The Friendship Game

This film escapes the trappings of most teen horror films. Even so, this does not make the film more likable. A refreshing aspect of the film shows 4 high school kids that have been life long friends without a focus on social media idiocy. It's almost a nod to the days where you spent time with people rather than sit with people while on your phone. From here it jumps into the horror that will be bestowed upon the bunch. Ultimately there is only one friendship that matters. Rather than look at the film and dissect every single syllable uttered on screen I will close by stating that this is exactly what it is billed to be, a horror movie about testing friendship. It's not a movie you must watch but if you do you'll be slightly entertained.

A confusing, teen angst movie that makes a terrible attempt at trying to be clever and when that fails tries to cover it up with what can only be described as 1970's artsy fartsy poor horror/scifi movie effects that don't hide anything I was honestly expecting the hurdy gurdy man song to start playing for most of this nonsense that in the end amounted to absolutely amounted to a nothing in a nothing movie, about four nothing teens doing nothing but being miserable in a horror movie that isn't a horror movie but a teenage angst movie that is as dull as watching paint dry on growing grass in the middle of winter.

Please do yourself the biggest favor and spare yourself the hour and some change of your life that you will never get back watching this mess of a film. Honestly, the characters are vapid, shallow people you never truly care about, the story is a confusing mess, and you never truly get what the hell is happening in any given time, scenes just repeat over and over for no reason as it doesn't add much to anything. It dragged so hard because of it... Get to the point already in which they never did. They tried to make this edgy and cool mix of a sort of Hellraiser, Wish Upon, Ground Hog Day type fiasco and it ended up confusing and plain stupid.

If this is how 2024 is beginning for me choosing this wreck of film to watch, I hope the rest of the year isn't as bad. Geesh.

As I stumbled upon this 2022 sci-fi horror movie "The Friendship Game" in 2023, I opted to watch it because it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, and also because it had Peyton List on the cast list.

I had not actually heard about this movie prior to watching it, so I didn't know what I was in for. So writer Damien Ober and director Scooter Corkle had every chance to impress and bedazzle me.

And they both failed to do so. Sure, "The Friendship Game" was sort of watchable I suppose, but it wasn't really a movie that appealed much to me. The storyline was just not really all that interesting, and as the narrative proceded at a rather slow and dull pace, it was getting more and more difficult to maintain interest in the storyline.

The acting performances in "The Friendship Game" were fair enough, though I wasn't really impressed with it. And as for Peyton List, well then she was much better in "Cobra Kai" than she was here in "The Friendship Game".

For a horror movie then "The Friendship Game" just didn't cut it for me. Having grown up watching horror movies for about 40 plus some years, then this movie just didn't really had the contents that mattered. I am sure that newcomers to the horror genre might get a kick out of this movie.

My rating of "The Friendship Game" lands on a four out of ten stars.

The real friendship game is asking your friends to watch this and then seeing if they remain friends with you.

This starts off fine, but within 5 minutes it goes downhill into a confusing poorly written and directed mess. It is so difficult to figure out what is going on: Is this real? Is this a flashback? Is this a flashforward? Certain scenes will replay again line for line or scenes will repeat with slight variations. The movie continues on being like this until it reaches its conclusion which ends up being even worse than the rest of the movie. Multiple people were involved in this movie: someone actually wrote this garbage, someone else directed it and along the way no one involved said anything about how bad it was.

Maybe there's an alternate timeline/universe where this is a good movie.