The Murder Game

Warner Bros

R1 DVD

Web: http://www.murdergamemovie.com

The Murder Game is an innovative and creative horror and suspense film. As you watch it you realize that it is never quite what it seems, it crosses genres between horror, suspense and psychological intrigue as well as offering an exploration of personal conflicts and relationships.

The premise, as obvious from the name, comes from the idea of a murder game. From the classic whodunit turned into an interactive form of entertainment that has become a well established pastime but with a twist. It reminds me a bit of the car crash game in John Water’s Female Trouble, replicating a horrid experience as a way of escaping emotional dysfunction and boredom. Eric (Steve Polites) and his teenage friends, seem perpetually bored and rather superficial. In an attempt to alleviate their condition, they play The Murder Game, where the person who picks the Queen of Spades becomes a killer and then sets out to find and kill the other members of the game using all manner of prop weapons from hammers to knives and rope.

When they are busted playing the game at home they decide to sneak out and play it in an isolated storage warehouse which has locked down for the night. Extra suspense is added by various interpersonal issues. Colin (Samuel Klein) is Lucy’s (Julia Pickens) strange looking gothic cousin who has been seemingly grounded for smoking at school and her father hovering in the background of the film is a stereotypical overbearing parent.

At first the game unfolds as simply as one would expect, interpersonal tensions are showing, the Goth is being demonized, Eric seems to be the quintessential jock with little sensitivity and all brawn and we have a couple of dope smokers. However, there is a sense that something is not quite right. They think someone else is in the building and soon the first bodies begin to appear.

The gore and violence is well presented with excellent special effects. What I especially like is the way in which different genres are explored. There are periods of suspense with excellent filming as they run, hide and are stalked throughout the complex and these are carefully interwoven with scenes of strong violence and the decaying of their personal relationships. Rather than just being a straight slasher stalker film, the violence is carefully spaced throughout other themes to make it all the more effective when it is shown.

As first look some of the acting seems a little amateur, the cast not being especially well known. However, I think this actually helps in the film in a strange way. The essence of The Murder Game, as I understand it, is the play on the relationship between the fictional “Murder Game” and the real “Murder game” and how the line between them has been blurred in the killers psyche. Accordingly, the actors performing as though “they are acting” reinforces this blurring of the game and the reality of what is occurring. On one level they are “playing at a game”, on another level “they are playing” and getting killed. Indeed when the final revelation of the killer is made, she declares that she became addicted to killing during an earlier murder game at another school and this is simply another game, so the layers of game playing are reinforced.

The plot is nicely textured as throughout the movie there are the decaying interpersonal relationships as the various characters blame each other and there are deliberately off putting hints such as missing weapons, phones damaged etc which could move the blame in any direction. The disturbed occupant of one of the storage units is a classic red herring which helps add to the whodunit aspect of the tale.

The scapegoating of the Gothic character was well developed, he is introduced as an unsympathetic outsider and yet slowly you realize he is probably the most sensitive and human of them all. He takes the blame for others as he understands that he is already “alienated” and hence being blamed doesn’t really matter. However, of course, this comes back to haunt him as Lucy’s father is happy to follow his prejudice and accept Colin (now dead) committed the murders and the real killer walks free – who would suspect a lovely young girl ?

This is an impressive film which has a lot going for it. Certainly when the killer gets into her final spree it is a startling streak of violence and gore, ranging from expert use of a set of garden shears, a classic disembowelment scene and a rather inventive death by fire extinguisher.

At the same time this is balanced with lots of suspense, stress, twists and turns and some nice character exploration. I enjoyed it immensely and felt it was a intelligent horror film which used an interesting plot and character development to give it the extra depth I like to see in a movie.