Let's be realistic.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Make no mistake, the plot for "Game of Death" is nonsensical, implausible and even downright imbecilic. On the other hand, it's also the most original, refreshing and straightforwardly efficient plot for a gory horror flick that I've seen in a few years. Lately, I admit, I've been whining and complaining that practically all gritty/gory horror films nowadays are about repulsive cannibalistic & inbred families entrapping a bunch of wayward teenagers and submitting them to extreme torture. The idea behind "Game of Death" is refreshingly different and I feel obliged to give it some extra appreciation for that reason. The style and vision of the directors' duo (Sebastien Landry and Laurence Morais-Lagace) is also very energetic and tinsel, with flashy opening credits and entire sequences/montages that look like footage from a typically 80s video game. The film starts with a group of young Millennial teenagers doing their thing: drinking by the pool and surrendering to their hormonal lusts. They stumble upon a seemingly harmless and vintage board game called "Game of Death" and naturally don't resist to play. After "donating" drops of their own blood via the finger, the game determines that they must murder 24 people, or else they'll die themselves. Obviously they laugh away the concept at first, but things get dead serious when heads start exploding out of the blue. The script doesn't bother to explain, so I won't either, but somehow the game registers the murders they are committing and counts down until the next head-explosion. Some members of the group turn into psychopaths with brutal survival instinct, whereas others become philosophical martyrs. I've read about comparisons between this film and "Scanners" or "Battle Royale", but that's only because heads are exploding. The simple truth is that "Game of Death" is a fun & undemanding stand-alone horror quickie. The film is extremely gore, with lots of fake blood and mediocre CGI-effects, fast-paced and blackly comical. The girls look yummy and the whole thing is finished after barely 75 minutes, what could you possibly expect more from a silly B-movie?

A one joke/idea kind of movie with a lot of bad CGI ... that would be blood if you are wondering. So the title can be taken literally and the movie does not make a big deal about what it does. So it does have a couple of funny moments here and there. Some nice effects, but the characters have to get on with the concept and roll with the game.A bit of humor is missing (apart from before the game "starts") and you could not accuse any of the "actors" involved of acting on the job. All kidding aside, when it comes to movies like this, you don't watch them for the performances, you watch them for the splatter and fun factor ... and unfortunately it does fail more often than not in those categories. Can be a past time or not ...

Trying to enjoy the good life, a group of friends living in a small town find a game that forces them to kill a specific number of people around them and set out on a rampage to fulfill the quest given to them or be forced into a deadly situation and must stop themselves before it ends.On the whole, there's plenty to go on here that makes it a lot of fun. One of the big positives to the film is that this one starts off with the kind of effort it really wants to be which gives this one some really big action. Right from the get-go, the lifestyle montage of the friends hanging out together drinking, doing drugs and trying to simply get by before immediately launching into the game is quite fun. The concept of the game being on a timer and forcing it to occur whether they like it or not really makes this one work well here for that brings along a lot of rather fun action scenes as the consequences of the game makes for a fun time overall. There's a swarm of bloodshed throughout here from the multitude of gunshot-wounds, and the scenes of them mutilating the corpses in order to fulfill their curse from the roadside ambush that knocks off several victims at once, the different random scenes of them going around town trying to whittle the numbers down and ending up at the big action-packed rampage in the hospital where it really ramps up the bloodshed provides this with some nice bits as well. The fear of knowing that the game is willing them to commit murder gives them a nice sense of suspense as to when the clock is coming up and their next target needs to be taken out, and a twisted sense of black humor in the absurdity of the situation while delivering some solid gore effects works as well and keep the film moving along rather nicely without all that much of a down-period overall. These here give this a lot to like even though it does have some problems. While the film attempts to address some big issues about how far people will go in order to question their own humanity, ultimately the film fails remarkably in that aspect. In regards to how easy it is for them to buy into the concept of the game, there's nothing special this does as the film doesn't do anything with this golden material as it just goes on with little regard to the commentary this had set up. Mainly by going all in on the concept of the killing rather than debating what will happen to the group as they carry out their rampage, it doesn't provide this one with the kind of needed social commentary it's trying for with this storyline as the characters don't have the necessary weight to get this one done. Being annoying millennials who don't have any real connection here which really undoes the message about violence it's trying to convey. However, this doesn't prevent the film from being really fun as the positives are a lot more impactful.Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence Graphic Language Brief Nudity and drug use.

Kill or be killed is the golden rule of the Game of Death. Unfortunately, seven millennials have ignored that rule. Now each one's head will explode unless they kill someone.In the simplest terms, this film is "Jumanji" meets "Battle Royale". Others have said "Jumanji" meets "Natural Born Killers", which also works. Either way, it is the premise of "Jumanji" (a board game that takes on a life of its own) re-interpreted with a horror theme. In a sense, even "Jumanji" could be seen as a horror film with its spiders and snakes, but the creators never went that dark.Giving credit where credit is due, "Game of Death" is an excellent concept, and it is actually shocking that it took someone this long to think of it and develop a script. The creators took the concept, and then added excellent filters and touchstones. There is some humorous splatter gore that will draw comparisons to "Dead Alive", for example.The standout actor in the film is Erniel Baez Duenas, the proverbial pizza guy. Initially his character is rather obnoxious, but increasingly becomes the most human and someone audiences might be able to identify with. In a film with such shallow plot, it is a testament to his skill that we are able to go through a small range of emotions towards the character.Another strong point of the film is how it will have audiences considering entry-level ethics questions. Is murder acceptable if the alternative is death? Would suicide be morally preferable to murder? Are some lives more valuable than others? And it throws in the interesting math that eight players must kill 24 people – does this suggest the moral answer is suicide, because eight deaths is better than 24? Unfortunately, despite some promising ideas, the film really suffers from a disappointing execution (no pun intended). We are treated to excessive padding on the running time with slo-mo shots that reveal nothing, cell phone footage of inane conversations and gratuitous party moments. These inclusions feel like an afterthought to stretch the picture from 45 minutes to (barely) feature-length. The script comes out feeling woefully underdeveloped, which may be due to the film's origins as a web series. I am unclear whether the series was remade into a film, or just edited together. Either way, it does not work in the longer format.Although there is a surreal running gag of manatee nature documentary excerpts which were amusing for inexplicable reasons, the film as a whole is half-baked and would benefit greatly from a complete mulligan. Perhaps the picture is more interesting for a younger or drunker demographic than this reviewer is a part of, but even they would have to be disappointed on some level."Game of Death" is playing July 15 at the Fantasia International Film Festival. The picture is brought to us courtesy of production companies La Guerrilla (in Montreal), Rockzeline (in Paris) and Blackpills (in Paris).