#the friendship game

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/4-5/2023: THE FRIENDSHIP GAME, BODIES BODIES BODIES

So look, usually when I write one of these things I wind up watching the movie at least twice to make sure I really got what was going on and I don't misquote anything. My dark secret is that I'm not very good at following even moderately complicated plotlines; I tend to judge movies based on psychological, tonal, and aesthetic coherence above all else, not only because it doesn't matter to me whether a story is "realistic", but because I'm actually pretty bad at tracking anything with a lot of moving parts. So, when I do see something that makes so little sense that it reaches the point of offending me, I often worry that maybe it was just over my head--but I'm pretty sure that's not the case with THE FRIENDSHIP GAME, even though this year's Blogtober is a speed run and I didn't double check anything. If I'm deeply wrong about this nonsense, talk to my lawyer.

In this movie, some teen BFFs find this HELLRAISER-ass thing at a fucking yard sale (?!) that they are told is "a friendship game". To play this game, you and your best friends sit in a circle around the torturous-looking object and you touch it and you all say whatever your deepest desire is, and if your friendship doesn't survive these confessions, NEITHER WILL YOU! I immediately had a lot of questions about this basic premise. This is kind of a trope, right: A bunch of people who think they're friends find out that they're really not when some form of pressure forces all of their secret disloyalty and hypocrisy and selfishness out into the open. I don't know if there's a name for this device, another example that comes to mind is VERY BAD THINGS, or BODIES BODIES BODIES which I watched the following day. In the latter case, it's pretty obvious that they're all a bunch of frenemies with terminal character flaws, and their toxic dynamic is basically a ticking time bomb. This is really easy to grasp, and it may even feel familiar if you've been cursed with crummy friends at any time of your life. But the thing is, if you knew that you had a lot of thoughts and desires that could harm your so-called friends, and you were faced with a "Friendship Game" that's supposed to like curse you or kill you or something if you're insincere--or just if you don't love your friends enough? or something?--then wouldn't you just, like, not play the Friendship Game? The frenemies in BODIES BODIES BODIES would definitely know not to play the Friendship Game. Like it's one thing to hope for the voyeuristic thrill of seeing people get humiliated in a game of Truth or Dare, but if you don't REALLY want to express your legitimate heart's desire in front of your social circle, what's the motivation for playing the game? If you think it's going to kill you for being disloyal, then you won't play it, and if you DIDN'T think it would do anything, then what's the point of it anyway? What is anyone going to get out of this?

Huh?

The "game" doesn't do anything when you're playing it, by the way, it doesn't shift around like the Lament Configuration or light up like Simon. It does some stuff much later on after it turns out you're a shitty friend, but in the short term, one of the friends reasonably asks, "So how do you win?" and the answer is, "By staying friends!", which is obviously an indefinite concept and not really like a satisfying climactic event that takes place at the end of the sitting-around-touching-the-thing game. (I mean how are you even supposed to know when you're DONE and you guys can all get up and do something else? Do you just assume that when you touch the thing and say your piece, some silent invisible mechanism inside it goes "Yeah, that checks out, bye"? Or are you actually playing the Friendship Game for the rest of your life just because you touched the thing?) But I also don't really get the existential functioning of the game; I guess it's kind of a monkey's paw type thing? Where the wording of your desire gets twisted into some kind of ironic, alternate timeline result that exposes how infirm your friendships are. There's also some kind of like...I don't know how to say this, like a demonic contagion that travels through the internet and surveillance devices, which is connects itself to the (basically inconsequential) local lonely autistic hacker kid who doesn't even have friends to play the Friendship Game with. But as you can probably tell from this description, this element didn't add a lot of meaning for me, and it really just made a confusing movie even more confusing.

Another question I have is, like...who made the Friendship Game? Who would make it?There's a lot of lore around the Lament Configuration and you totally get the point of it: It lures to their doom people who feel they have exhausted all of life's possibilities and who will do literally anything just to feel something again. And it's connected to Hell, which is always in need of corrupted souls. Great, got it, no notes. But what person or entity or belief system would create the Friendship Game? The kids in this movie are flawed, obviously, or there would be no story to tell, but none of them are like evil maniacs who really need to be punished--and the punishment in this case seems to be death, which like, is it really worth shredding some teenager's reality just because they're predictably shallow and immature? Who is gaining what in the Friendship Game? I completely do not get this. Spoiler alert or whatever but at the end of the movie all the kids who haven't died or dematerialized or something touch the thing and say their new collective heart's desire, which amounts to "we wish this never happened", and even though the set up is NOT "make a WISH"--the setup is "tell the TRUTH", but the Friendship Game still kind of works like a genie for some reason--all the friends get sent back in time and they wind up not buying the Friendship Game in the first place, and they're all saved. But it's not like they remember this, so it doesn't count as a lesson learned... I don't even know if that matters, but it seems like it's supposed to, which makes the whole misadventure feel really pointless.

Also I should say that the ordinariness of the kids raises another problem for me, which is: Why is this movie founded on the principle that ANYbody's heart's desire would be something that would seriously harm everyone around them? Like I think that's just called being a psychopath. I mean yes, everyone has secret thoughts and feelings that are not so nice, and sometimes you wish you could be more selfish or mean because it would feel good in the moment, but it's not like a universal truth that any random human being's most basic desires are necessarily detrimental to other people, meaning that all friendships are predicated on never going after what you truly, profoundly want. Certainly there are some relationships like that, as represented by BODIES BODIES BODIES (and every single Brett Easton Ellis product, to which I am not always immune!), but that movie is more of a specific type of character study, not a generalization about humanity. It's not trying to like make a statement about the fundamental nature of friendship.

By now it may seem obvious that while BODIES BODIES BODIES is a better movie that gave me less to complain about, I also didn't find it remotely as provocative as the basically-awful FRIENDSHIP GAME. When BODIES decided to open with a long, extreme closeup of lesbian face-sucking, it probably didn't expect me to become immediately distracted and wander away from my TV. Minutes later I was gazing mindlessly into the fridge thinking, "Wait a minute, did I just start a movie? Am I missing the setup right now?" I forgot I was watching that poor movie continuously throughout its running time; if it was 90 minutes long, I probably really only saw about 70 minutes of it, optimistically. A big part of the problem is that on paper, BODIES BODIES BODIES is clearly supposed to be a black comedy, but in practice it's just sort of an empty style piece and it is not remotely funny enough, often enough to make its point effectively. The only people who seem to know that they're in a satire are Pete Davidson and Chase Sui Wonders, who I thought were both pretty good, but the whole rest of the production really abandons what those two actors are valiantly trying to do with the script, and the end result is just very low impact. I was way less frustrated with that movie than I was with THE FRIENDSHIP GAME, but it also gave me a lot less to think about, whatever that's worth. The End.

[moviesandmania]

THE FRIENDSHIP GAME (2022) Sci-fi horror preview with trailer

THE FRIENDSHIP GAME (2022) Sci-fi horror preview with trailer

The Friendship Game is a 2022 Canadian sci-fi horror film about a group of teenagers in a small town discovering a strange object that tests the strength of their friendship. Directed by Scooter Corkle from a screenplay written by Damien Ober. Produced by Daniel Bekerman and Amanda Verhagen. The movie stars Peyton List, Brendan Meyer, Miranda Edwards, Jennifer Copping, Dylan Schombing, Kaitlyn…

[ramascreen]

Watch Peyton List In This Trailer For THE FRIENDSHIP GAME

Watch Peyton List In This Trailer For THE FRIENDSHIP GAME

Check out this official trailer for the thriller/horror film THE FRIENDSHIP GAME starring Peyton List! RLJE Films will release the thriller/horror film THE FRIENDSHIP GAME in theaters, on demand and digital November 11, 2022. THE FRIENDSHIP GAME stars Peyton List (“Cobra Kai”), Brendan Meyer (“The OA”), Kelcey Mawema (To All the Boys I’ve Loved franchise), Kaitlyn Santa Juana (“The Flash”)…

[horrorpatch]

Official Trailer - THE FRIENDSHIP GAME Starring Cobra Kai's Peyton List!

Official Trailer – THE FRIENDSHIP GAME Starring Cobra Kai’s Peyton List!

[cultfaction]

RLJE Films acquires horror/thriller "The Friendship Game"

RLJE Films acquires horror/thriller “The Friendship Game”

RLJE Films, a business unit of AMC Networks, has acquired U.S. rights to the horror/ thriller film, THE FRIENDSHIP GAME.  Directed by Scooter Corkle (Hollow in the Land) and written by Damien Ober (“The OA”), THE FRIENDSHIP GAME stars Peyton List (“Cobra-Kai”, “Bunk’d”), Brendan Meyer (Color Out of Space), Kelcey Mawema (“To All the Boys…” franchise), Kaitlyn Santa Juana (“The Flash”) and Dylan…

[buzzfeedpuppies]

🚨Warning: There are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for The Friendship Game!🚨

[gebo4482]

THE FRIENDSHIP GAME | Official Trailer

Dir: Scooter Corkle Star: Peyton List / Brendan Meyer / Jennifer Copping / Kelcey Mawema

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[sasa-chan]

Day 31

Casper Meets Wendy

Year Released: 1998

Run Time: 1hr 30m

Director: Sean McNamara

Rating: PG

Genres: Adventure, Comedy

R.L. Stine's Monsterville: The Cabinet of Souls

Year Released: 2015

Run Time: 1hr 26m

Director: Peter DeLuise

Rating: PG

Genres: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror

The Friendship Game

Year Released: 2022

Run Time: 1hr 27m

Director: Scooter Corkle

Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi

The Curse of Sleeping Beauty

Year Released: 2016

Run Time: 1hr 29m

Director: Pearry Reginald Teo

Rating: TV-14

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Mystery

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The musical episode.

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[dapper-lil-arts]

You should read The Princess and the Peasant it's really good lol

[sic-radical]

Also,,,, Neil and Jean telling the FBI that they intentionally and willingly switched Neil's looks back over winter break bc "what's the worst that could happen? 🤪" like it was a boys will be boys moment sent me

[tuna-cereal-box]

Despite everything, he'll always be a part of you

[danyllura]

I love that Finnick and Katniss’ relationship goes from mutual skepticism and minor dislike of one another to being each other’s emotional support emotionally-unstable besties where when one freaks out and has to be sedated so does the other

[n64retro]