DON'T LOG OFF Review

I just recently, as of this writing, passed one hundred movies released in 2025 watched. In that hundred films, I've obviously seen a lot of movies in theaters and that were big, major releases (Predator: Badlands was officially #100, for instance), but you don't get to that figure without finding a lot of independent flicks on streaming services.

When you watch a lot of indie films--especially in the horror genre--you end up seeing a lot of films of a somewhat dubious quality. It's what makes my picking the Worst Movies Of The Year such a chore. I hate denigrating smaller flicks, but a lot of them are technically the worst films I had seen. So I'm often sifting through the bottom movies to name some of the bigger budget flops of the year instead.

That's not always entirely fair, though; there are a lot of great indie pictures, too. So really, seeking out these movies is a really fun experiment. You don't know exactly what you are going to get because a lot of times, there is no prejudice from seeing a lot of other opinions first.

When looking for something to watch this week, I came across a screenlife movie called Don't Log Off on Amazon Prime. It stars one of my favorite young Hollywood stars, Ariel Winter, so it was a pretty easy choice to give it a watch. Screenlife films are the kind that take place at least almost entirely on a screen within the movie. So everything we see is through Zoom meetings or security cameras or FaceTime calls or the like. It's similar to how found footage movies all take place through a camera lens within the universe of the movie. It's a gimmick that is taking movie-making by storm.

Don't Log Off takes place in 2020 in the early days of the COVD-19 epidemic. Several quarantined friends get together for an online meeting to celebrate one of their own's birthday. As the gathered young adults party virtually, the birthday girl excuses herself... and then never returns. Eventually the others grow concerned and begin investigating where she might have disappeared to.

This leads some of them to break quarantine and head out to the missing friend's home to try to find her. As one after another comes up M.I.A., as well, the remaining friends are stuck wondering if this is a prank in process or something more nefarious.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ I am a fan of screenlife movies, especially ever since I interviewed the director

who basically invented the genre and made it famous. It remains an interesting narrative function for modern storytelling. It's basically a more modern take on the found footage genre, and I don't see it going anywhere in the near future as directors and screenwriters find more and more stuff to do with it.

This is not to say that Don't Log Off is filmed ENTIRELY in screenlife; there is at least a segment to open the movie that is filmed in base format shooting. But the rest of the movie uses the gimmick. I'm always reminded of Searching...when I see these movies, and it was one of my favorite movies in the 2010's. So as long as filmmakers are working to keep this style fresh, I am here for it.

Ariel Winter in Don't Log Off

+ Don't Log Off is appropriately tense at points and does a solid job creating the atmosphere it desires. It's a genuinely enjoyable watching experience, and there were moments where I was all-in and leaning forward and holding my breath as the events unraveled. It made me care about the goings-on and want to know what was happening. That's as much as you can ask for from a movie!

- A COVID movie in 2025? Feels a little quaint. The end credits imply this movie may have been made back in 2020, so credit there if true, but why wait so long to mass release it? I guess there could have been issues getting distribution, so that's possible. But still... watching a movie this year about COVID-19 is the worst kind of reminiscence.

Given how many reasons you can have to make a screenlife movie--let's face it, meeting with friends via the Internet is a ubiquitous enough activity in the current decade--I kind of wish they had not leaned on the coronavirus as a crutch here. Even if the movie was filmed back in the heyday of the disease, it still ages the movie quickly.

- The acting is uneven across the board (no shade to Ariel Winter, who is always doing her best in every project in which she is cast), and some of the characters are unbelievable or feel negligible. Others still just feel unlikable, but not necessarily just because the writer wanted them to be; the acting is a little too obnoxious and to buy what they are selling.

The good news is that these are all inexperienced young actors cast in these roles, and they have plenty of room to develop and grow, so a little indie project here is a great place to get some experience. But that doesn't change the fact that their lack of seasoning is apparent as you watch Don't Log Off.

Don't Log Off is a perfectly adequate little movie to enjoy when you have about 90 minutes to kill. Despite the unpolished performances from the stars, nothing here is so offensive as to turn a viewer off. It works as a screenlife movie, it works as a thriller, and it works as a vehicle for Ariel Winter's talents. It's just unexceptional on the whole.

🍿 SCORE = 49 / 100