Friend Request (2016)
A popular college student graciously accepts a
social outcast's online friend request, but soon finds herself fighting a
demonic presence that wants to make her lonely by killing her closest
friends.
Director:
Simon VerhoevenStars:
Popular college student Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) has tons of friends,
both on Facebook and IRL. She graciously accepts social outcast
Marina's (Liesl Ahlers) online friend request, until Marina crosses the
line and Laura unfriends her. To everyone's shock, Marina takes her own
life in a ritual meant to torment Laura, which appears in a video posted
on Laura's profile. Even though it wasn't Laura who posted the video,
or other creepy content that begins appearing on her page, her Facebook
friend count begins to dwindle as a result. When her real-life friends
start dying mysterious, cruel deaths, Laura must figure out how to break
the deadly curse before it's too late.
Country:
GermanyLanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
1 March 2017 (Philippines) See more »Also Known As:
Unfriend See more »Box Office
Opening Weekend:
€258.980 (Italy) (12 June 2016)
See more »
Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorDid You Know?
Trivia
The film was shot in Cape Town, South Africa. Although the film was produced by the German director Simon Verhoeven and German production companies, the largely English-speaking cast required that the film be shot in English. Filming ended in March 2014. See more »Goofs
When Laura and her friends are looking at Marina's profile page, her
privacy for posts is set to friends of friends. Since it says she has 0
friends, that would mean they have no friends in common and should not
be able to see her posts.
Social media becomes a nightmare for a young woman and her friends in Simon Verhoeven's horror film.
The scariest thing in Simon Verhoeven’s social media-themed horror film Friend Request isn’t any of the frequent gruesome onscreen killings of its young characters. Rather, it’s this warning that keeps popping up on their computer screens: “An unknown error has occurred. Please try again later.” Just typing the words brings on a shudder.No doubt you’ve encountered a variation of the phrase at some point or another. And you’ve probably also kept careful track of how many friends you have on Facebook, looking on enviously at other members with higher numbers. This film, like such predecessors as Unfriended, taps into those technology-based anxieties. Unfortunately, it squanders the opportunity to explore them in a meaningful manner by resorting to tired horror movie tropes. It’s too bad, because Friend Request starts out promisingly.
The story revolves around Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a university student who has a hunky, supportive boyfriend (William Moseley) and tons of friends, both on Facebook and IRL (if you have to look that up, this movie probably isn’t for you). Since her social media friends number is over 800, Laura doesn’t mind accepting a friend request from Marina (Liesl Ahlers), a hoodie-wearing, Goth-like fellow student. It’s not surprising that Marina has made the request, since her friend tally before Laura signs on is exactly zero.
Marina, whose Facebook page is filled with her original creepy drawings and animations, soon becomes obsessed with Laura. After Laura lies to her about a birthday party, Marina becomes even more unhinged, to the point where Laura is forced to unfriend her. Marina’s response is to post a video online in which she’s seen committing suicide by simultaneously hanging and setting herself on fire.
That would seem to be the end of Laura’s involvement with the disturbed young woman. That is, until Marina begins cyberstalking her from the grave and posting horrific videos in Laura’s name. Laura finds herself unable to delete the videos or even remove her account. And then her friends wind up being systematically murdered in bizarre, supernatural-drenched incidents often involving swarms of black wasps. Even worse, onscreen graphics illustrate how Laura’s number of Facebook friends begins dropping precipitously.
The screenplay by Verhoeven (son of director Michael, The Nasty Girl), Matthew Ballen and Philip Koch works reasonably effectively until roughly the film’s halfway point. It’s then that the storyline devolves into a series of gruesome Final Destination-style deaths that, while admittedly shocking, don’t show us anything we haven’t seen before. As Laura enlists the services of a hacker friend (Connor Paolo) who finds himself in way over his head, Verhoeven employs a series of jump scares to increasingly familiar effect.
Although visually stylish and imaginative — the short bits of animation on display wouldn’t be out of place in a Tim Burton film — Friend Request gets less interesting the more it goes on. Still, you can’t entirely dismiss a horror movie in which unfriending someone on Facebook is vividly depicted as the ultimate act of brutality.
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