was there an alternate cut of the film regarding the flash poll at the end? The main page lists Matias' fate as being buried alive next to Amaya, but in the version this Troper saw, Matias was hit by a truck after the Charons voted for him to die and Amaya was captured, presumably to become the next Erica Dunne.
  • The main page also says that the movie has two different endings in different theatres.
  • Almost certainly not. The consensus seems to be that the two endings are the "buried alive" and the "hit by a truck" ones, with the poll only happening in the truck version. Unless there's somehow a third ending, the truck version would only ever result in Mattias being killed.
    • There is a third ending, that results in a different vote altogether.
• Here is a big question. How do these Charons prevent their victims' ghosts from haunting the Internet and coming after them the way Laura Barns came after Blair Lily and company?
  • Maybe they didn't have to do anything to keep them from coming back. Instead, maybe they brought Laura back because they saw the video, the suicide and after investigating her friends, figured it would make for great entertainment.
    • There's nothing besides their incredibly good luck to indicate The Circle has any supernatural pull, but who can come back as a ghost of vengeance is always arbitrary in fiction. Freddy Krueger was a child murderer killed in an act of revenge, yet he gets to come back 10 times more powerful than he was in life simply because he was burned instead of given the chair (yes, I know it was revealed he made a deal with dream demons, but only after 5 movies and a TV show)
  • The simple answer is that this is just a Thematic Series, not one bound by the same continuity. The two films share a similar gimmick and revolve around the same themes, but unless we learn otherwise in a later film we can just assume that they don't necessarily take place in the exact same universe. In other words, since there's little-to-nothing in the second film to suggest anything supernatural is going on, the second film simply takes place in a universe wherein there's no ghosts or other supernatural beings.
  • Have you noticed that one of the circle's victims (actually the last one before Erica, if the files in the CONTRIBUTIONS folder are sorted chronologically) was called Laura? If this isn't just a coincidence, it might well mean that absolutely nothing supernatural was going on in the first movie, as the circle staged all of those events.
  • That wouldn't explain how Laura shows up in ghost form at the end of the movie. The Charons can't reanimate a dead person.
• Okay, so AJ’s death via SWAT-ing was probably the most disturbing one in the entire movie...but what’s gonna happen once the cops find out it was bogus? Cause he didn’t have any weapons, they’re gonna see he didn’t have a shotgun in his hands at the very least, and they’ll probably find out the true nature of the call itself eventually. Of course they might not have anyway to track it back to the circle, but still.
  • Any trail might lead back to Matias, whom the Circle had framed for their crimes, or any leads will just deadend. On the other hand, maybe law enforcement is aware of The Circle, has an on-going investigation and this is just the latest sad event to add to their list of atrocities. Like Silk Road, sooner or later, they're going to draw so much attention that law enforcement will investigate and they will find them. Another troper pointed out that the fake suicide note was labeled American English, while the victim was English. That could be a vital clue that leads authorites to treat his "suicide" as murder and take a harder look at the other evidence.
  • It is revealed at the end that one of the police officers that killed AJ was a member of The Circle and there are likely more. If there are then it is likely that The Circle has the ability to tamper with, destroy, or remove evidence or testimony that could lead to their exposure and frustrate any investigation, at least to some degree.