New Screenlife Thriller ‘Don’t Log Off’ Starring Ariel Winter to be Released in July – Trailer Reaction

Screenlife movies existed well before the pandemic, but the widespread lockdowns of that era catapulted the genre to greater prominence. Don’t Log Off hopes to capture the tension and uncertainty of that time in history with a suspense thriller told (mostly) through computer screens. Take a look at the trailer below:

If you caught it in the trailer, Don’t Log Off is set on March 21, 2020. That’s during the time that pandemic lockdowns were spreading across the United States (and the world). According to writers and directors Brandon and Garrett Baer, the time period is essential to their story. In an article from The Hollywood Reporter, they’re quoted as saying, “We intend our film to exist as a time capsule — a testament to an insane technologically dependent period of all of our lives.”

Don’t Log Off is about a video call among friends celebrating Sam’s birthday. Sam disappears from the call and doesn’t return, prompting her friends to investigate and attempt to find her. Meanwhile, someone from the friends’ past is watching, and stalking.

My first reaction to the trailer is that it feels somewhat like Unfriended: Dark Web (2018). I’m sure the story is different, but the idea of a non-supernatural presence lurking in the shadows during a group chat isn’t so dissimilar. I enjoyed Unfriended: Dark Web and that style of movie, so Don’t Log Off could be a lot of fun.

I’m not sure how I feel about pandemic-era movies right now. I don’t know that I’m too terribly interested in that sort of thing at the moment, but, Don’t Log Off apparently began production back in the summer of 2020, so the time period at least makes sense for the movie. Plus, if it’s entertaining, then I don’t really care when or where it’s set. It will be interesting to see how much the filmmakers use the time period to feed into the themes of the story, or if it ends up being a screenlife thriller that just happens to be set in 2020.

One thing that has me on the fence with this is that the movie will apparently use screenlife and traditional filmmaking formats. The first part of the trailer shows a scene shot in a traditional narrative way, then it moves over to a computer screen presentation. I’m a big stickler for committing to a format, especially with found footage and related genres, so I’m not sure how this will go. Hopefully the movie makes logical sense for when it uses traditional versus screenlife. I’ve seen other movies do this, and it pretty much always breaks the mood for me. So, we’ll see.