Friend Request | Little White Lies

Friend Request

18 Apr 2016 / Released: 20 Apr 2016

Words by Adam Chapman

Directed by Simon Verhoeven

Starring Alycia Debnam-Carey, Connor Paolo, and William Moseley

A young woman with long, wavy hair holding a mobile phone and looking at the screen intently.
A young woman with long, wavy hair holding a mobile phone and looking at the screen intently.
3

Anticipation.

For anyone with a Facebook account, this could be uncomfortably close to home.

1

Enjoyment.

[Insert shrugging emoji]

1

In Retrospect.

Trades originality for tired tropes.

Simon Verhoeven’s super­nat­ur­al thriller explores the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of con­stant­ly stay­ing connected.

If there’s a cau­tion­ary tale buried some­where in Simon Verhoeven’s film, it’s that you should nev­er accept a stranger’s seem­ing­ly pla­ton­ic advances. Col­lege stu­dent Lau­ra (Aly­cia Deb­nam-Carey) finds this out the hard way after becom­ing ​“friends” with social out­cast Mari­na (Liesl Ahlers), much to the dis­may of her clique. After a bizarre con­fronta­tion, Lau­ra realis­es she should have judged the book by its cover.

Friend Request is full of inter­netisms, from our hap­less pro­tag­o­nist declar­ing ​“she’s try­ing to Face­Time me, what do we do?” to on-screen noti­fi­ca­tions alert­ing us to the fact that her Face­book fan base is dimin­ish­ing due to some vague curse. Is this visu­al metaphor sup­posed to mock the mis­placed pri­or­i­ties of mil­len­ni­als? The inten­tion is unclear.

Get more Lit­tle White Lies

Ver­ho­even tries to elic­it cheap scares with tongue-in-cheek twists and var­i­ous shock tac­tics, but it’s a heavy-hand­ed job. It’s a shame, because while social media is increas­ing­ly com­ing under the micro­scope for engen­der­ing inse­cu­ri­ty among young peo­ple, cin­e­ma is yet to deliv­er a tru­ly chill­ing med­i­ta­tion on its insid­i­ous impact.

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