Friend Request (AF)

Stars: Alycia Debnam-Carey, William Mosely, Connor Paolo, William Moseley, Brit Morgan, Brooke Markham, Sean Marquette,Liesl Ahlers, Shashawnee Hall

Director: Simon Verhoeven

Facebook fanatics beware!

College student Alycia Debnam-Carey, who has hundreds of friends on social media, makes a seriously sad mistake when she befriends strange outcast Liesl Ahlers, becoming her sole on-line contact.

And after Ahlers behavior becomes more and more creepy, Debnam Carey de-friends her.

Big mistake!

Even after Ahlers commits suicide, her on-line behavior from the dead is even scarier as she sets out to have the luckless college student join her beyond the grave

Apart from Debnam-Carey, appropriately, perhaps, a refugee from televisions Fear the Walking Dead, the cast is largely made up of unknowns and, on the evidence here, likely to remain so.

German director Simon Verhoeven (and co-scenarist with Matthew Ballen and Philip Koch) ensures that very few B-film genre tropes are ignored (although perhaps I should a least praise the creators for the ingenious phrase internet obsession disorder).

The movie was shot in Capetown with filming ending over two years ago. Regrettably age has not matured it

In the long-ago heyday of the double feature, this tepid shocker would rightly have been stuck at the bottom of the bill simply as bait for horror film completists.

These days, however, the natural home of pointless films like Friend Request is to fill the multitude of late night slots on television. Mind you, the DVD might be even better, thanks to the fast-forward button.

Alan Frank

USA/Germany/South Africa 2016. UK Distributor: Warner Brothers. Colour by Alpha Cine.
92 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 3, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.

Review date: 24 Apr 2016