Friend Request

Friend Request

Genre:	Horror Drama
Directed By:	Simon Verhoeven
Produced By:	Quirin Berg Max Wiedemann
Written By:	Matthew Ballen Philip Koch Simon Verhoeven
Starring:	Alycia Debnam-Carey William Moseley Connor Paolo Brit Morgan Brooke Markham Sean Marquette Liesl Ahlers
Distributed By:	Warner Bros. Pictures (Germany) Entertainment Studios (International)
Release Date:	January 7, 2016
Runtime:	92 minutes
Country:	Germany
Language:	English
Budget:	$9.9 million
Box Office:	$11.3 million

Friend Request (released overseas as Unfriend) is a 2016 English-language German supernatural psychological horror drama film. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Laura Marshall.

Why It Sucks

The entire film is basically the same thing as Unfriended only except it doesn't focus only a computer screen. Even the original title is literally called "Unfriend."
The premise of the movie comes off as hamfisted and out-of-touch, treating Facebook like it's a vital part of one's real-life reputation.
Throughout the film, there's a recurring theme of Laura's friend count dropping, which comes off as ridiculous, as if a Facebook friend count actually matters that much.
Laura Woodson is extremely unlikable. She was responsible for everything that happened in this film, all because she bullied Marina Mells for not inviting her to her birthday dinner, as well as calling her a "freak," which lead her to committing suicide, and having her ghost haunting her and her friends.
Literally everything that happened in this movie leads to something extremely ridiculous. One of the reasons why Marina killed herself is because she was lonely, and she wanted to make Laura "lonely" after being rejected and (ironically) unfriended. After succeeding, Laura becomes "Lau Ra" by wearing Marina's clothes, as well as having the same skin on her laptop, and having 0 friends on Facebook. So basically, Marina possessed Laura.
Marina can somewhat hack into Facebook, disabling users to delete their account, posts, or even log out, and can also make disturbing posts of Laura's friends being murdered.
The teenagers act extremely weird and oddball, another common issue with teenager films.
Loads of overused, tedious, and lame jumpscares. Literally the first scene with Laura has her watching a cat video with a forced-in jumpscare in it.
The death scenes are extremely unoriginal. The majority of them are just suicides, with some being murdered by wasps.
Marina wasn't that bad to begin with. Sure, she was a bit creepy, but she had a terrible life, and she deserves to have a friend, and Laura deserved everything (well, not the fact that her friends get killed) that happened in this movie.
Inane dialogue.
For some reason, we are led to the fact that Kobe is one of the villains of the movie now, all because if Laura is dead, she won't be lonely, which makes no sense.
If Laura were to just invite Marina into her birthday dinner, none of this would've ever happened.

The Only Redeeming Quality

The animated sequences are well-animated.

Reception

Friend Request was panned by both critics and audiences alike, with a 17% critic score and 28% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 5.3 on IMDb, and a 31 on Metacritic, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."