Should you watch this if it’s free? OK.
Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? No.
Score: 2.0/5
Secret ending? No.
Running time: 92 minutes (~1.5 hours)
“Friend Request” is a horror movie about a girl who goes on a revenge streak after getting unfriended. Her victims soon find out that this girl’s supernatural powers extend into the technological realm. It stars Alycia Debnam-Carey (Laura Woodson), William Moseley (Tyler), Connor Paolo (Kobe), Brit Morgan (Olivia), Brooke Markham (Isabel), Sean Marquette (Gustavo), and Liesl Ahlers (Marina Melts). It is rated NC-16.
“Friend Request” is a horror movie that takes the standard scary movie plot and dresses it up in today’s context. While it may sound innovative in its approach, it doesn’t fully explore the new element it has introduced (Facebook), and instead just uses it as a plot device to get the characters to go alone into dangerous rooms and scary dungeons. It’s disappointingly average even with its Facebook angle, so without that, it’s just a sub-par horror film.
Highlights
Interesting premise
The movie hooks you with the idea of being haunted through Facebook, and seeing how films like Unfriended have executed it, you would no doubt be excited to see how this rendition plays out. The film explores some aspects of it (like the haunted programming code) to explain how the haunting functions. But a good premise is hardly enough to hang an entire film on, and as interesting as it may be, it’s not enough to save the film from mediocrity.
Good-looking cast
They’re all good-looking young adults (even the less attractive ones are still beautiful by any standard) so the film’s cast goes easy on the eyes. This helps the film get away with many of its odder plot points and stranger character motivations, and makes up for the lack of characterisation. At least aesthetically, “Friend Request” got it right.
Letdowns
Feels dated
Somehow, the Facebook screenshots feel like a dated attempt to to simulate how college students spend their time. Three or four years back, they might still have been believable and relevant, but you can hardly find people who post the way the characters in the film do. It’s the way they post and the volume that they post which, combined, make for a very unrealistic portrayal of how Facebook is used these days.
Only one scare technique
There’s no other scare technique besides springing a horrific visual on you with angry music. Shocks are common, and even expected, in horror movies, but that’s all the film ever does. There’s no lingering sense of horror, no uneasy creepiness, and no dread that this might happen to you. It’s just shock after shock after shock. It gets your pulse pounding, but a horror movie has to have more than shocks to truly terrify the audience.
Antagonist’s motivations are strange
What exactly is Marina’s (Liesl Ahlers) aim in the film? You constantly wonder why she has to go through such roundabout methods to accomplish her goals. Given her mastery over social media, she could have easily forced her will upon everyone’s Facebook account. Yet she incites other people to do it instead, which boggles the mind. In the end, you discover that her plot all along was to achieve another goal that was not properly setup anywhere in the film. Why is Marina doing all this again?
“Friend Request” is a horror film that only has a good premise, and little other merits.
“Friend Request” opens in cinemas 28 April, 2016 (Thursday).
I thought it was obvious the goal was to destroy someone she feels lacks humility, so they walk in her shoes… if she controlled everyone’s Facebook she would not achieve this… she has to make it look like it came from her so she would feel the same powerlessness and alienation, of losing everything and falling from grace.