Denver Film Festival Review: 'Game of Death'

Written by Dave Minkus

Note: I have never used this much profanity in a film review before. However, it felt appropriate when discussing such a profane film.

Film is a medium that at its finest provokes a strong emotional response from the viewer. Generally speaking, that response results in rapturous praise, introspective and philosophical discussions over dinner with friends, or even aching abs from laughing so hard. Game of Death definitely elicited a response in me. However, it was one of seething hatred at a film for wasting my time pissing all over any idea that life is something to be remotely valued.
​
The plot, such as it is, revolves around a bunch of entitled dumbass kids enjoying a debaucherous weekend at a lakeside cabin. Various PG-rated freakiness ensues before someone happens to find the titular ‘Game of Death’. Everyone puts their finger on the board, they get their finger pricked to extract blood from each player. The game then generates a random number, which is the number of people who must be killed by the players to keep from being killed themselves.

Of course, nobody takes it seriously until the first person’s head explodes in a beautifully bloody fashion and the film sets off on the rest of its brief, yet too long, 73-minute runtime.

At this point, the film quickly devolves into a celebration of pessimistic nihilism where everything in life is bullshit and there is no regard for human life in such a cold way that I actively hated every single character in this film. Even when life’s sanctity is given lip service before another character is dispatched coldly, the ulterior motives are clear from the beginning that just trying to survive is the film’s only point of existence.

---

As if the film’s message wasn’t insulting enough, it’s clear that the threadbare concept wasn’t enough to sustain even a 60-minute runtime, so the audience is ‘treated’ to PG-rated sexual grinding that makes no sense and mind-numbing extended scenes of characters looking at each other over music to stretch the film’s runtime out by 15 minutes. I’m not saying I was craving nudity and explicit sex scenes at all. It just felt incredibly at odds with the blood and guts on full display throughout the rest of the film.
​
I understand that it’s impossible to know what’s in the cultural zeitgeist at all times, but the godawful delivery of a couple lovingly calling each other ‘bitch’ made it impossible to not respond, ‘Awwww…biiitch’ a la Scary Terry in Rick and Morty. That’s the least of my complaints about the film, and it DID make the viewing almost bearable when everyone watching with me did the same thing.

When you’re making essentially a high-concept Jumanji, but with horror tropes, there is a responsibility to make it at least fun. There’s a way to make a film that is just as gory, but finds fun ways to play with the intersecting board game and horror tropes. Unfortunately, Game of Death wastes any of that kind of promise with cold laziness that results simply in a waste of everyone’s time and energy.

---