This paper conducts a survey of modern binary pattern flavored feature extractors applied to the Facial Expression Recognition (FER) problem. In total, 26 different feature extractors are included, of which six are selected for in depth description. In addition, the paper unifies important FER terminology, describes open challenges, and provides recommendations to scientific evaluation of FER systems. Lastly, it studies the facial expression recognition accuracy and blur invariance of the Local Frequency Descriptor. The paper seeks to bring together disjointed studies, and the main contribution is to provide a solid overview for future research.