The deal is this: Six strangers will be in this kind of "Real World" situation in which they have to remain in a creepy, isolated house for six months. If they do, they win a million dollars. If any of them leaves, they all lose the money. The movie opens with clips from their audition tapes, which is a very clever and unobtrusive way to quickly draw each character and also deliver exposition about the rules of the game. Then the screen divides into four and we see a bunch of quick shots, which moves us five months and three weeks forward in time-and by three minutes in we're at the last week of the contest. We'll talk about this later.
Then we start settling in with the characters. Now you notice that the idea of the film is that you will see only what the webcams see, which turned out to be much more effective than I expected at creating and sustaining tension. And it's easy to do-you can start having regular close-ups and the audience won't notice so long as every third or fourth shot is off-balance or looks random is some way. I really admire movies that can do things very cheaply but that work really well, and this is one of those conceits.
Now, the best way to watch this movie is by not knowing much more than I've told you above. If you like a good, scary horror movie that keeps you in high suspense (until it starts to deflate a bit toward the end), definitely stop now and watch it. If you've already seen it or you just don't care, read on. We'll have two levels of spoilers, for things that it would just be better not to know, and things that will really give away the ending of the movie.
Level one spoilers! If you don't know what's happening, the movie plays with a lot of possibilities. What I thought toward the beginning was that the house would have mechanisms which would kill the participants, and the audience would watch how the others react. This resulted in perhaps the longest period I have spent NOT watching a movie, because I couldn't stand the tension of when something was going to jump or shoot out. And something about the automated camera sounds and angles really made every moment seem threatening, instead of just the ones that follow on certain camera angles that we know spell danger. That said, there were a large amount of pointless jump scares in this section, and those can get annoying. One was a loud bump in the room behind, rendered so well by the surround sound that I truly thought the woman in the apartment behind me has dropped something really heavy against the wall.
Anyway, it would appear that the people who are running the contest are messing with the people in the house. They cut off the heat. They stop the food shipments. They tell one character that his beloved Grandfather is dead. And all of these things create more tension between the housemates, and they start gradually turning on each other. One very clever and successful way this seems to organically happen is that if one person leaves no one gets the money-so whenever one character is fed up and wants to leave, another will convince them to stay because he wants the money. Then just after this we have one of the most amusing rationalizations for why a couple need to have sex that I've heard in some time: "Maybe (the webcast creators) are punishing us for not having sex."
Level two spoilers! Around this time it becomes a lot more clear what's happening, and I'm afraid it becomes a lot less interesting. Rather than the webcast creator messing with the minds of their contestants until they kill each other, which I was kind of hoping for, but rather it becomes a kind of slasher thing with a twist. I was a little disappointed by that, but this approach does offer one extremely cheap yet extremely effective decapitation.
According to the IMDb this film was getting good word of mouth when there was a disastrous screening of a four hour version of it, and after that distribution dried up. At the beginning I saw the Universal logo and was wondering why what looks like a standard movie got buried, but ultimately this film's grimmer than grim ending made me realize why they thought they couldn't lure mainstream audiences. But the fact that a four hour version exists explains a lot of things that appear but never go anywhere in the film, and also speaks to how much detail the filmmakers seem to think you need. Me, 90 minutes was just enough.
Oh, and at the end they really screw up the creepy webcast tone they've been building up the entire movie with some really inappropriate speed-metal.
------ Hey, check out Cinema de Merde, my website on bad and cheesy movies (with a few good movies thrown in). You can find the URL in my email address above.
Then we start settling in with the characters. Now you notice that the idea of the film is that you will see only what the webcams see, which turned out to be much more effective than I expected at creating and sustaining tension. And it's easy to do-you can start having regular close-ups and the audience won't notice so long as every third or fourth shot is off-balance or looks random is some way. I really admire movies that can do things very cheaply but that work really well, and this is one of those conceits.
Now, the best way to watch this movie is by not knowing much more than I've told you above. If you like a good, scary horror movie that keeps you in high suspense (until it starts to deflate a bit toward the end), definitely stop now and watch it. If you've already seen it or you just don't care, read on. We'll have two levels of spoilers, for things that it would just be better not to know, and things that will really give away the ending of the movie.
Level one spoilers! If you don't know what's happening, the movie plays with a lot of possibilities. What I thought toward the beginning was that the house would have mechanisms which would kill the participants, and the audience would watch how the others react. This resulted in perhaps the longest period I have spent NOT watching a movie, because I couldn't stand the tension of when something was going to jump or shoot out. And something about the automated camera sounds and angles really made every moment seem threatening, instead of just the ones that follow on certain camera angles that we know spell danger. That said, there were a large amount of pointless jump scares in this section, and those can get annoying. One was a loud bump in the room behind, rendered so well by the surround sound that I truly thought the woman in the apartment behind me has dropped something really heavy against the wall.
Anyway, it would appear that the people who are running the contest are messing with the people in the house. They cut off the heat. They stop the food shipments. They tell one character that his beloved Grandfather is dead. And all of these things create more tension between the housemates, and they start gradually turning on each other. One very clever and successful way this seems to organically happen is that if one person leaves no one gets the money-so whenever one character is fed up and wants to leave, another will convince them to stay because he wants the money. Then just after this we have one of the most amusing rationalizations for why a couple need to have sex that I've heard in some time: "Maybe (the webcast creators) are punishing us for not having sex."
Level two spoilers! Around this time it becomes a lot more clear what's happening, and I'm afraid it becomes a lot less interesting. Rather than the webcast creator messing with the minds of their contestants until they kill each other, which I was kind of hoping for, but rather it becomes a kind of slasher thing with a twist. I was a little disappointed by that, but this approach does offer one extremely cheap yet extremely effective decapitation.
According to the IMDb this film was getting good word of mouth when there was a disastrous screening of a four hour version of it, and after that distribution dried up. At the beginning I saw the Universal logo and was wondering why what looks like a standard movie got buried, but ultimately this film's grimmer than grim ending made me realize why they thought they couldn't lure mainstream audiences. But the fact that a four hour version exists explains a lot of things that appear but never go anywhere in the film, and also speaks to how much detail the filmmakers seem to think you need. Me, 90 minutes was just enough.
Oh, and at the end they really screw up the creepy webcast tone they've been building up the entire movie with some really inappropriate speed-metal.
------ Hey, check out Cinema de Merde, my website on bad and cheesy movies (with a few good movies thrown in). You can find the URL in my email address above.