Friend Request is a German production that was filmed in South Africa in 2014 and has been available on DVD in Europe for the last couple of years. If that isn’t a recipe for a quality theatrical release, then I don’t know what is. At the same time that this was being made, there was another horror movie released called Unfriended. It was awful. Unfriended is the story of a girl that commits suicide and then haunts people via social media. The real shit kicker is that it was filmed entirely through the computer screens of a group of teenagers as they interacted with each other via Skype and Facebook. If you like watching teenagers type about inane bullshit, then that is the movie for you. Personally, I would rather fill a burlap sack with coked-up badgers and tie it on my head. But I recall thinking that the overall concept could have worked if it was filmed like an actual movie. Friend Request was seemingly made to prove me wrong.
Just like Unfriended, this is about a girl that commits suicide, broadcasts it on social media and then haunts the people that she blames. The main girl is the only person that accepted her friend request, but then unfriends her when she starts acting like a psychopathic stalker, thus triggering the suicide. The dead girl then returns to kill main girl’s friends somehow (more on that in a minute) to make her understand what loneliness feels like. The moral of the story is that if you meet a sad and lonely person, don’t be nice to them. Because they will kill you.
Not much about this film makes a whole lot of sense (though I say that relatively after sitting through mother!). In particular, the film can’t quite decide on the nature of the villain. For most of the film, she is just a depressed, weird girl that dresses like Hot Topic was having a blowout sale. Kind of like me in high school, except whinier and female. Later on, though, it is revealed that she is a witch and (I think) has been evil the whole time and probably really likes The Ring. The result is that the first and second halves of the film feel like they are taken from completely different scripts. I’m still not entirely sure if she was meant to be evil for the entire movie. If it is meant as a cautionary tale about cyber bullying, then they probably shouldn’t have turned the girl into a demonic witch in the last act because nobody needs that in their lives. It’s also noted that the university (the setting of the film that is totally in California and not South Africa) has no record of her existence. As a college administrator, that raises a few red flags for me. How did she get a dorm? How is she on class rosters? What was her admissions essay about? Why do all the administrators know who she is, yet have no record of her? Perhaps this is occupational nitpicking, but somebody in Admissions needs a serious talking to.
Several other things don’t make sense. The death scenes are just vague. Case in point, one guy just loses his mind in an elevator and bangs his head repeatedly on the wall (again, I think). Another girl rips her hair out and slits her own throat in full view of a hospital staff that should probably be fired. I don’t understand what the villain’s powers are, so I have no idea what exactly is happening in any of these scenes. Somebody else gets stung to death by black wasps, because apparently those have something to do with witches. The witch is also manipulating people’s Facebook accounts to upload videos of these deaths and not allowing them to delete any content or their accounts. While the characters point this out to each other, they never bother showing it to the cops that suspect them of murder. I’m not a detective, but that might be handy information for the police. It also seems that death could be avoided if the characters just opted to avoid social media, but that option is never explored. I could theorize that that was an intentional commentary on modern society, but I think that is giving the movie too much credit.
Other than the rampant plot holes, I guess this isn’t awful. It isn’t one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year, but that is more of an indictment of the industry than an endorsement of the film. It is a pretty standard modern horror fare: jump scares, awful computer effects and forgettable characters. If you are ever faced with having to watch this or Unfriended, then pick this and enjoy your slightly less shitty evening.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_Request#/media/File:Friend_Request_Poster.jpg
