Friend Request (2017)
Maybe the corniest genre to horror films is the social media genre. We had the corny film Unfriended, horror dealing with the dark sides of Skype and Facebook. On a much smaller level, you also had the foreign film The Den (2013), dealing with webcams. It's a unique genre but I don't see how it can grow and will become so dated twenty-years from now. The worst film to the social media genre to this date and basically a rip-off in many ways to Unfriended is Friend Request out this weekend.
Laura Woodson (Alycia-Debnam Carey) is your typical popular girl in college who has a popular following on Facebook. After accepting a friend request from a classmate and social outcast Marina (Liesl Ahlers), a girl who looks like she popped out of the The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo set, Marina than becomes obsessed with Laura. Marina then unexpectedly dies but somehow and someway, Marina is still posting on Laura's Facebook and making new friends on her account. A horror mystery is now upon us online.
Even though set in college, Friend Request feels like a high school setting because these main characters are so immature and such thin characters. None are strong actors/actresses and aren't well written either. Marnia isn't in this much besides the first act and her story is so muddled/disjointed and mostly important, she isn't creppy either. Maybe even worse in this is Laura, who you just never care for as a plain main character. Her boyfriend Tyler (William Moseley) has his fair share of screen time who doesn't anything to the story. Kobe (Connor Paolo) is the techy friend who again is a character that doesn't do anything much.
Friend Request's issues reside in the film's plot holes and question marks. If Maria is sending these messages, why doesn't Laura just doesn't delete her account? If she can't delete her account as she says, what kind of software issues is she having along with the other characters? What is Marina purpose to all of this? What exactly is happening in the third act because it's all too forced? A laughable and bad third act that tries to force black magic along with numerous settings making it very hard to follow.
Friend Request is trying to combine certain elements of the horror film and then social media and the results together are a disaster. You shouldn't have expected this to be good but Unfriended really worked when it wasn't meant to. A film not helping the cause for the social media horror genre at all.
