FRIEND REQUEST (2016)

Studio:       Lionsgate
Director:    Simon Verhoeven
Writer:       Matthew Ballen, Philip Koch, Simon Verhoeven
Producer:  Quirin Berg, Max Wiedemann
Stars:     Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley, Connor Paolo, Brit Morgan, Brooke Markham, Sean Marquette, Liesl Ahlers, Shashawnee Hall

Review Score:

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Summary:

By shunning a strange loner, a popular college student sets in motion a supernatural mystery that endangers her close friends.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Awkward loner Marina Mills idolizes her popular classmate Laura Woodson, an active social media user, from afar. Marina sends Laura a friend request on Facebook. Despite Marina being shunned on campus and having zero friends, Laura takes an interest in Marina’s macabre artwork and accepts her request.

Marina immediately begins commenting on all of Laura’s posts, sends numerous messages, and mocks up a picture of the two of them together. Laura reviews Marina’s online profile with her friends Olivia Mathison and Isabel, and they find gruesome videos that look like recorded nightmares. Olivia and Izzy warn Laura to be wary of Marina.

Laura lies about her birthday party plans so that Marina is excluded. When Marina angrily confronts Laura in the cafeteria after seeing party photos posted online featuring other friends, a physical struggle erupts. Marina’s hood falls down, revealing that much of her hair is ripped out.

Worried that Marina is mentally unstable when she continues sending messages and trying to video chat with her, Laura unfriends Marina. Laura later experiences a disturbing vision of a haunted mirror previously seen in Marina’s artwork.

Dr. Markham announces to his students that Marina committed suicide, which shocks Laura. It is also revealed that a webcam video exists of Marina’s death. Kobe, a friend with a romantic interest in Laura, adds that Marina’s body was not found and police are not sure of her true identity.

Laura receives a call from Marina as a video is posted to Laura’s Facebook profile. The video shows Marina burning an illustration of Laura before hanging herself in front of her computer. The fire from the paper ignites Marina’s body. The video is sent to everyone connected to Laura’s account and she immediately begins losing social media friends.

Detective Cameron interviews Laura in front of the university dean. Laura tries explaining that she is unable to delete the video and no longer has control over her social media account.

Laura asks Kobe for help to figure out what is wrong with her profile. Kobe examines the code and discovers it is seemingly distorted and rewriting itself.

Izzy’s boyfriend Gustavo Garcia ends up in a nightmare world of imagery from Marina’s profile. Izzy opens an elevator door to find Gustavo inside beating himself to death against the walls.

Izzy blames Laura for Gustavo’s death, citing that he was suffering from nightmares ever since Laura and Marina’s confrontation. Elevator video of Gustavo’s death is posted to Laura’s account, losing her more friends and causing the dean to suspend Laura for the remainder of the semester. A message from Marina says that Laura will know what it is like to be lonely.

Kobe hears the sound of wasps on the video of Gustavo’s death. His research reveals that wasps were known to protect witches. Kobe and Laura break into Marina’s dorm room and find a photo linking Marina to a private school from her childhood.

Laura speaks with the principal of Marina’s former school and learns she was an orphan whose real name was Marina Nedifar. Marina was known to stare into her computer and was bullied by other children who claimed she gave them nightmares. Laura connects Marina to the deaths of two boys who were found with mutilated faces and swarmed by wasps.

Kobe becomes haunted through a computer as he researches black mirrors and occult rituals. Laura’s boyfriend Tyler McCormick discovers he is haunted when he removes a wasp from his ear.

While recovering in the hospital from the shock of Gustavo’s death, Izzy enters Marina’s nightmare world. The next day, Detective Cameron shows Laura surveillance footage of Izzy tearing out her hair and cutting her own throat. The video is posted to Laura’s account and she continues losing friends.

Olivia, Tyler, and Kobe discover they are unable to delete their Facebook accounts and cannot unfriend Laura.

Tyler researches Marina’s history and learns her mother was Ada Nedifar, the sole survivor of a fire that destroyed Moore’s Grove Farm. He later explains to Laura that the commune at the farm was an evil cult that people tried to stop. Ada’s burned body was kept alive long enough to give birth to Marina.

Kobe tells Laura that he thinks Marina’s death was a ritual, not a suicide. He explains that witches used black mirrors for scrying to communicate with the other side. When they became hunted or had no other way out, the witches would hang and burn themselves in front of the mirror to become a dark entity like a demon. To stop the curse, they have to destroy the original black mirror, which in this case is Marina’s laptop. However, they still are not sure where Marina killed herself.

Olivia is next to enter Marina’s nightmare reality. Tyler and Laura accidentally hit Olivia with their car when she runs into the road while entranced, but she survives and is taken to the hospital. Olivia later becomes possessed, takes the gun from Detective Cameron’s partner, and kills herself.

Kobe and Laura search for Marina and her laptop at the remains of the Moore’s Grove Farm. After staring into a mirror in a burned out building’s basement, Kobe stabs Laura, thinking Marina will not kill the rest of them if Laura is dead. Laura flees into the woods with Kobe in pursuit.

Laura makes her way to a factory she recognizes from research about the mutilated boys. Tyler arrives at the farm, confronts Kobe, and the two men follow after Laura.

Laura’s mother Caroline Woodson calls Laura as she explores the factory. Laura sees her mother tearing her hair out in a fit of madness before leaving the screen holding a knife.

Tyler reunites with Laura. Kobe unexpectedly stabs Tyler in his throat from behind and kills him. Laura runs. Kobe follows, but he is suddenly swarmed by wasps and killed.

Laura sees visions of the two boys and demands to know what they want from her. A vision of young Marina appears and tells her she wants to be best friends. Laura is led to the laptop, which morphs into a black mirror. A demon lunges at Laura.

Laura returns to school in a disheveled state wearing a hood. Laura eyes a girl across the cafeteria before turning to her social media account on her laptop, which shows zero friends.

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Review:

Since there is more than one movie with the title, it might merit mention that this review is for the 2016 “Friend Request” starring Alycia Debnam-Carey of “Fear the Walking Dead,” not the 2013 thriller with Anthony Michael Hall.  Though given that the latter has just 50 IMDb votes and no user or externally linked reviews, I suppose it’s a longshot anyone is looking for that.

Laura is the kind of popular girl pulled from a cool college student stereotype.  Her Facebook friend count is closing in on one thousand.  She has one boy in her bed and another pining in the wings.  Yet Laura is still sweet enough to treat her psych studies seriously and always takes time out to talk to mom.

Social outcast Marina comes from the opposite side of that coin.  She sits in the corner with a hood hiding half of her head, occupies her imagination through a pen making macabre doodles, and oddly idolizes Laura from across the lecture hall.

Not unsurprisingly, Marina’s Facebook friend count sits at zero.  Somewhat surprisingly, that goose egg is about to go up by one.

Marina drums up enough courage to invite Laura to be her first virtual friend and, taking an interest in her artwork as well as pity on her loneliness, Laura clicks ‘accept.’  She immediately wishes she hadn’t when Marina comments on every post, sends pestering messages, and Photoshops a picture of the two imaginary BFFs together.  So Laura says goodbye with the ‘unfriend’ button and hello to a new kind of nightmare.

Word soon spreads that Marina killed herself.  Police didn’t find a body.  But students have seen the gruesome webcam video of Marina burning an illustration of Laura and hanging herself, with the resulting fire sending Marina’s corpse up in flames.  What no one yet knows it this seeming suicide may have been an obscure occult ritual.

In death, Marina is determined to make Laura as lonely as she was in life.  One by one, Laura’s friends enter a weird waking world built from Marina’s mind, and they don’t make it out alive.  Before Laura becomes the last classmate standing, she must solve the mystery of who Laura really was, and what it is she wants from beyond the grave.

“Friend Request” sounds a lot like “Unfriended” (review here), and it is.  But the movie may have more in common with “The Ring,” as its concept of viral vengeance comes with a twisty backstory involving witches, cults, black mirrors, and demons.  There is a little more to this mystery than “ghost out to get the bullies,” which sends “Friend Request” forward on the right foot.

Director Simon Verhoeven is clearly versed in well-worn tropes of routine horror.  What is interesting about his approach is he doesn’t exploit expectations.  He uses them as distractions.

Verhoeven baits a lot of the usual jump scare hooks.  A profile shot frames Laura so her background is obscured when she opens a medicine cabinet.  Several people peer into dark mirrors with empty space conspicuously positioned to one side.  Except instead of reeling in the line with an anticipated surprise behind a closing cabinet door or suddenly reflected scare, scenes continue uninterrupted.  It isn’t much, but it’s a small touch that tells us Verhoeven wants substance inside these frights instead of only loud noise and visual shocks.

“Friend Request’s” setup stage is surprisingly suspenseful with decent supernatural depth.  Alycia Debnam-Carey has the right pinch of charm to carry the movie’s main arc.  Subplots are complemented with ghastly imagery of mutilated faces or a burning woman giving birth.  There’s a sinister darkness to several of the slayings and to Marina’s true story casting an appropriately haunting pall over proceedings.

For a while, “Friend Request” outpaces peers like “The Gallows” (review here) or “Ouija” (review here) for teen-targeted terror that is eerie and entertaining.  With a capable cast, premise, and cinematography, it is certainly put together as well as any comparable studio-backed thriller finding its way into mainstream multiplexes.

Which is why the last act descent into formula is such a letdown.  All of that creepy exposition lays good groundwork for something a step above in the supernatural slasher subgenre.  Then “Friend Request” starts chucking out the usual claptrap of our heroes losing cellphone service or finding themselves in a dark, dilapidated factory for the finale.  When a reveal comes that Marina’s real last name is Nedifar, it sounds so out of place that it immediately screams “anagram!”  And what do you know, ‘Nedifar’ rearranged spells ‘a friend.’  (Insert eye roll here.)  By the end, Verhoeven can no longer hold out on convention and he concludes the penultimate scene with a ‘gotcha’ lunge at the camera.

There is enough effort and initial intrigue to “Friend Request” to keep it a notch above average as “Single White Female” for a social media age with a supernatural twist.  The movie might have been better still with a more menacing, less predictable third act.  It almost seemed as if it would get there too.  Too bad it didn’t.

Review Score:  55

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