Everybody suspects Facebook is sinister; this was, after all, the premise of “The Social Network.” John Daschbach’s thriller tries for a worst-case view of what happens when a college acquaintance you never liked in the first place tries to “friend” himself back into your life.
The unwelcome friend is Teddy (Scott Shepherd), an outsider still trying to break into the in crowd. That crowd consists of software entrepreneur Aaron (Joel de la Fuente), his pretty wife Lea (Alexie Gilmore) and a winsome gay couple (Quentin Maré and John Ellison Conlee) — all neighbors in rural New England.
With this gang’s convivial meals in their historic houses, and their smugly exclusionary attitudes, you definitely see what’s bugging Teddy, even if he does happen to be a loon.
In fact, the movie’s best asset, and most suspenseful element, is Shepherd’s vividly smarmy performance. It’s amazing how creepy he makes the vacuous parlance of social media: “You could friend her. Or I could tell her you said it was OK to friend you.”
The gorgeous setting makes it easy on the eyes, and there’s a sinuous, well-deployed score by Michael Shaieb. But a movie like this should be a tightening noose as your anxiety for the main character keeps rising. Aaron is charmless, self-absorbed and perception-free. He’s a natural-born sucker fated to fall for something — if not a psychopath, then maybe three-card monte or a Nigerian bank scam. The stalker-enabling menace of Facebook is largely abandoned by midpoint, and “Brief Reunion” won’t even prompt most people to change their privacy settings.