Friend Request keeps on trend with other social media horror movies like #Horror, Unfriended, Fear Dot Com … in the sense that it’s not good.
A quick synopsis, if you couldn’t guess it from the “clever” title: a popular, happy-go-lucky girl Laura (played by Fear the Walking Dead‘s Alycia Debnam-Carey) befriends a hoodie-wearing loner by accepting her social media friend request. But then things get weird and Laura unfriends her and then, uh-oh, now this girl wants revenge on her and her good-looking college buddies. Scary.
Nothing in Friend Request works: it’s a clunky, generic horror script, with everyone in the movie just a stupid caricature that does stupid things. I’m just going to assume the script was trying to have some deep message about people’s obsession with social media and getting likes and having friends on the internet but, unfortunately, that all falls flat. There are also scenes where deaths are shared online in the un-branded movie version of Facebook. Maybe this is a nod to the recent suicides that people have posted via Facebook live or whatever. It doesn’t really matter because any metaphors are ruined by a lackluster movie and un-scary CGI hornets. You heard me.
The college students that are the main focus are your typical b-movie idiots, which I guess is fine. But the adults in this movie really take the cake in being over-the-top stupid. Was this a conscious decision for the high school age audience that will probably be mainly watching this? Who knows. Nothing feels real at this point.
By the way, it’s 2017 right? We can stop acting like the internet is some new-fangled thing. One scene had me laughing because as Laura and her friend (who I guess is a hacker?) are doing some Googling. As they type in their inquiry they go to hit a button and it says “WEB SEARCH”. What year is this that a search engine has a button that says “web search?” No shit, it’s a web search … they are clearly on the internet in a year past 2005. I was hoping hacker-boy was going to say something about “surfing the information highway” or something equally as outdated. No such luck.
(Also, one of the victims falls prey to evil hoodie girl via CGI hornets and in the process of that, he bangs his head into a wall until blood starts pouring out. I felt the same impulse while watching this movie.)
Delete this Friend Request and then just log off of the internet for the day.
Rating:
