The Horror Show
Friend Request
by Simon Verhoeven
Social media rules our lives. Someone is always twittering a tweet or snapping a chat. We have Facebook and Instagram. We feel validated by these notifications, our likes, our retweets, our “friends” and it is addicting. This is the modern day playground where horror could blossom. In the 1980's it was your morality plays, just say no to sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll and you might survive. Unfortunately, this modern times morality YouTube video hasn't found it's rhythm.
There's been a ton of these types of horror movies based on different social media or online presence. There's even one about ride sharing, but we'll get to that one soon enough. Friend Request is not the best example of this type of movie. I'm not sure it even knows what type of movie it wants to be. It's kind of got a lot of nothing happening. Well, there's a lot of jump scares. Like… so many jump scares. Every scare was a jump scare. What's worse, the jump scares were so predictable. It rendered them virtually useless and since that was all there was, it made the movie pretty boring.
The movie opens with a college class finding out about a fellow student that has killed herself. Then we get a time jump to two weeks earlier. We now get to meet our useless cast of death fodder and the final girl through the social media posts that are obviously Facebook, but not. Mark Zuckerberg tried to get the movie blocked from release and failed.
As the montage of “good times” ends, we are introduced to Marina, the lonely girl with no friends IRL or online. She's creepy and compulsively pulls her hair out. Marina constantly watches Laura and her beautiful friends. Laura accepts Marina's friend request and Marina becomes obsessed. Laura's birthday rolls around and Marina invites herself to the party. Laura ditches Marina and Marina kills herself. Or at least that's what we think.
The timeline catches up with the beginning of the movie and Laura's social media becomes haunted. She can't delete her profile. It keeps posting the video of Marina's suicide. Laura starts to lose friends. Oh, the horror! Laura's friends start dying. There might be a monster. I have no idea, they wouldn't ever show it. Laura battles Marina's spirit, but loses. She becomes the new Marina at a different school. And the cycle of this lame ass movie starts over.
This movie is a good example of what is wrong with a lot of modern horror. It's a formula. Final girl/guy and a group of friends who serve as nothing but kill fodder. A McGuffin of some sort comes into their lives. The friends die. The final girl/guy sacrifices themselves to/defeats the evil. Roll credits. Wash, rinse, repeat. If you can't tell, I am super bored of this. Unfriended, Truth or Dare, The Bye Bye Man, Wish Upon, they're literally the same thing. I worry for the state of this genre. I blame Blumhouse. I really do. I also blame companies trying for a PG-13 rating. I miss being scared of the trailers. They were usually mysterious and never gave away anything. Horror used to be creative, even when it was a formula.
Friend Request is on Netflix. I wouldn't even bother. I think I'd rather watch some of the crap people post on Facebook.
Robin Thompson, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.