Unsubscribe (film)

Unsubscribe is a 2020 film created by actor and YouTuber Eric Tabach and filmmaker Christian Nilsson.[9] Starring Charlie Tahan and YouTuber Michelle Khare,[3] with Nilsson also featuring in the film alongside YouTubers Thomas Brag and Zach Kornfeld,[10] the 29-minute film[7] follows five famous YouTubers who are tricked into joining an online call, only to find themselves stalked and hunted by an internet troll on camera.[6][3]

Unsubscribe
Theatrical release poster
Directed byChristian Nilsson[1]
Produced byXianssen[2]
Screenplay byChristian Nilsson[1]
Starring
Music byHugo Lopez[2]
Production
company
TXE[2]
Running time
29 minutes[7]
CountryUnited States[8][5]
Budget$0[3]

The film gained international publicity for gaining a #1 spot in worldwide theaters and earning $25,488 USD on a $0 budget.[1][11][12] The title and amount of money was gained via a technique known as "four-walling", which allows filmmakers who rent out a whole theater to gain all of the profits from that movie, something only considered lucrative during the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]

Plot

Five YouTubers conduct a video-call[3] for their friend's birthday,[2] but begin to be stalked by an enigmatic member of the call.[3][1][8]

Cast

Reception

Reception to the film was mixed. Though critical reception of the film's content was mostly negative,[13] the film garnered mostly positive reviews for its creation process and ability to gain high rankings during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Washington Post praised the film as "a testament to artistic ingenuity under lockdown",[6] while NME called the film an "entertaining hoax",[11] and Fox News opined that "garnering a No. 1 release – albeit short-lived since 'Unsubscribe' failed to throw off weekend box office numbers – is a stout accomplishment in itself".[9] Other sources were more ambivalent, such as Decider, which stated that "[w]hether this stunt is a stroke of brilliance or a stroke of shameless self-promotion is up to you",[10] while Trillmag said that "Unsubscribe's status as a historical filmmaking achievement is indicated by the unorthodox (and deviously scheming) method through which it achieved box office success".[8]

gollark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSiRkpgwVKY (with an ESP8266 though).
gollark: I think I read that the ESP32's I²S hardware could do something vaguely PWM-like up to 80MHz.
gollark: I don't know *that* much. It just seems like it might require a lot of routing table entries on every node to work.
gollark: Based on skimming the disaster radio routing protocol bit, it doesn't really have any defenses against malicious devices fiddling with routing, and may scale poorly (not sure exactly how the routing tables work).
gollark: Not the hardwarey/RF stuff, more like how you can efficiently do routing (even in the face of possibly malicious devices connected) and whatnot.

References
  1. "Their film played for 1 day at 1 LI theater — and became the No. 1 movie in America". Newsday. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  2. "Unsubscribe - Trailer 2020 - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-07-28.
  3. Nevett, Joshua (2020-06-19). "How a $0-budget movie 'topped the US box office'". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  4. Unsubscribe, retrieved 2020-08-07
  5. "$0 budget film 'Unsubscribe' tops Box office". Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  6. Elfrink, Tim (June 18, 2020). "Want to top the box office during a pandemic? Film for free on Zoom and then rent out a theater". The Washington Post.
  7. All citations that can be found, such as these ones,[5][6] cite the film's length at 29 minutes.
  8. "$0 Budget Movie 'Unsubscribe' Tops U.S. Box Office - Trill! Magazine". Trill! Magazine. 2020-06-21. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  9. Young, Julius (2020-06-19). "'Unsubscribe' is a $0-budget movie that cleverly 'topped the US box office'". Fox News. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  10. "These YouTubers Had the No. 1 Film in America Thanks to a Pandemic Loophole". Decider. 2020-06-18. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  11. "Box office busted: a short history of Hollywood's greatest ever hoaxes". NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM. 2020-06-30. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  12. "'Unsubscribe': $0-budget film made by pranksters tops US box office | NME". NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM. 2020-06-18. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  13. Actual reviews of the film's content are few, but those that can be found are largely negative; for example, Trillmag's review, which called the plot "sub-standard".[8]
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