Kill or be killed is the golden rule of the Game of Death. Sucks for seven millennials who ignored that rule. Now each one’s head will explode unless they kill someone. Will they turn on each other to survive, or will this sunny day be the last for the innocent people of their middle-of-nowhere town?

If you put Jumanji, Battle Royale, and The Belko Experiment into a blender and hit “Puree” you could probably pour yourself a big glass of Game of Death. And you’d probably like it. I did.

Tom and Beth and Ashley and Mary-Ann and Tyler and I’m already tired of keeping track of who is who, so: a bunch of obnoxious friends (seriously, there’s really nobody to root for, they’re all horrible people) hang out and drink and get stoned and talk about who wants to sex up whom and, surprise, they find an old game hanging out on a shelf: Game of Death.  They start  by placing their fingers on the board and *ouch* the game pokes them and takes some blood from each player.

Oh, crap.

The timer begins and the number 24 is randomly displayed.  24 people must die before the game will be over, and if the timer runs down before someone is killed, then these players will be offed one by one.  Yeah, right, how can a game make all that happen?  Oh, don’t you worry, we find out very very soon how the game can take a player off the field, and in a spectacularly graphic and gory manner.

I perked up.

Game of Death is a fun movie that, unfortunately, has some unpleasant people as protagonists and the major enjoyments I got from it were 1) the amazing gore effects, and 2) the suspense of not knowing which one of these assholes would bite it next. It gets quite philosophical near the end when one of the last survivors delivers a little monologue about life and our place in it, but the movie doesn’t really earn it’s introspective ending, and it seems like that bit of business is from a different movie entirely.

Directors Sébastien Landry and Laurence Morais Lagacé have a lot of tricks up their sleeves to pad out the 73 minute running time (and even at that it seems a bit long): clips from the characters’ cell phone vids showing how fun and dumb they can be, 16-bit animated portions that simulate game play, and…scenes of manatees on a nature program? Sure, why not?

Some of the character choices are interesting, to say the least: a neighbor who makes a “V for vagina” sign with his fingers while he’s watering the lawn, a park ranger (or police officer?) who sings pizza commercials and talks to her dog on the walkie talkie, or the entire epilogue where the police department wraps up actual pieces of evidence as gifts for a departmental Secret Santa game. Wha…?

I liked this movie a lot, didn’t love it. I think it’s definitely worth your time, particularly if you like watching horrible people suffer horrible fates in horribly bloody ways.

Game of Death is brought to you by the distribution companies La Guérrilla (Montreal), Rockzeline (Paris), and Blackpills (Paris).