I really wish I'd saved this for the 13th movie I watched for this challenge. I just realized that would have been cool. Oh well, too late now. At least I watched it, one way or the other. I'm surprised I've never heard of this movie before, because not only am I a gamer, I also make it a point to watch any horror movie featuring an evil game, so this movie is right up my alley. This movie seems to have a lot of bad reviews, but we all know that means nothing, because I'll probably still like it. Away we go!
This movie starts with chatter on a police scanner, then with suspects being brought in for questioning, and the suspects are covered in blood and they talk like people from medieval times, insisting they are on some kind of holy quest. Then the movie jumps back in time, and we see these characters back when they were just normal people, stoner gamers hanging out, starting to play a board game. Clearly the board gome did something if it transformed them into the weirdos we saw in the beginning. We also learn that the game has a history of supposedly being evil. Apparently years ago, copies of the board game were burned, and it was banned, and people said it was evil and cursed. I'm old enough to remember times when things like that actually happened, a big wave of panic that games like "Dungeons and Dragons" and "Magic: The Gathering" were evil tools of Satan. I suppose this movie shows what would have happened if those fears had actually been real, so the plot of the movie resonated with me because of all these connections.
Going a bit further, the characters might have annoyed other people, but they remind me of my friends and I, so I didn't mind them. I guess I know a lot of annoying gamers. Plus the game actually seemed cool to me, like I would enjoy playing it (if it weren't all evil and cursed and stuff). I think a lot of the negative reviews were because of people who didn't like exactly the things that I liked about this movie, so there's that. If all this sounds like it would annoy you, then you probably wouldn't like this movie.
As the movie goes on and the friends keep playing the game, there are times when reality gets fuzzy and they go into a kind of trancelike state, then when they snap out of it and get up to stretch their legs and take a break, there are radio reports of assaults and possibly murders that happened overnight. The guys don't realize it, but it's clear to us that the lines between fantasy and reality are being blurred here and bad things are happening. It's easy to wonder why they don't just stop playing the damn game, but I've been in some marathon playing sessions that last for a few days like this, so I kind of get why they kept playing, especially since the game was getting into their heads and distorting their view of reality. Once we actually see what's been going down and what happens during their blackout playing sessions, it's kinda creepy.
Overall, I think I can see why so many people didn't like this movie. If you've never gotten so involved in a game that you played it for days, losing sleep and getting loopy along the way, the movie probably seems ridiculous. Maybe you have to be a gamer to really "get" this movie, or maybe I just like terrible movies, so I'll appreciate them when others don't. Either way, I wound up liking this movie. It's not great or anything, but it was a fun way to kill some time during my horror movie month.
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