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The Long Strange Journey of ‘Friend Request’

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Can Friend Request do what Unfriended couldn’t?

The fall movie lineup is filled with clowns, maniacal serial killers, and haunted cameras. But Simon Verhoeven’s “Friend Request” is one that we are keeping our eyes on, it has already seen a semi-successful German theatrical run in 2016 with over $2M at the box office in its first week.

The social media horror film has undergone a few different titles throughout its lifetime. At one point it was called “Unknown Error,” so as not to be confused with Levan Gabriadze’s stateside “Unfriended,” in 2014.

And even more convoluted, Friend Request was once itself called Unfriended because the American film was released over there as Unknown User, so no copyright infringement there.

Unlike the U.S film, Verhoeven’s doesn’t appear to be told through the “Live cam” feature on your laptop.

That gimmick may have run its course starting with Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) before being warmed-over by Unfriended.

Friend Request is an international release, it was filmed in Cape Town South Africa, and despite its German production roots, the cast speaks English, no subtitles needed.

For everything that the film makers try to do to set it apart, Friend Request also shares a plot point with the other film: a high school outsider commits suicide, getting vigilante justice from beyond the grave.

While Unfriended is told through Skype, and the supernatural entity plays BFFS against each other, Friend Request takes place in the outside world.

Our heroine Laura is very popular on social media and in an act of compassion adds an outcast named Marina to her friend’s list. When Laura inadvertently omits Marina from a social function she kills herself, setting into motion a series of strange deaths among Laura’s friends and prompting her to find out why.

The conceptualization of  2014’s Unfriended was a good one, a story told through the pop-up Skype and PM windows was a stylish filming gimmick. And having the entity force friends to reveal their true natures was a nice touch. But there were some hitches along the way. A few of the self-kills seemed overly exaggerated and clearly, the players were pantomiming as one would if they were trying to scare a younger sibling.

With Friend Request taking place in an open world, there is enough room for the director to show more by way of the monster and how each friend dies. He’s not limited to the computer screen to tell his story.

Although Friend Request may seem like another attempt at trying to scare audiences with something we use every day, this film has already been a  minor hit abroad and it’s rare those titles get a wide release in the U.S.

Friend Request opens nationwide on September 22.

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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