Kill Game Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Kill Game Blu-ray Movie Review

DOA

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 30, 2017

You might think that the time honored tradition of schadenfreude would be able to carry the inanities of Kill Game, since the film deals with a coterie of truly unlikable characters, many of whom meet their fate in some pretty spectcularly gruesome ways. This film, which was evidently titled Prank’d at some point, posits a group of nasty young folks who had a history of pulling some pretty vicious practical jokes back in the day, and who are now getting a dose of “what goes around comes around”. It’s an okay if hardly innovative premise, and the fact is Kill Game starts out promisingly enough, with some disorienting quick edits that contrast a funeral with at least one (and possibly two) victims who are in various states of distress, hogtied and awaiting what seems to be a pretty horrifying fate. When the film’s signature villain shuffles in to one of these hostage scenarios dressed kind of like Mrs. Bates in Psycho and wearing a mask that is supposedly of Marilyn Monroe (though I had to find that out doing research for this review), spraying a bound victim who’s hanging upside down with some kind of aerosol and then lighting a match, horror fans’ sensibilities might be at least momentarily piqued. Alas, the film squanders whatever mojo it’s attempting to muster in this early going, ultimately losing momentum with an increasingly ridiculous series of expository full stops, fantasy sequences and flashbacks that repeatedly disrupt any forward movement in the story.

Many of you probably played practical jokes on someone in your younger days, and that sort of sympathetic understanding would seem to help establish a tether to Kill Game’s aggregation of former classmates (played by a gaggle of semi-recognizable young names including Joe Adler and Laura Ashley Samuels). However, there’s a substantial difference between, say, exchanging sugar for salt in a shaker and, say, making someone believe they’ve contracted a horrifying disease. That difference in impact levels makes the focal group in Kill Game pretty despicable, though writer-director Robert Mearns, evidently basing this film on a 2012 short he did called Prank (based on some detective work at the IMDb), tries to keep at least a couple of the characters relatively likable.

While the funeral of a mutual friend gathers the friends together, it turns out it’s not the only death the group has to talk over, which leads to a post- funeral debrief that begins to detail the fraying tensions which animate the interrelationships. When a large supply of pizzas suddenly shows up (a time honored prank, for those of you who are unaware), suddenly the group starts to think someone may be pranking them. In the meantime, a couple of interstitial scenes document the horrifying deaths of a couple of people, though the film’s tendency to insert these admittedly shocking scenes actually only tends to make what’s going on more confusing, since little context is offered, at least in the early going.

It ultimately is revealed that one of the group’s pranks actually led to the demise of another mutual friend of theirs, something the friends have been covering up and which has led to at least some psychological turmoil among the less ethically challenged among them. When it’s also ultimately revealed that the funeral they were attending was for one of the victims seen in the film’s “torture montage” (for want of a better term), the group begins to think they’re being targeted for their former bad behavior. The problem is, as a series of needlessly protracted vignettes details, there are a lot of folks the kids played jokes on back in the day, and so the list of potential suspects is large. In one of Kill Game’s potentially interesting plot points, some of the group decide that trying to make amends with these former “victims” of practical jokes might be a wise thing, and so there are faltering attempts to make things right. Guess how those turn out?

Kill Game is one of those horror enterprises where some of the building blocks are in fact reasonably effective, but where the execution (no pun intended, considering the increasingly accruing body count in the film) is too haphazard to be effective. The film probably would have been more disturbing had fewer sidebars been introduced, and while it’s time honored horror tradition to have a “sting” at the end, this film has several, to the point that some folks are going to wonder if the damn thing is ever going to end. Even at the conclusion of the film, though, some (like this reviewer, in fact) are going to wonder whether the killer has actually been identified. Evidently this particular “game” has no clear winner.

Kill Game Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kill Game is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is the first film I've reviewed (that I can recall, anyway) that was shot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, a unit which according to its website is highly portable. The results here are kind of odd looking at times, but some of that may be due to some unusual grading choices. A lot of Kill Game is desaturated to the point that it almost resembles a black and white film, with just blushes of not very convincing color. That tends to suck some fine detail out of the imagery, a tendency which is further exacerbated by the many dark shots that take up the bulk of the film (as can be seen in screenshots 9 through 12). There are some passing moments that feature a more naturalistic looking palette (see screenshots 8 and 17), but they tend to be fleeting. In this brief moments, however, saturation is noticeably improved and detail levels also perk up. There's some very minor banding on display in a couple of segues toward relatively brightly lit moments, but otherwise this presentation encounters no real compression issues.

Kill Game Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kill Game has an occasionally quite forceful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though some of the most punchy surround activity comes courtesy of one of the production entity banners at the very beginning (and, no, that's not a joke). As might be expected, some of the kill scenes have good ambient environmental sound effects that help to up the anxiety levels, and the film also ventures out of doors (sometimes in flashback), something else that offers some good use of the side and rear channels. A big scene next to water at the film's supposed climax also has some decent wash (no pun intended) of sound. Dialogue is also rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

Kill Game Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is a bare bones Blu-ray release, with no supplementary material whatsoever.

Kill Game Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I think Kill Game could have had a shot at being something more memorable, and indeed more disturbing, had it been made by more experienced hands. The story has elements that are certainly interesting (if rote), and the killer's iconic look certainly seems tailor made for a new horror franchise. But the story is handled too haphazardly to ever really make much sense, scenes often lead to nothing in particular, and some of the performances probably could have used stronger directorial aid as well. Technical merits are generally very good to excellent for those considering a purchase.