Game of Death (FrightFest 2017)
Gareth Jones
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Starring Sam Earle, Victoria Diamond, Emelia Hellman, Catherine Saindon, Erniel Baez Duenas
Directed by Sebastien Landry, Laurence Morais-Lagace
A bunch of obnoxious millennial friends see their frivolous partying take an entirely unexpected turn for the worse when one them discovers a mysterious board game: Game of Death. Busting the game out for some drunken fun, the friends place their fingers on the edge of the board – receiving, for their efforts, a pin prick as the game draws and absorbs blood from each of the participants.
And so the fun begins.
The rules are simple – the players must kill 24 people within 24 hours. Using a retro LCD screen mounted in the middle of the board, the game counts down both the time limit and the remaining kill requirements. Oh… and if the gang take too long to off some unsuspecting bystander, one of them will be randomly chosen to suffer an impressively meaty head explosion.
Originally designed as a web series, Game of Death is as entertaining as it is frustrating. A fabulous pixel art credit sequence makes for a promising start, but things seem to be heading down a less interesting path in the first few scenes, where it seems we’re going to be stuck on this ride alongside some of the most gratingly insufferable characters put to film.
Thankfully that isn’t quite the case, as Landry and Morais-Lagace soon give their cast a little more room to breathe, even as the pace rockets on through a sparse circa-70-minute runtime. It’s actually very well handled, packing in character development and roiling conflict amongst the group of friends whilst simultaneously serving up an almost constant display of splatter.
And splatter is most certainly the name of the game here. For such a low budget effort, the effects work is tremendous – especially the pulsing, mega-veined head swelling send-offs that look unspeakably painful in action. There’s hardly five minutes that go by without a pumped-up head, brutal evisceration or high-impact gunshots that send chunky sprays of gore flying around the locations.
Whilst the sense of gruesome glee and playful irreverence helps keep Game of Death on its feet, it’s also where the frustration sets in. There’s little to no explanation of the game – how did it get there? Who owned it? Since it was in their house, how come Tom (Earle) and Beth (Diamond) appear to have no knowledge of it whatsoever? How does it manage to supernaturally influence the group, to the degree that it can actually make your head explode, no matter where you are?
What’s the bloody point?
If you aren’t willing to set the threadbare excuse for a plot aside and simply wallow in the splattery goodness, you’re going to have a bad time with Game of Death. It’s as simple as that. On the flip side, if you’re looking for some basic entertainment and one of the wildest splatter shows we’ve been treated to for some time, you could do far worse than breaking out a few beers and enjoying Game of Death for what it is.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
