A film of two halves

habakukofice

In a horror movie you often get a setup where a group of sexy teenagers go to a cabin in the woods, where they encounter some horrible monster and all die. This is the budget version. A group of bland twenty somethings go to a house in a field and find a board game. Then they all decide to play the game, even though some of them are complaining about it, and the game is cursed. Now they have to kill people or their heads explode.

Man, I love to see a head explode. People just get covered in blood and brain, and eventually they realise the game is real and set off to start killing people. And it's all just boring. The kills aren't any good, the film production isn't any good, and I just don't care about any of it. It's not bad enought o be interesting, it's just bland and lifeless.

Until it isn't any more. There is a specific shot. It's a long single shot, the camera moves through a working hospital, and it looks really good. That's the start of easily the best part of the movie. Two of the killers go to this hospital and start killing people and it finally feels like they're trying to make a movie. They're doing things with the camera, the kills are better, they do weird transitions involving video game footage, they just do things. \

The only misstep is that they didn't kill the kid. The girl in the couple at the hospital has a chance to save them all by killing a little kid, a terminally ill kid, and she doesn't do it. I know Hollywood doesn't like killing kids, but this is a low budget horror film where peoples head explode. You've got to kill that kid.

Then one of other kids playing the game arrives to kill her friends to save innocent people. The camera follows her in, it's an interesting shot, although not as good as the killing spree, but this character is awful. She succeeds in killing her friends, so only her and one of the others is left, and the game says they must kill one more person. She kills her friend to win the game. She gives a stupid speech about choosing life, and abandons all that stuff about saving innocent lives. She decides to kill to survive, just like the game wanted.

So a film that goes from boring to interesting halfway through, and has a frustrating ending.

MY problem with the film? Got to kill that kid.

score 5/10

habakukofice 30 July 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5952920/