Friend Request

           Ugh. What did we do in a past life to receive such a constant shipping of stale, uninspired horror movies? Like a good amount of media in recent times, Friend Request markets itself as movie dipped in the horrors of social media. But unfortunately, the execution here feels so half-assed and distant it's as if we're reporting on a pool of a story by sticking our toes in. Or even walking by a deadly animal in the zoo and hoping it explains why it's so deadly. The recent film "Unfriended" also had themes of evils on social media coming to bite us in the spirit form, but at least that movie gave us something to chew on in terms of the way we can treat people when we are in front of a screen and how those actions can bite back, or in this case kill back. The most fucking frightening thing that happens here in the social media scenes is being unable to delete the "antagonist" after she commits suicide due to the way the "protagonist" and her friends treat her and begins to stalk them. And I use quotes around the words protagonist and antagonist for good reason; who the fuck are we supposed to be rooting for, or even against in this movie? Are we on the side of the bland villain, contradicting olden horror movie days when we were supposed to be against the big baddie? Are we on the side of the even blander protagonist and all of her friends? Who all happen to look about 15 years too old to register as young college students. That's the issue here, there's really no perspective or insight here into the horrors of which side we are on, which makes the even more stock loud noises, bangs, and poorly visualized evil faces as the antagonist comes after the protagonist and company more of a nuisance then anything. You know what's an even more daunting part of social media than friend requests? This movie's process of searching and searching for a point to it all and having your search engine say "Sorry not found".

1/4