A campfire tale for the social media age, FRIEND REQUEST is Hollywood’s latest attempt to portray the internet as a scary place. It’s a conventional and predictable horror yarn, though well-executed enough that if you go in with lowered expectations, you may have some fun with it. FRIEND REQUEST begins promisingly, introducing protagonist Laura Woodson (Alycia Debnam-Carey) in a lively and well-edited montage showing how she blends her real life with the internet. Laura is an outgoing popular college sophomore with plenty of friends including close ones Olivia (Brit Morgan), Izzy (Brooke Markham) and Gus (Sean Marquette), boyfriend Tyler (William Moseley), and over 800 more on Facebook (though the word ‘Facebook’ is never actually uttered in the film). She accepts a friend request from a fellow student, the damaged goth misfit Marina Nedifar (anagram of ‘A Friend’ – and played by Liesl Ahlers), who seems to do little except stare off into space and post nightmarish little B&W videos on her timeline (which only Laura sees since Marina has zero other friends). Soon Marina is cyberstalking Laura, posting creepy and inappropriate content on her timeline nonstop and throwing a fit when she’s not invited to her birthday dinner. It’s too much for Laura who decides to cut ties with her and clicks the dreaded ‘unfriend’ button. Marina doesn’t take that well at all. She kills herself and begins stalking Laura from beyond, picking off her friends in bloody fashion through via social media and their nightmares.
The idea of a haunted Internet was handled better in 2015’s UNFRIENDED, but for its first half, FRIEND REQUEST is a well-made and innovative little horror movie featuring young people behaving the way young people actually behave—in how they talk, in how they interact with technology, in how they can be jerks. The screenplay touches on themes of loneliness, bullying, suicide, and sexual abuse and has a few things to say about social media infatuation and how Facebook can be a dangerous tool used to blindly demean others. The biggest problem with FRIEND REQUEST is that, despite a plethora of cheap jump scares and loud noises, it’s simply not scary. There’s so much going on with haunted mirrors, swarms of black wasps, mutilated dead children, and possessed killers (we know they’re possessed because they wear bright contact lenses) that it loses control of the various horror components it’s trying to squeeze in, resulting in an otherworldly mess that fails to generate any real tension and the slow pace gives us too much time to think about the story’s lapses in logic. Director Simon Verhoeven brings some style to the proceedings but all the various scare devices and horror images he throws on the screen often feel lazy and old-school (though after last week’s MOTHER!, perhaps comfortingly so). The acting is exceptionally good. Alycia Debnam-Carey’s Laura has a breezy charm that’s most appealing while Liesl Ahlers generates real sympathy. FRIEND REQUEST breaks no new ground, but if you’re looking for cheap thrills and have already seen IT, you could probably do worse.
2 1/2 of 5 Stars
