Laura Woodson (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is a well-liked, all-American school gal attending college in sunny Southern California. She boasts greater than 800 Facebook mates, lives in a killer condo, and is relationship a hunky medical pupil. She additionally possesses a welcoming smile and an open coronary heart, so it’s no shock when she accepts a pal request on Facebook from Marina (Liesl Ahlers), a misfit, goth-like fellow psych pupil with zero social-media mates. Laura is a bit hesitant to take action at first, as a result of macabre photographs, drawings, and movies on Marina’s Facebook web page. But, what the hell, she accepts it anyway. Huge mistake.

Marina now has a finest pal, or so she thinks. Laura? She now has a stalker. Marina’s smothering presence, each on-line and in individual, quickly turns into so overbearing that Laura unfriends her—a good greater mistake. Marina is so distraught she commits suicide, which isn’t gifting away something since we study Marina’s destiny within the film’s opening scene earlier than the story backtracks two weeks to element the occasions main as much as her loss of life. But though Marina is lifeless, she nonetheless haunts Laura from past the grave; not solely does she begin killing off her closest mates, however she then posts their grisly deaths on Laura’s Facebook account for all of her on-line acquaintances to see. Unsurprisingly, Laura’s variety of “friends” quickly plummets. How does Marina do all of this? Well, let’s simply say witchcraft and wasps are concerned. Lots of wasps!

The setup for Friend Request is stable sufficient for a traditional horror flick, and the primary half hour or so is pretty attention-grabbing. Unfortunately, as soon as the killings begin the film really turns into much less scary as a result of the murders are so implausible and ridiculous. (Example: A possessed character actually bashes his brains out in opposition to the partitions of an elevator. It performs like an outtake from The Happening.) It doesn’t assist that each one of Laura’s mates are inventory characters (the new blonde, the plain Jane, the chubby goofball, the tech whiz, and so forth.), so once they meet their merciless fates we simply don’t care since we aren’t invested of their lives. The few jolts the film gives are of the jump-scare selection, though director Simon Verhoeven’s use of animation to delve into Marina’s warped thoughts through her disturbing Facebook posts is eerie and fairly efficient. It’s too unhealthy the complete film wasn’t animated, however the filmmakers probably knew their flick was cartoonish sufficient already with the absurd aforementioned deaths and laughable strains like “Unfriend that dead bitch!”

Midway via the film, a poster for A Streetcar Named Desire is prominently displayed within the background for inexplicable causes. Yet it instantly brings to thoughts that movie’s most iconic line, by which Blanche DuBois, whereas being led away to a psychological hospital, says, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” And that’s form of what Marina does right here, not less than earlier than she goes all Blair Witch on everybody. Speaking of strangers, right here’s a reliable phrase from one: Reject this film’s pal request. You can thank us later.