Death Game Review

• 8th Jul 2013

In 2001 a film was released called Series 7: The Contenders which was about a reality TV show in which the contestants play for big prizes and must eliminate each other in a violent reality TV game of social Darwinism. The film wasn’t seen by too many but has become something of a cult film. Back in 1997 the Netherlands first aired a show called ‘Big Brother’ which would within a couple of years become a worldwide phenomenon and produced a new kind of TV show. Soon our airwaves would become dominated by reality TV. Even back then commentators were making remarks that in the ensuing ratings wars TV executives wouldn’t be content until someone gets killed or seriously hurt. And that was the idea behind Series 7: The Contenders and now Death Game. Death Game begins with Tatsuya Fujiwara playing an unemployed young man desperately seeking a job when he is approached by a young woman who shows him an advert for a job in which he can earn over 10,000 Yen an hour. He is curious and applies. Before long he arrives at a secret location with 9 other people from different walks in society in which they are invited into a secure bunker watched over by a sinister robot servant which patrols the bunker on a track. As in ‘Big Brother’ the guests are invited into a dining room with a lavish dining table with food to greet them. The nervous and suspicious guests are given instructions coming from some 3″ high Indian figurines on the table (geddit, a nod to the Agatha Christie novel, ‘Ten Little Indians’) who give them the rules ie. no leaving their rooms under any circumstances or face penalty by death. They also inform that assembled contestants that the house is called Paranoid House (meanwhile they have no idea that they are being filmed for an online audience). When one of the party winds up dead with bullet wounds the rest of the visitors begin to realize that they are going to be killed off one by one and soon they all start to become suspicious of each other and paranoia and death take hold of the group.

Death Game was directed by Hideo Nakata, a director who shot to notoriety with the internationally renowned and now classic Ring in 1998, a film that many would agree was a truly terrifying horror film that bore a whole new stream of Asian horror films coming out of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. He followed this with a sequel the following year and the equally atmospheric Dark Water (2002) as well as an American remake of Ring titled The Ring which starred Naomi Watts and Jennifer Connelly in the Hollywood remake of Dark Water. But with the latest film, although it is best off a best selling novel, ‘The Incite Game – 7 Day Death Game’, with Death House Nakata has fallen somewhat short of the standard expected of the director, even if the budget was low. Surprisingly the direction lacks much of the tension and genuine sense of unease one would expect of Nakata while the story is now somewhat hackneyed and done to death itself. All Nakata has done is mix the elements of ‘Big Brother’ with that other cult Japanese classic of the early noughties, Battle Royale (2000), a film that still stands the test of time today due to its extreme. The best advice would be to watch Battle Royale again even if this film is all more than 10 years old.

The disc has no special features just a chapter selection.

Chris Hick