FilmQuest Review: ‘Wicked Games’ Has Some Inspired Kills But a Lot of Unrealized Potential
Sharai Bohannon
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Wicked Games is a project that has a lot of unrealized potential once we get to the meat of the movie. The first 15-ish minutes of the film feel like a cross between mid-’90s MTV2 videos and the Silent Hill 3 video game, with the camera working overtime and making me a bit dizzy. However, because of the chaos on display as a guy stumbles around a house of death before going to the police and cryptically telling them to, “Find that girl in the video” as he gives them a camera and dramatically dies, I rallied.
The movie follows Harley and Kiel, (played by Christine Sprang and Markus Silbiger) a couple still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship who are going to Kiel’s family’s country home for a weekend. Once there, Harley finds herself fighting for her life after masked randos appear.
The film seems to purposely steer toward any similarities to You’re Next, but with ridiculous mask choices that cause laughter when there should be mounting tension. Unlike the final girl in You’re Next, Harley doesn’t seem to have that many survival skills or even want to fight back when she first finds herself under attack in this house. This is weird because early on, Harley beats up a guy at a bar after he casually (and loudly) hits her on the ass twice. The scene is made to feel bigger than it is, so it leaves us to believe there is some trauma surrounding this ass-kicking and that Harley is probably about to be another casualty of sexual assault being mishandled in film. When Harley’s backstabbing boyfriend, Kiel, asks her how she learned to fight, after she beats up the loud handsy guy in the bar, she mumbles something about having to learn to fight to keep her virginity.
She’s not the only inconsistent character, but because she’s the lead it’s more noticeable. It’s almost like an imaginary switch is flipped, and all of a sudden Harley remembers she’s killed before and can do it again. As she racks up more kills she seems to start taking glee from it, which we love to see but again is confusing for this character’s journey. I had a hard time hearing a lot of her dialogue, so Harley may have said something along the way that I missed that would make this shift seem less jarring. However muddled her character is, I do love the kill where she takes the branding iron they were going to use on her and propels it through two of the people who were in on this plot. This is possibly my favorite part of this movie, even if character consistency has gone out of the window.
The movie is predictable and spends way too much time explaining the obvious to its audience. This is especially annoying in a later scene where it feels like Harley’s backstabbing boyfriend, Kiel is just recapping what has transpired in the house so far while trying to make it sound more terrifying than it was when we watched it play out. All of that aside, the movie tried to make it all make sense and tie up Harley’s loose ends by having Kiel’s family have a history of setting up women in this home. They choose women that “have it coming” and then bring them here to torture and kill. They chose Harley because she murdered the men the courts let walk after they assaulted her. Kiel’s brother, Rhodes (played by Michael Shenefelt), also counts Harley’s abortion in her number of kills to drive home the sexism that is rampant in this familial pastime.
Wicked Games had its regional premiere at FilmQuest 2021.
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Wicked Games
Summary
Wicked Games is a journey, but it does lead us to another entry in the “good for her” subgenre.
