Roger M. Bobb

(On TV, September 2022) Aw yes—it took me a while to get used to it, but there’s nothing quite like a schlocky BET thriller like Friend Request to unwind after a hard day. The mixture of in-your-face plotting, familiar story arcs, neutered naughtiness and good-looking actresses is not what we’d call elevated cinema, but it’s fun enough in small doses. I’m on a mission to watch them all. So it is that Friend Request plays along incredibly familiar lines to BET viewers: The successful married career man who’s more-than-tempted by infidelity, and ends up paying a big price for it. I’ve just described roughly a third of their lineup if you allow for some gender-flipping, but as long as we get a scene of the temptress in lingerie, we’re all good. The mixture of low-end production values with over-the-top dramatic content is always good for a few chuckles, even if the result ends up generic enough that it’s difficult to write a review that doesn’t simply copy assessments of similar films. The overdone plotting leads to a conclusion that’s more comic than thrilling, but that’s part of the fun as well. I got exactly what I expected from director Roger M. Bobb’s Friend Request, which wasn’t much… but at least exact.