The Friendship Game is a 2022 sci-fi horror thriller directed by Scooter Corkle. It centers around four teenage friends – Zooza, Rob, Courtney, and Cotton – who discover a mysterious object at a yard sale that supposedly “tests” the strength of friendships.
1. What is the Plot of ‘The Friendship Game’
At a yard sale, Cotton and Zooza discover a strange artifact that an old woman tells them is a “friendship game” that will test the strength of their bonds. Intrigued, the four friends play the game which involves placing their fingers on the object and confessing their deepest desires.
Afterwards, they attend a party where Cotton sees Zooza and Rob hooking up, upset at the betrayal. Cotton then mysteriously disappears. As the friends deal with Cotton’s disappearance, their wishes granted by the friendship game start to wreak havoc.
2. What Happens to the Friends?
As each friend reveals their innermost wish when playing the game, those wishes start coming true in twisted ways, often with dire consequences:
A. Cotton
As the one who discovered the friendship game, Cotton faces the most tragic fate. After catching Rob and Zooza hooking up at the party, a distraught Cotton storms off and is killed in unclear circumstances. Her unresolved feelings of betrayal by her two closest friends haunt the group.
In the climax, a ghostly vision of Cotton appears, accusing Zooza of failing their friendship by moving on so quickly after her death. Cotton’s deepest desire was to stay in this fleeting moment of friendship and youth with her friends forever. Her premature death granted her wish, trapping her spirit in the moment her life was cut short.
B. Zooza
Zooza harbors deep-rooted abandonment issues from her father leaving when she was younger. Her greatest fear is losing those close to her. After Cotton’s death, Zooza struggles with visions of the friends bleeding and dying.
By the ending, Zooza is the only one who can break the cycle by embracing the transient nature of friendships. When Cotton’s spirit condemns her, Zooza affirms her unconditional love for her friend. Zooza’s desire for endless time with her friends then overrides the game’s twisted consequences. She resets the timeline back to the fateful yard sale, refusing to play the friendship game in the first place.
C. Courtney
Courtney’s deepest desire is to leave home for her dream college. After Cotton’s death, Courtney fixates on trivial things like misplaced lighters, disconnected from the reality of losing her best friend.
At the climax, Courtney reveals her only wish is to know what happened to Cotton, showing glimmers of remorse. Ultimately, Courtney faces no direct consequences from the game. With the timeline reset, she gets a second chance to appreciate Cotton and Zooza before leaving home. Her ending remains ambiguous but perhaps bittersweet as she likely moves on to college.
D. Rob
Rob wishes to improve at intercourse, ashamed of embarrassing himself previously. After Cotton catches Rob and Zooza together, Rob steals the friendship game artifact believing it granted his wish in a twisted way.
Rob descends into paranoid delusions about the game’s powers. Consumed by visions of Cotton beckoning him outside, Rob ends up at her empty house implying he murdered her. While his ending is unclear, the implications are grim as he faces a tragic fate of his own making, a victim of the friendship game’s dark power.
3. Is Cotton Alive or Dead?
The film leaves this ambiguous. Cotton is shown to be missing throughout most of the movie. In the final act, Rob steals the Friendship Game artifact and through footage on it, spots Cotton.
So she appears to be alive somewhere, at least at that moment in time. Ultimately, whether dead or alive, her disappearance itself fulfills her wish to keep the friend group together forever.
4. What Was the Strongest Desire in ‘The Friendship Game’?
The strongest desire expressed was likely Cotton’s wish for their friendship to remain unchanged and last forever. This tied into the film’s themes around fragility of high school friendships. Zooza’s abandonment issues also played a key role.
5. How Did Zooza Reset the Game? Ending Explained
In the climax, Zooza has a vision of Cotton accusing her of betraying their friendship. Zooza insists she still cares about Cotton.
This act of reaffirming her commitment to the friendship seems to “reset” the game. The film flashes back to the yard sale scene from the beginning, except now Zooza tells the woman they don’t need to play any friendship “game.” In this reset version, Zooza simply wishes to have this time together with her friends.
In the end, Zooza comes to realize the friendship game created alternate realities based on their desires.
The movie concludes with an older Zooza at the yard sale with the friendship game artifact, telling a new group of girls that friendship doesn’t need testing.
This suggests Zooza has experienced these timelines before and is trying to prevent others from making the same mistake. In this reset version, Zooza simply wishes to have this time together with her friends.
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The ending of ‘The Friendship Game’ is purposefully ambiguous, leaving it up for interpretation whether the friends actually survive the friendship game or if the timeline resets with each new group that plays. Ultimately, the movie highlights how life, adulthood, and the passage of time can test even the closest of friendships.
