‘The Friendship Game’ (2022) Review – Aimless And Generic

Directed By: Scooter Corkle

Starring: Peyton List, Brendan Meyer, Miriam Smith

Plot Summary: A group of teenagers in a small town have their lives turned upside down when they find a strange object. What started out as a harmless game turns deadly as it tests their friendship in twisted ways.

I’ve always tried to grow as a critic, not only in terms of writing, but in a deeper sense, to become a thoughtful and constructive one. After all, I understand that every movie, even the terrible ones, take a lot of time and hard work. Therefore, I try to respect that fact and always find a silver lining. However, there are those films that make this job very difficult. The Friendship Game is a movie that grated on me from the first couple of minutes and, impressively, it only got more annoying, baffling, and just generally terrible as the runtime limped on. I really was amazed by how much of a nothing burger this one is.

Right off the bat, the movie jumps around wildly to several different scenes, all taking place during different timelines. There is a scene where the group of friends are playing the mysterious “friendship game”, another one later on at a club, and then a scene presumably in the present. Oh, and another random kid is secretly filming the game session…for reasons. Not only is this just really jarring and confusing, but you never feel like you get a handle on any of the characters. Sure, we get some very stock motivations for everyone, but nothing that stands out nor that is memorable.

It seems like director, Scooter Corkle, wanted to make his own spin on the Hellraiser films with his own puzzle box. There are even generic demonic and supernatural happenings that (not a shocker) make no sense in the larger, overarching plot. Corkle skips over all of the groundwork and rich lore that makes something like Clive Barker’s film groundbreaking. Not to mention, Barker was drawing on some very interesting and provocative subject matter. The game is not well defined which makes it malleable for whatever the screenplay needs. Here, the central point of the movie is friendship and how scary it is going off into the real world and drifting apart. Not really a groundbreaking thread to build an entire movie off of, but with a talented screenwriter it is possible to make this a good jumping off point even as thin as it is. It’s virtually impossible to get invested in this aimless story when nothing is known about these kids, and the world’s inner workings are so poorly crafted.

The way these characters are written is cringe and something truly to behold. At one point, a bratty teen snaps at her mom by saying, “Barf.com, mom.” Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those “so bad, it’s fun to watch” movies–something that could almost be camp. Nope. It’s just aimless, boring, and honestly, it may be the worst film to come out this year.

Surprisingly, not every single aspect of the movie is trash. The acting is pretty decent. While nobody is likely to win any awards here, the actors do the best they can with what they have to work with. Often times it’s easy to pinpoint where a movie needed some improvement. Maybe it is the pacing, the dialogue, the focus, or the movie is generally misguided in terms of structure and its core concept. However, The Friendship Game fails in some regard in just about every department. It’s disheartening because it really feels like nobody, at the very least, cared enough to craft something even remotely coherent.

The Friendship Game is currently available in select theaters, On Demand and on Digital platforms courtesy of RLJE Films. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJbe3ovg-TQ]