Director: Nicolas Wendl, Dani Abraham
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Arriving at a friend’s apartment, a group of guys decide to get together with their dinner plans turning into a special series of games that take up their night, but as the festivities continue it dawns on the men that the women have ulterior motives for everything and must stop it from transpiring.
Review:
Overall, this was a somewhat enjoyable effort. Among the better features here is the solid and likable enough setup to get the victims together under this particular premise. After getting everyone lured together with the pretense of dinner and then gradually descending into the bizarre board game the deeper into the night it goes, this one comes off well enough that the chaotic nature of the board game becomes increasingly more compelling. The tasks being forced to complete and the consequences for failing them make for some enjoyable moments here involving the dark figure constantly lurking in the background of everything and the confusing rules that are in play for the fun finale, which all make the film quite entertaining.
There are some issues here that hold this one down. One of the main drawbacks of this one is a rather weak storyline that makes it feel more appropriate for a short film or an anthology tale than anything else. This one takes so long to get going with the friends hanging out having dinner and having conversations about their past together that it tends to feel like padding to bump out the running time while we’re getting to know the characters. Some of these interactions are fine at this stage of the film but they just draw the film out for quite a while without featuring any kind of genre action normally expected here with so much time spent on the various bits learned about each other just stall out the pacing to this one without much in the way of storyline helping this along.
That also means the majority of the film relies on the confines of the bizarre game that the group plays which grows somewhat darker the more the night goes on but which also makes no sense. Despite the candle-lit setting and bizarre series of tasks and challenges that are to be accomplished over the course of this one, the lack of rules and purpose behind everything makes for a game where it has very few stakes. Since the girls are kept to a secretive air about why the boys are there and what they’re doing, the idea of forcing them to play everything out and not allowing any clues to their real intent is kept hidden for so long any interest is long gone by the time it comes to the more intriguing elements even with no knowledge of what’s going on. Featuring no real gore or scares present either, there are some big issues to be had here.
Overview: **/5
Fun enough for what it is but still pretty problematic, there’s some rather fun elements present here while still being quite let down by its big flaws. Those who are intrigued by this one or aren't bothered by the flaws featured here might have some fun with this one while most others out there should heed caution with this one.
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