Mr. Movie review: ‘Friend Request’? Don’t accept this one
Friend Request
Friend Request takes what could have been a very original premise and has a group of social media-connected friends rejecting a witchy social misfit. Big mistake. The person in the group who originally reached out to the unhappy young lady is Laura, and she’s the most popular of the bunch. When the rejection happens, Laura has over 800 Facebook friends.
By film’s end, that all changes.
How it changes is via three writers that includes director Simon Verhoeven, who throw every overused cliche horror movie trick ever done at you. None of it works from the way-too-pretty college students, to people dying in order of their importance to the plot, to things that pop onto — punctuated by a loud musical note — and then off of the screen with lightning speed.
The bottom-line: Friend Request is done by a director you’ve never heard of and written by people you’ve never heard of and stars a gaggle of young actors and actresses who aren’t close to household names and who you’ll probably never see again.
This is not unusual these days for horror movies — especially bad ones and this one is awful. If you get a friend request to see Friend Request, you might want to think twice.
Movie name
Director: Simon Verhoeven
Stars: Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley, Connor Paolo, Britt Morgan, Liesi Ahlers
Mr. Movie rating: 1 star
Rated R for extreme violence and language. It’s playing at the AMC Kennewick 12, the Fairchild Cinemas Pasco 12 and at Walla Walla Grand Cinemas.
5 stars to 4 1/2 stars: Must see on the big screen.
4 stars to 3 1/2 stars: Good film, see it if it’s your type of movie.
3 stars to 2 1/2 stars: Wait until it comes out on DVD.
2 stars to 1 star: Don’t bother.
0 stars: Speaks for itself.
This story was originally published September 21, 2017 at 1:15 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: ‘Friend Request’? Don’t accept this one."