As reliable millennial consumers, movie makers believe that nothing scares us more than losing access to our Facebook. The horror!

“Friend Request” begins with our protagonist, Laura Woodson (Alycia Debnam Carey) going to her psychology class. The professor announces that her classmate Marina Mills (Liesl Ahlers) has committed suicide. She recorded her own hanging and burning. Laura then has a flashback to two weeks earlier. Here we discover how flat and typical Laura is. She’s majoring in psychology because her father was a psychologist before he died. She has two best friends, a dumb blonde and a duff. She loves volunteering, surfing, and her hot boyfriend, Tyler (William Moseley). The only character with some substance was Marina, the antagonist.

The plot of “Friend Request” could not be more predictable. A popular college girl attempts to take social outcast under her wing but immediately quits after her friends coerce her out of it. Another fault in the plot is the paranormal aspect. It’s pathetic when these horror films cop out with witchcraft and demons. They throw all logic out the window due to writing themselves into a corner with an already atrocious script.

As for the visual aspects of the film, they are very well done. The special effects makeup is believable and not overly gory. Thankfully, the suicide scenes are executed with class as the camera cuts away just in time to allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. The lighting and set design for the different scenes draws you in. Unfortunately, the horrendous script snaps you back into reality.

Subsequently, the acting is subpar. However, the actors are not to blame as they cannot give an Oscar worthy performance with a script that offers insightful lines such as, “Wow, she’s crazy!” The characters are predictable, with the worst of them being Olivia.

Olivia is portrayed by fellow Jersey girl, Brit Morgan. She is the typical dumb, blonde friend. She is constantly switching majors and giving pointless advice to the protagonist. It seems like her character was solely written so the wardrobe stylist could put someone in a low-cut shirt to get more people in the theater on opening night. Unsurprisingly, this did not work as “Friend Request” projections were $5 million for it’s opening weekend on Sept. 22 but only amounted to $2 million.

Recently, the remake of Stephen King’s “IT” provided a bright light in a dim tunnel of a decade of bad horror movies. But “Friend Request” has reverted us back to jump scares and possessed college girls.

The scariest aspect of the whole film was that movie producers think teens still use Facebook. If a dead classmate’s ghost hacks into someone’s Instagram, now that’s a scary a movie.