Want a little dose of pre-October horror? Check out Friend Request when ithits theaters September 22nd–a film that attempts to make you afraid of your own Facebook feed. Co-writer/director Simon Verhoeven’s film, which hit Germany last year, is yet another entry in the incipient subgenre of social media scares that cropped up after 2010. Unfriended is probably the reigning champ (and the short film Noah perfected the A.D.D. single screen blitz), but while it covered the contained supernatural slasher angle in a Skype chat, Friend Request looks for room to breathe in the real world.
It stars Alycia Debnam-Carey (from The 100 and Fear the Walking Dead) as a popular college student named Laura with fun roommates and a boyfriend played by a post-Narnia William Moseley. That’s the good news. The bad news is that she becomes the sole Facebook friend to a gothy loner named Marina (Liesl Ahlers), and after that crashes and burns, Marina records her suicide and auto-uploads it to Laura’s profile. The worse news is that Marina appears to be haunting Laura and her pals.
Real talk: witches in your computer is a new twist.
Friend Request appears to hit all the highlights of social media horror. The cyber bullying suicide, the plugged-in crew waiting to get cut down, the Baby Boomer-beloved characterization of scrolling through Facebook as the doom of all society. The question will be if it offers anything new beyond the cultural statement inherent in finding fear inside our nervousness and need to connect online.
And, you know, whether it’s actually scary or not.
What do you think of the trailer? Let us know!
Image: Entertainment Studios
