Main cast: Sam Earle (Tom), Victoria Diamond (Beth), Emelia Hellman (Ashley), Catherine Saindon (Mary-Ann), Erniel Baez Duenas (Tyler), Nick Serino (Kenny), Thomas Vallieres (Matthew), and Jane Hackett (Marilyn)
Directors: Sebastien Landry and Laurence Morais-Lagace

Game of Death has an unapologetic, simple premise: a bunch of idiots play a game that requires them to kill a number of people as indicated by a counter on the game. If they fail to kill someone by the time one round is up, the game will kill off one of the participants—causing their head to explode and shower gore everywhere—and the required kill count then goes down by one, and the game continues.

All these details are in the accompanying instruction of the game, mind you, so it’s hard to sympathize with these bunch of losers when they realize too late what they have done, right after they accidentally activate the game and have one of them get head-kaboom’ed as a result. Only then do they read the instructions and screech.

These “teens”—they are played by actors that are clearly older than their characters’ supposed age—get together for a weekend of drugs, sex, and what have you. The first 10 to 15 minutes of this movie seem to be a desperate effort to reel in a certain audience: one guy is seen touching himself off while hearing his sister’s voice message, his sister later giving him a sexy lap dance and crotch-rub in a spin-the-bottle game that takes place in front of an audience, and one lady gets high while being, uh, slurped out down below by her boyfriend.

Maybe all this is a French thing?

Also, the person doing the cinematography seems to be tripping, perhaps literally as well as figuratively, so during these moments, I am subjected to wonky and shaky camerawork to the point that I feel a little seasick just watching the whole thing.

Fortunately, once these idiots accidentally start the Game of Death, that’s when the real fun begins. This movie is unexpectedly and pleasantly gory, to the point that everyone that isn’t dead in this thing is covered completely red from being drenched with gore. There’s a lovely scene of a poor guy’s body being ripped in two, but sadly, most of the best kills are presented in a bizarre montage of animated scenes. Maybe that’s because these folks don’t have the budget, I guess.

Now, this won’t be winning any awards soon when it comes to the acting department, but the acting isn’t bad enough to completely pull me out of the movie. This whole movie is a fun wholesome slasher flick with lots of gore, and it works precisely because that’s what it sets out to do and it doesn’t try too hard to offer anything extra. It’s bad, yes, but it’s also bad in some of the nicest ways possible!