5.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.7 |
When college student Laura unfriends a mysterious girl online, she finds herself fighting a demonic presence that wants to make her lonely by killing her closest friends.
Starring: Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley (I), Connor Paolo, Brit Morgan, Brooke MarkhamHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 35% |
Supernatural | 28% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
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.)
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).
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.
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.
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