Exclusive: Brit Morgan Talks Friend Request and Its Scariest Moments
Staci Layne Wilson
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Most of us blithely accept friend requests online, thinking at best we’ll have a fun new pal or at worst we’ll just never hear from them. In the new horror movie Friend Request, the “worst” that could happen is much, much worse.
Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is one of the most popular students at her college and enjoys an active social life. She lives with three friends, Olivia (Brit Morgan), Isabel (Brooke Markham), and Gustavo (Sean Marquette), and has over 800 friends on Facebook. When a request from an outcast named Marina (Liesl Ahlers) pings in, she accepts it… but after a while Laura unfriends Marina, and suddenly… evil is trending!
We had the chance to catch up with one of the actresses from the film, Brit Morgan, and here is what she had to say.
Dread Central: What’s your criteria when accepting a role, and why this one in particular?
Brit Morgan: It was two things that attracted me. I thought it was smart, I liked the social media aspect – it was really smart; there was like a bullying aspect to it which I thought was great. It really cultivated the relationship with the friends, which I think any good horror movie does. It gets you kind of attached to the people in the film; you care about what’s happening to them. So I was getting really attached to this group of friends while I was reading it. So to see this stuff go down in the script – you really get sucked into the plot. That’s really why I went out for it. I really liked it. The social media aspect was creative and unique, especially a few years ago when we filmed Friend Request – I hadn’t seen anything like it.
DC: Tell us about working with your director, Simon Verhoeven.
BM: Simon used to be an actor himself, so I feel like he really understood what would make this work. And Simon’s interest was to make this feel real, he wanted this to feel so authentic. So he wanted us to essentially become really, really close best friends, which happened organically. We are still so close that they’re all coming to [celebrate] my birthday in a couple of days. That’s how close we all are. We were always taking selfies, always taking videos of each another, as if we were a real group of best friends. So all the photos we captured, that were on our Facebook pages, were all photos we were really taking as we were out at bars, partying, eating, laughing. He made the experience real. He would just take us to dinner – “All right guys, shoot pictures, we’ll have fun together,” and in the process we all became actual best friends. We were living it, in a way, though we weren’t living the horror of it. But he really did create it to be like a haunted house. Everything single thing that is depicted on the Facebook page really is us having a great time, so it’s as real as it gets as far as the relationships go. The horror of it, he tried to keep it really, really authentic. He really wants you to go there. We all became really close friends. It did feel really real at times. Sometimes shooting horror movies can be kind of disturbing (laughs).
DC: What’s one of the scariest moments in the film, in your opinion?
BM: It’s hard to say without giving anything away. The antagonist is really scary. She just is. Then there are insect elements. It gets really gory. I think I have the most gruesome death. It’s really disturbing and disgusting. But – I haven’t seen the film. I’m going to go see it tonight. But I remember it because I was there.
DC: What does your family think of seeing you die in horror movies?
BM: They hate it so much. They hate it. They ask me all the time why I don’t do more comedy. They hate it. Honestly, I think it’s really hard for my mom. You’ll see – how I die – whatever it is I end up doing, it’s just so dark; and I think my family, my mom and dad, are like “Whoa.”
DC: There’s a lot of CGI in the movie. So, are you acting to a tennis ball on a stick or what? How difficult is that as an actor?
BM: I think that’s when Simon comes in. That’s where he is a really great director. He’s coaching you through the stage of it – “Oh you’re about to die” – because you don’t see someone who’s eleven feet tall, coming after you with bugs coming out their eyes – you just don’t see it. So that’s really where the acting comes in, in horror movies. And that’s where Simon was great; he really helped you to keep those stakes really high. I hate to say it, but that’s horror.
DC: What do you hope will be the takeaway from Friend Request?
BM: If you guys get scared and consider getting off Facebook, I think the movie did its job! That would be great. I hope it scares people.
The film is in theaters NOW!
Directed by Simon Verhoeven, Friend Request stars Alycia Debnam-Carey (“Fear the Walking Dead”), Brit Morgan, William Moseley, and Connor Paolo. It was penned by Verhoeven with Matthew Ballen and Philip Koch.
Synopsis:
Popular college student Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) has tons of friends, both on Facebook and IRL. She graciously accepts social outcast Marina’s (Liesl Ahlers) online friend request, until Marina crosses the line and Laura unfriends her. To everyone’s shock, Marina takes her own life in a ritual meant to torment Laura, which appears in a video posted on Laura’s profile. Even though it wasn’t Laura who posted the video, or other creepy content that begins appearing on her page, her Facebook friend count begins to dwindle as a result. When her real-life friends start dying mysterious, cruel deaths, Laura must figure out how to break the deadly curse before it’s too late.
Categorized:News
