Film Review: FRIEND REQUEST (2016)

Social media will never be the same in the horror film FRIEND REQUEST (2016) that sees popular college student Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) confront her greatest fear when she “unfriends” someone on a networking site. Laura has a good life.  She’s successful in school.  She has a great boyfriend. She has lots of friends.  She also has a stalker by the name of Marina (Liesl Ahlers) whom she unwittingly friends on a networking site thinking that the girl just needs a friend.  When Marina, who is an artist with dark and gothic overtones, starts to squeeze herself into Laura’s life Laura tries to end her friendship.  Marina doesn’t take being unfriended lightly and ends up committing suicide by filming it on her laptop and putting on social media for everyone to see.  Thinking that she may have been a reason for Marina’s suicide, Laura’s guilt and life gets weird as her friends start to die around her and videos of their deaths are posted on her social media site.

Everything get worse when there is no way for her to delete the death videos nor shut down her site.  It seems that someone or something is taking over her personae online.  She gets blamed for the death videos; the cops think she has something more to do with the cases than she is saying; and it seems as though Marina is still manipulating her from beyond the grave.  Now she must figure out what is going on before all of her friends die leaving her the only one left with a connection to Marina.

Although the production values are good, the film lacks suspense or any sense of horror.  There is nothing in this film that you haven’t seen done better in other films.  It’s actually hard to believe that the film is Rated “R” as it contains very little gore, sex, or even profanity and is way too tame for the typical horror fan.  If not for Debnam-Carey the whole film would be completely forgettable as it is good to see her in something other than the hit TV series Fear the Walking Dead.

Film Review: INDIGENOUS (2014)

I generally love a good monster movie and even when it’s a clichéd premise in which tourists go into a house, forest, place, etc. that they shouldn’t have (and were warned against) and encounter a creature that picks them off one by one for no real good reason other than they stepped into the wrong place at the wrong time, I can still generally enjoy and be entertained.  This is the entire premise of Indigenous (2014) which finds some Americans in Panama on vacation to enjoy the beach and sun but when a local legend peaks their curiosity to a forbidden waterfall they set out into the jungle to see for themselves. 

It’s not long before their guide is abducted by something from the jungle leaving the Americans without a way out.  Lost and alone they soon discover that their paradise has turned to a nightmare as they are hunted one by one by something in the dark that can hide behind every shadow and every fallen tree.

The film is extremely well done with a very capable cast but unfortunately there is nothing original or interesting in the film which is problem considering how much work went into pulling off a production which such high production values.  The third act does take some interesting and original turns especially when it wants to be relevant to our growing obsession with social media but I kind of wished that it had more of these types of ideas earlier in the first two-thirds of the film, which is a by-the-numbers monster film.

The makeup FX are pretty good but unfortunately don’t do much for crafting a satisfactory monster which is too human-like especially when it could’ve been something more special considering the exotic location.  Overall, the film is entertaining but not one you’ll bother to remember in the long run.