German director Simon Verhoeven’s first horror outing, a film that syncs classic genre tropes with modern day personal privacy paranoia, has scares a-plenty, if not the talent to convincingly pull it off.
In a role that carries the film, Fear The Walking Dead’s Alycia Debnam-Carey stands out amid otherwise mediocre performances, proving a sympathetic protagonist in the face of her character’s (initially) ridiculously charmed life. Blessed with over 800 Facebook friends, the health conscious, party-loving Laura begins to see her friend count go down as the film’s body count goes up. It’s a surprisingly effective conceit that binds things together nicely.
The film loses likes thanks to Marina, the black-clad, hoodie-wearing cliché of a villain who’s almost laughable in an old-fashioned role that undermines its ‘down with the kids’ premise. Overacted, over-written and well, over-everything-ed, there’s nothing Liesl Ahlers can do to save such a poorly written character.
Friend Request keeps up the pace and throws in a few neat twists to keep the plot from stagnating.
Despite this unfortunate baddie, Friend Request keeps up the pace and throws in a few neat twists to keep the plot from stagnating. What’s more, the Facebook fixation will hit a note with younger viewers, even if the message that ‘self-obsession = bad’ is a little heavy handed.
And while occasionally clunky lines jar (“Unfriend that dead bitch” is a clanger not even Laurence Olivier could pull off), coupled with an overenthusiastic score and protracted final act, there are still some serious scares here.
