Mark Reviews Movies: THE FRIENDSHIP GAME

The Friendship Game, RLJE Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 10, 2022

The Friendship Game fits the mold of a certain type of horror movie, particularly in its gimmicky premise, but it's clear that screenwriter Damien Ober has some other notions in mind with this material. For a while, the movie's mysteries are more concerned with how a close group of friends finds its collective connection challenged than with the strange mechanics of the title game, as well as the odd device that makes it possible.

Eventually, that focus on the characters and their dynamics changes, and since the movie doesn't bother or much care to establish the workings of whatever is happening within the game, the sudden attention toward them offers more confusion than clarity. The result is a disappointing third act that's a mess of violence and alternate realities.

Until then, director Scooter Corkle's movie presents some relationships on the verge of change with some care and consideration. The four friends, enjoying their last summer together after high school. Cotton (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) finds a weird device at a yard sale.

It's a game, according to the eerily repetitive seller, meant to test whether or not friendships are the real deal and will last. The teen buys it, and soon enough, she Zooza (Peyton List), Courtney (Kelcey Mawema), and Rob (Brendan Meyer) are sitting in Cotton's bedroom, getting ready to test the strength of their collective bond.

The game revolves around the players placing their fingers on the device, revealing their deepest desires, and, from there, the game, the thingamajig, or the universe will reveal the truth. The specifics don't matter, which is somewhat refreshing—until the screenplay reveals that the specifics really do matter without letting us in on the secrets.

Cotton disappears after a party, where she saw Zooza and Rob having sex in a back room, and Courtney leads the search for her friend. That's the extent of the plot, although a series of flashbacks, each one told from each friend's perspective, gradually reveal those hidden desires and paint a better picture of how and why Cotton might have disappeared.

Some of the characters are more compelling than others, with Zooza and her abandonment issues becoming the most detailed through line of the story. Beneath it all, there's an air of cynicism, as friendships hit walls as those wishes come true, that matches the creepy, uncertain atmosphere running through the tale.

Such questions about the nature of friendship can't be answered, but that doesn't excuse Ober and Corkle's unwillingness to provide some answers—or even some basic understanding—of how the game works, the significance of a voyeuristic computer geek (played by Dylan Schombing), and why a seemingly throwaway theory about multiple universes matters so much to the climax. The Friendship Game sets out to do something different with its grounded approach to gimmicky horror, only to become overburdened by the game of its own inexplicable plotting.

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