The Friendship Game

Having been sorely disappointed by 2022's Hellraiser reboot, I was admittedly drawn in my the contraption shown in the trailer. Eerily reminiscent of the puzzle box seen in the aforementioned film, I decided to give this film a chance where I normally wouldn't have even bothered (horror movies starring teenagers get an automatic, "No, thanks!" in my house). Man, I really should have listened to my intuition. This movie is what happens when you have a cool concept, make it for the lamest audience possible, and call it a day. Seriously, what were the people responsible for this thinking and how were they given a budget to make it reality?

The biggest problem this movie has are the wholly unlikable characters. You have the moppy depressed one, the drug user, the typical insufferable teenage girl, and the lame male best friend, each one more awful than the next. All of them are drug users and alcohol drinkers, so that was an huge put-off for me. But then the movie wants you to constantly jump time frames and locations, so that you're wondering if what you just watched was happening in real time, a version of the past, a version of the future, or none of the above? If it weren't for their acting, which was actually really well done, these characters would have sealed what was an already unwatchable film. But you know what they say about people with unnaturally colored hair? Yeah, that's what you're going to be seeing for an hour and a half. I should have turned it off as soon as I saw it.

The only reason I'm giving this movie any stars are; A. The acting- talent is talent, and despite how much I disliked every single character, they actually did a great job with the trash script they were given.

B. The "game" itself is actually really dope looking, and when the center sphere starts rotating it actually looks really slick.

DO NOT waste your time on this movie. It is not even recommended to the most forgiving of horror movie fan, let alone the general public. It has almost no redeemable qualities. Luckily, it's the type of movie that will be ignored and forgotten by most people.

I can't in good conscious recommend this movie to anyone.

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.

Zooza (Peyton List), Rob Plattier (Brendan Meyer), Courtney (Kelcey Mawema), and Cotton Allen (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) are longtime small town best friends. They are set to scatter after graduation. Cotton buys the mysterious Friendship Game at a yard sale. The friends have to tell their deepest secret desires. Their friendship survives if they survive. Cotton disappears and the friends' desires start coming true. There is also a hacker who recorded their game session.

The plot is a mess. My first suggestion is to get rid of the computer hacker. I don't get his character. In addition, the simple gameplay gets muddied by bad story telling. It's all a mess. There is a simple idea here somewhere. It's not necessarily a good horror idea, but more clarity would help this movie a lot.

I couldn't tell if this convoluted attempt to create a film was the fault of of the director or the writer, because the results of both are just so bad. Firstly the story makes no sense. Well it started with an idea, about an object that magically tests friendships, but after that it falls apart. Yes it literally falls apart after the first five minutes of the movie. The story meanders, gets weird and confusing and seems like the writer didn't know how to get the beginning of the story, to the end of the story. All the loose ends, and questions this film leaves are just frustrating, especially the question " How the heck did this film even get made?!!!". It's like someone who starts telling you something interesting and just stops mid-sentence and stares into space. The choices in scenes and how they were put together are dumbfounding and just add to the idea that the writer had no idea where this story was going. Jumping from one idea to another and adding elements that make you wonder what they're really trying to accomplish- which it looks like they don't even know. I couldn't even finish it, it was so bad, but watched it on fast forward to see if there was anything worth continuing, and even that was a waste of time. Don't bother wasting your time, just unwatchable.

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.