Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Friend Request Blu-ray Movie Review

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Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 7, 2018

Do you really know all of your friends on Facebook, or your followers on other social media apps like Instagram or even (heaven forfend) LinkedIn? I know I don’t, and in fact I often wonder to myself, “Who is that?”, when an ostensible friend posts something weird that shows up on one of my social media feeds. There’s a curious built in irony to social networks, in that they give us the illusion of community while keeping us firmly isolated on either our phones or our computers, but Friend Request attempts to have Facebook “reach out and touch” people in a way suspiciously similar to that “viral video” at the heart of The Ring. The film begins with a harried college professor getting to his lecture class and quickly upbraiding his students for having downloaded a suicide video that had just been posted by a former student named Marina (Liesl Ehlers). When the professor asks the assembled multitudes if anyone has any information about the death, the camera’s quick dolly in to Laura Woodson (Alycia Debnam-Carey) drops a rather broad hint that she just might have a few datapoints tucked into her PC that might illuminate things. Of course, the film quickly segues back two weeks to give some background, but already Friend Request is on pretty tenuous narrative ground, a tendency it continues to suffer from as it trots out a series of pretty rote horror film clichés, albeit supposedly cloaking them in the “newfangled” technology of Facebook. (I have to say the one truly surprising thing about this film is how it repeatedly apes the technology and even look of Mark Zuckerberg’s “little” project, without ever including the Facebook logo or mentioning the app by name. I have to wonder if hushed legal negotiations took place in the background.)

Be honest — do you keep track of how many Facebook friends you have, secretly comparing your total to others on the site? That tends to play out as a subtext throughout Friend Request, with Laura seeing her total top 800 after what appears to be a rave of sorts that she attends (there are certain narrative deficiencies at play throughout Friend Request where quasi-montages supposedly provide content, but really don’t). She’s one of the more popular girls at her school, with seemingly healthy relationships with a whole coterie of both female and male students. She’s also nice, and perhaps because her late father had a career in mental health, she likes to help people. That tendency of course turns out to be a major mistake once she meets Marina, a kind of low level goth type who is always seen cloaked in a hoodie and looking like she’s contemplating several outer rings (sorry) of hell simultaneously.

Poor Marina has exactly zero Facebook friends, so when she contacts Laura through the app, Laura accepts her friend request, and is actually quite taken by Marina’s gothically themed illustrations which Marina has posted to her timeline. (The film’s visual aesthetic is actually fairly interesting at times, including its “voyages” through Marina’s various pieces of art.) The images are initially just kind of creepy in an Edward Gorey or even Tim Burton kind of way, but as things progress, they become increasingly more graphic and disturbing.

While Friend Request does a capable job at providing the sort of expected jump starts, startles and scares that films like this are required to provide, there’s an underlying illogic at play that subverts those very scares. Without giving too much away, several questions might accrue for the more inquiring horror fan, including why exactly Marina latches on to Laura (other than the fact that Laura allows herself to be latched on to), or what exactly Marina’s troubled past has to do with why she’s so intent on (ultimately) stalking Laura. A bullying element enters the story at about the midway point when a female "Moishe the Explainer" gives Laura some background information, but even this aspect is woefully underdeveloped, to the point that the film's climax seems to offer a brief vision of Marina's childhood tormentors, only to have them disappear again with absolutely no explanation. There’s also absolutely no explanation given for Marina’s ability to instant message Laura from beyond the grave, but that’s perhaps one of the least problematic issues for a film that trots out a series of gruesome deaths for seemingly no other reason than that’s what’s expected.

Friend Request has an okay if hardly innovative premise, and it is buoyed occasionally by those gothic flights of fancy with regard to Marina’s artwork, but the screenplay is so disjointed that nothing ever makes a great deal of sense. Even the supposed possession of various characters is feebly documented, and the aforementioned series of deaths tips over into cartoon territory at a couple of key junctures (including one death that is actually seemingly played for laughs). As a result, this is one Friend Request you may wish to mark as spam.

Friend Request Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Friend Request is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is by and large a rather nice and even baroque looking presentation, one that derives quite a bit of energy from some of Marina's supposed illustrations and animations (see screenshot 3 for one example). The film tends to ping pong between brightly lit daytime sequences where the palette looks rather warm and detail levels are typically quite high, to darker, more "goth" like, nighttime or otherwise shadowy scenes which are often rather coolly graded toward blue or slate gray, and where detail levels don't quite rise to the same levels. Both practical effects and CGI look good throughout. The only passing issue is some minor banding, something that's rather unusual for a Lionsgate release (at least in my experience).

Friend Request Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

If you don't mind a horror movie music score that "Mickey Mouses" and/or announces every upcoming moment of grotesquerie, Friend Request's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 provides the proper bombast along with the ever popular sudden jolts of LFE to provoke startle effects. There's good use of the surround channels throughout the audio presentation, whether that be in terms of the large lecture hall where a few scenes take place, to more confined locales like the spot where Marina supposedly committed suicide, where more industrial sounds occasionally intrude. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly on this well prioritized and problem free track.

Friend Request Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Friend Request: The Social Nightmare (1080p; 11:22) is okay EPK fare with a bunch of brief interviews intercut with scenes from the film. One of the more interesting things about this piece is almost a byproduct, as it shows what an international production this was from a cast and crew standpoint.

Friend Request Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You've seen virtually everything in Friend Request before, and really not all that long ago if you ventured to check out Unfriended. This film doesn't even have that lackluster effort's "POV" conceit. There are some jolts here, but they're all of the rote variety and only temporarily distract from the fact that Friend Request has several manifest lapses of logic. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.