So You've Decided to Play With Bitcoin

Another social media slasher? Must be Monday!

What a fine time to be alive.

Quick Plot: Early twenthysomething Matthias is updating his brand new/used Macbook just in time for Skype-style game night with a few pals. He's hoping the new bandwidth will make it easier to build an app designed to improve communication with his deaf girlfriend Amaya. Apparently, constructing a translation program is easier than attending a few classes in ASL.

As he fumbles through the setup process, Matthias becomes intrigued by his computer's previous owner Norah, a mysterious man who made a lot of promises to women on Facebook while hiding some very dark videos in buried folders. When he shares them with his Skype circle, Matthias realizes he's stumbled on a very dark, very dangerous dark web.

Or, like, The Den. He found The Den. 

Which is super confusing since Unfriended: Dark Web reads more like a sequel to The Den than the first Unfriended, which was actually about online bullying and Facebook ghosts, sort of like Friend Request (the one about Facebook, not the one about Anthony Michael Hall playing Gary Busey). It's incestuous and confusing and for the sake of you, dear reader, I'll try to push past it.

Side note: remember how we learned that Anthony Michael Hall doesn't know where a woman's ass is actually located? Good GOSH I love Friend Request 

Anyway, before Skype can crash and demand you update to the next version, Matthias and his pals have become the newest targets for Norah's sadistic cohorts. 

Like the unrelated Unfriended, Dark Web is "set" entirely on a laptop. We see snippets of Norah's dirty deeds via his grainy videos, and real-time attacks as he sets his sights on Matthias's pals. First time director Stephen Susco (who previously penned a batch of horror scripts, including the 2004 remake of The Grudge) seems to have learned from the glut of internet horror films, keeping the action fairly clear in view and not forcing its audience to squint.

Yes, we're still victims to the typical "lots of attractive people shouting at the same time to the monitor", but perhaps because the characters are a little more mature than most of these types of films, it's not nearly as irksome. It might have been a simple personal preference, but I found myself moved enough by the better-than-usual cast to care about their fate. Once the action hits its point of no return, Susco creates some genuinely effective tension. 

Much like The Den, Smiley, and the very crowded catalog of these kinds of films, I'll probably have a very hard time remembering any of the particulars of Dark Web. It doesn't create a lasting impression or offer anything that new, but for its 90 minutes, I was pretty taken and invested. Sometimes that's all you want a horror flick to do.

High Points

I've said it before and I'll likely say it countless times again: having your characters be nice people is vital to having your audience care whether they live or die. Matthias's pals aren't perfect, but the fact that our lead makes a key decision to save a stranger rather than himself goes a long way in keeping us on his side

Low Points

The fact that this movie has four different endings (two were apparently planned as a theater gimmick, which went over just as well as it did for Clue) suggests a certain lack of confidence in what the story be

Lessons Learned

No good can come from attempting to be ambitious with a used computer

Fast typing is a vital life skill

Any coed group of friends will always, without fail, include one straight white a$$hole

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, Unfriended: Dark Web doesn't break any ground (well, unless you count two of the four alternate endings, but I digress). But hey, for its fairly quick running time, it gives you a pretty tense, very mean little ride into some very dark places. If that's appealing to you, you can catch it on Hulu. 

The Friend List Network

It was hard enough to keep the Unfriended and Friend Requests straight, only to then find out then there's another movie CALLED Friend Request. 

Which obviously, I have to watch.

Quick Plot: Veronica, an attractive young woman with a social media addiction, is assaulted one night out, her face doused in hydrochloric acid--the kind you can't find at Walmart. The detective on call is none other than Burke (Anthony Michael Hall), the kind of grizzled drunk whose introduced waking up in his truck, half parked on a stranger's lawn, covered in half full beer bottles.

As if we needed more insight into Burke's character, we follow him home to his dump of an otherwise lovely-from-the-outside suburban house, where there's somehow more empty shot glasses than square footage. Burke takes a bite of cold pizza that's presumably been sitting on his table for as long as his Breakfast Club residual checks have been clearing.

Just in case that wasn't enough, he also uses a conveniently open bottle of vodka to clean out a randomly gaping hand wound.

IT GETS BETTER. Burke heads over to his justifiably annoyed captain to get the scoop on the latest case and reluctantly meet his new partner, Laura Chance. Yes, she's a LADY, which means Burke turns on his charm:

Note that he hasn't actually seen her rear, so if you weren't already questioning the skill behind Friend Request, dialogue and spacial consistency are not one of its strengths.

Following Veronica's attack, Laura and Burke head to the department's official IT nerd Cam (officially as in Cameron, but I have to also assume as in webcam because I want to give something to writer Jason Falasco). Turns out, there's a social media slasher on the loose, hunting down victims via the world's most popular platform: Face List.

Not only does our killer find his victims through the platform, but he then steals their user identity to lure the next. Two men are next on the list, with both being skillfully castrated so they can survive without their favorite asset. Burke's ex-wife, a woman with a very specific habit of sleeping with men she meets on Face List, just narrowly escapes a similar fate. Burke and Chance have their work cut out for them, especially since neither seems particularly good at their jobs. 

It only takes our first victim's suicide by mirror (think the Pride scene in Se7en, only funnier) for the pair to be thrown off the case. It makes sense, since they have absolutely zero leads as to the killer's identity.

I won't spoil Friend Request, but please understand that much like Deviant Love, this is a movie almost worth watching for its twist. You might figure it out early, since the economy of characters rule is in full effect. Still, the actual execution of the reveal is ridiculous, and when you take more than 90 seconds to figure out its logic, it's even dumber.  

For people like me, that's a good thing.

High Points

He gets little help from the mostly amateur cast around him and genuinely painful screenplay, but credit to Anthony Michael Hall for tapping into his inner Gary Busey 

Low Points

I don't expect Shakespearean writing from a cheap horror movie that occasionally references the bard, but allow your female characters to, I don't know, talk like somewhat interesting human beings

Lessons Learned

The way to stay alive when spending 18 hours a day mixing your liquor choices is to occasionally supplement your diet with some potassium

Hospital walls are made with incredible noise-reducing insulation

You know how some of the most common advice for how to do regular morning runs is "keep a tidy pile near the door with everything you need?" The same rule applies to assembling your Face List murder kit

Fake Movie Alert

Admittedly, I'm not overly versed in the copyright laws, but let us all take a moment to imagine what the possible Asylum Studios version of Magic Mike might look like. We already have the title:

Stock Photography Alert

Hey, I totally understand and sympathize with the challenges of budgetary limitations, but even Ed Wood wouldn't have let an obvious watermark fill up a frame

Rent/Bury/Buy

Friend Request feels like this decade's iMurders, and that's obviously a great (and terrible) thing. If you're looking to expand your repertoire of cheap social media thrillers that try REALLY hard to stop you from using social media, this one's streaming on Amazon Prime.

You've Got a Stalker

#Horror, Unfriended, The Den, Megan Is Missing Friend Request...In some ways, it's surprising that there aren't MORE social media based slashers.

Give it time.

Quick Plot: Laura is a pretty and popular college sophomore with a knack for taking super flattering selfies and doing amazing things with her hair. One day, a new goth student named Marina sends her the titular friend request, following up with a flood of stalkerish messages designed to make even the kindest of cool girls disinvite her newest BFF to her birthday bash.

Bad decision, that.

Before you can pick your best Instagram filter, Marina commits grisly suicide live on Facebook (I mean, some fictional social media site that is Facebook). Laura is shaken with guilt, but quickly learns that there's no need to punish herself: Marina is fast at work on that, posting nasty things on Laura's behalf and murdering her real friends in mysteriously wacky ways.

Friend Request got hammered by critics when it premiered last year and while it's littered with stupid character decisions, it's also really not nearly as bad as its reputation and Rotten Tomatoes' score might lead you to believe.

Yes, that's slightly disappointing for someone like me.

Fear the Walking Dead's Alycia Debnam-Carey is sympathetic enough as Laura, though I may have been seduced by her ability to maintain incredibly hair styling as her life falls apart (this is true in the zombie apocalypse as well). The story even takes some surprising turns involving a should-be victim taking some unexpected agency in his fate.

The pluses don't necessarily outweigh the minuses. Marina is a frustratingly bland antagonist with a rushed and trite backstory, and while the young actors playing Laura's pals try to make an impression, the script gives them such minimal material that it's hard to care much about their fates. Still, for a lightweight 90 minute modern slasher, there's fun to be had.

High Points

Yes, jump scares are still disappointing as a go-to in modern horror, but you know what? Friend Request does them surprisingly well

Low Points

Any movie that finds its viewer thinking, "You know what technology-kills-young-people horror had better character development? Bedeviled!" is not firing on all cylinders in all departments

Lessons Learned

Modern detectives have no time for investigation or sympathy, but plenty of time to discuss dinner options

College kids in turmoil now experience sever symptoms of excessively red undereyes

Never let a silly thing like being stabbed in the gut slow you down 

Life will get worse after you stare into a black mirror, much like how your emotional life will in many ways get worse after you watch Black Mirror

Rent/Bury/Buy

Is Friend Request good? Not particularly. Is it entertaining and far better than its dreadful reception might lead you to believe? I thought so. Granted, I have terrible taste. But that's what Netflix Instant was made for.