Friend Request was directed by Simon Verhoeven and stars Alycia Debnam-Carey as a college student who accepts a social outcast's online friend request, but soon finds herself fighting a demonic presence that wants to make her lonely by killing her closest friends. Now, I knew absolutely nothing about his film going into it. I didn't see any trailers for it and I saw it show up under showtimes on the theaters website. I had no expectations and in a way that really paid off because I didn't seem to hold it to a standard set from the trailers. Leaving Friend Request, I can honestly say this was not a great movie, but better than most cheap horror films out there. I routinely found myself feeling a little uneasy as the scares were being set up. With that being said, this movie has some major problems to it. At one point I did laugh out loud, only because of how ridiculous this movie got. That's the main thing I noticed with Friend Request, it was just over the top and ridiculous. That style of film making helped at times, but in the long run it hurt Friend Request more than I think Verhoeven meant to.
Let's take a look at some of the things that worked.
1. Cinematography- This movie was actually really well shot. It looked clean and never confused me. Verhoeven's visual direction of this movie was actually pretty impressive. He attempted to use a lot of camera movements to add to a scene. It worked for the most part. At times the camera really helped deliver to a scare. My one complaint with the camera work is an over use of close up dolly shots. He used it early in the film to help with dramatic moment, and he kept using it over again which got stale and diminished the feel of the movement.
2. Direction- I was surprised with Verhoeven's direction of the scares in this movie. The movie had some intense sequences. It had jump scares that were better than most and I appreciated his effort there. I could tell that Verhoeven worked hard to build suspense and he did a decent job at it. Unfortunately, the tension was deflated quickly but we'll talk about that next.
Let's take a look at what didn't worked.
1. Writing- This movie suffered a lot form a poor script. It had a really bad plot and even worse dialogue. I was blown away at how poorly this movie was written. It had a comedic relief character that did not work at all. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of viewers completely missed there even was one. Friend Request had some of the most stale dialogue I have heard. It's plot was jumbled and it had me saying "all this could've been avoided" more than one time. Which is not a good sign!
2. Acting- Friend Request had really poor acting. This wasn't a huge shock to me, but it can't be overlooked. It had bad ADR, which felt rough and uneven. I would just listen to the actors and it felt like they were reading the script for the first time. There was no charisma by any one on screen. I never bought into the things they were doing and how they felt because I didn't see them as the characters they were portraying.
3. Overused Jump Scares- Verhoeven relied way to heavily on the jump scares of this movie. One or two in a movie are okay, but every single scare in this movie was a jump scare. I have seen a lot of directors be able to make horror movies that don't rely solely on jump scares. Namely Mike Flanagan. He is one of my favorite working horror directors to date, next to James Wan. Flanagan is an expert at thinking outside of the box when it comes to scares in a movie. He will focus on the characters and build them up so that the audience genuinely cares about them. Once we do, he will start to have them in intense situations. Once in the scary scenes, Flanagan will refrain from using loud music to scare you. He just places the imagery on the screen to allow you to react the same way the characters in the movie would. This adds to a strong sense of tension throughout the movie that never get's released. This of course leads to fewer scares in a movie, but the ones we are delivered are more intense because we care for the characters and have been allowed to react to things the way we normally would instead of being told how to feel with startling music. He also stays away from "false" scares. To me a false scare is anything in the movie that you're not supposed to be scared of. Some false scare examples would be: Closing a mirror to have a friend behind the main character. A black cat jumping out from behind something. The character backs into an object that isn't scary, or into someone they know but they are accompanied by loud music to get a reaction.
Friend Request did the exact opposite of this. It skipped the character building and went straight to the jump scares. Verhoeven crafted some creepy scares, yes. However, he caused an immediate deflate in the tension because he instructed us how to feel with loud music. It was never "scary" only startling. Once all the tension is released, a director has to start from scratch to build back up to the next scary moment. It wastes time and focuses the movie around cheap scares instead of true and earned ones.
Overall, Friend Request was not the worst horror movie I have seen. It did however struggle quite a bit with it's script and dialogue. A huge part of that is due to the poor performances from everyone in the cast. Verhoeven did deliver a good looking movie and he created some intense moments but he did rely way to heavily on jump scares. I believe this is because he was not able to focus on the characters in the movie because of a bad script and poor cast. I would like to see him get paired with an excellent writer and a good cast to see how talented he really is. Verhoeven worked past a lot of obstacles in this movie to deliver an passable horror movie but really delivered just another formulaic jump scare fest. I am going to give Friend Request a D.
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