FRIEND REQUEST (USA/16/92mins) Directed by Simon Verhoeven. Starring Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Moseley, Connor Paolo, Brit Morgan, Brooke Markham, Liesl Ahlers, Shashawnee Hall, Nicolas Pauling. THE PLOT: The super-popular, super-pretty Laura (Debnam-Carey) is a friend to pretty much everyone at school – hence the constantly rising number of friends she has on the Facebook clone used here for copyright purposes. In fact, possibly the only kid Laura isn’t friends with is the mysterious, brooding goth girl, Marina (Ahlers), who keeps to herself, draws dark, Gaiman-esque animation shorts (all in black & white, of course), and has a total of zero friends on fake Facebook. Naturally, Laura decides to give this poor girl a break, and clicks confirm on that friend request. Which automatically unleashes a desperate, troubled and troubling stalker. Who’s fecking kick-ass at coding. Only problem is, Marina’s even more persistent in her stalking after she commits suicide live on social media... THE VERDICT: Welcome to I Know What You Did Last Facebook Post, this by-the-numbers OMG teen horror flick appearing to have time-travelled straight out of the 1990s. Just before Scream started making fun of films just like Friend Request. It’s like this movie is actually strutting around in stone-washed jeans. Sporting dirty great big rips at the knee. Full of the kind of black magic that 14-year-old goths find mindbending, it doesn’t help here that the leading lady in this Carrie-meets-Zuckerberg looks like a fresh-faced Emmy Rossum. Ironically, for a film all about a supernatural killer who uses Facebook as their stalking ground, Friend Request is going to suffer a quick death at the busy hands of social media. RATING: 2.5/5 REVIEW BY PAUL BYRNE...
