“We’re livin’ on the edge,” Steve Tyler once told us, and while he was referring to our sanity, we also find ourselves living on the cutting edge, especially when it comes to films. Many Hollywood features try to incorporate elements of the latest technology for an easy way of giving viewers something they’ve never seen before. The horror genre is no exception to this. Whether it’s Scream capitalizing on the '90's boom in consumer cellpone ownership for its self-aware killings or Untraceable, which works webcams into its anonymous murders. The biggest trend nowadays is the cultural dominance of social media. So it’s only natural for horror filmmakers to deduce that people’s entire lives are online these days. Why shouldn’t their deaths be also? So now, Friend Request becomes the latest film to combine demon/supernatural possession with the networking of social media. It’s not perfect but it’s worth accepting rather than ignoring.
When popular college girl Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey – The 100, Fear the Walking Dead) accepts a Facebook friend request from the lonely outsider Marina (Liesl Ahlers – debut,) it quickly turns into a case of cyber-stalking obsession. Following Marina’s mysterious suicide, something starts killing off Laura’s Facebook friends, both online and in real life.
So in 2016's growing tradition of Walking Dead, ladies staring in their horror films (Lori in The Other Side of the Door and Maggie in The Boy), Fear the Walking Dead’s Alicia becomes the next in line. To her credit, Carey makes a very good go and being a leading lady, but the film around her has some problems. The usage of augmented and manipulated reality visuals creates a very unsettled tone. One minute, the film is presenting itself as grounded with its social media basis designed to make it feel relatable but the next, we’re diving headfirst into one of Marina’s twisted arty video postings for a bizarre dreamlike sequence. Each in isolation is fine but the two really don’t mesh, which is a shame because the immersive visuals are often quite enjoyable and ultimately deliver some good foreshadowing. The next problem is that it takes its social media approach far too literally and too seriously. When the film has police officers questioning Laura about posts on her Facebook page, the immersion shatters and the film losses all credibility. Neither do the constant error messages towards unfriending and profile deletion add anything to the tension or scares (although granted, for some viewers not being able to update their status will be more scary than watching someone slit their own throat). Although yet again, this problem has a silver lining to it. In a clever meshing of the occult and technological, the supernatural elements lean towards witchcraft and the idea of “black mirror” cults, which here revolve around the black screens of phones and laptops. That is a very smart play on the modern screen staring epidemic and deserves its credit.
The story is better than expected. Although it can feel a little slow to get going, a lot of the time is spent building up the main characters of Laura and her friends do notable degrees of likeability, which adds value when the inevitable kills start rolling in. Once the horror side of the story gets going, it also produces a couple good twists along the way and at several points, produces some genuinely good scares. The nightmare/haunting imagery is effective in its use of wasps (who doesn’t hate wasps?) and even clichéd troupes like dark corridors, and jump scare grabs are still put to decent use. The horror elements of the film do have a major unexpected error though. That is Marina as a villain, in human form, at least. She’s more comical than anything else as the film goes way too far in trying to make her look shy and weird like the Corpse Bride fell into a vat of Hot Topic. We don’t even get any real depth to her character once Laura and friends start investigating her. What’s more, can we just stop for a moment and appreciate that one of the key messages of Friend Request is portraying the idea of showing any form of kindness or friendship to the shy and socially awkward very negatively? Yes, there are clear notions of regret and misunderstanding in the film’s final act, but the whole “just ignore the weird kid” message is arguably more harmful than any of its graphic imagery. Speaking of the gore, while there are clear violent and bloody scenes the film finds the right balance of not going overboard to be tolerable for the more squeamish yet satisfying for the gore-connoisseur types.
Alycia Debnam-Carey is the clear standout of the cast. She’s believable in her benevolent desires for reaching out to Laura while bringing in much of her successes from Walking Dead to give us fear and vulnerability when required. She becomes very easy to care about, which is essential for any decent heroine. Liesl Ahlers tries her best but the ridiculous stereotype of her character is heavily against her. William Moseley (The Chronicles of Narnia’s Peter) does okay on boyfriend duties. His jealousy angle often feels forced which is really all he’s got for most of the film but he functions well as someone for Laura to hug when plot necessary. Connor Paulo (Gossip Girl, Revenge) fairs much better as Laura’s ex and tech geek Kobe for being allowed to lighten up considerably, bringing in some comic relief. Being the computer geek, he gets lumbered with plenty of exposition but manages to keep it from turning into a C++ tutorial. Brit Morgan (True Blood), Sean Marquette (The Goldbergs) and Brooke Markham (debut) are all enjoyable enough rounding out the group of friends.
Friend Request is a film commendable in its ambition but less so in its execution and its failures over social stereotyping. It’s a good horror viewing and certainly the best currently available but not a great one. It looks like we’ll have to accept it, social media based horror films are here to stay so place your bets over the next one. Insta-kill? Trick or Tweet? Death Messenger? Or the even more terrifying “No signal”?
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