‘Game of Death’ teen psychodrama

‘The Archer’ an OK action thriller

MBy Dennis Harvey

anaging to wring some lively variations on the kill-or-bekilled teenage psychodrama pioneered by “Battle Royale” and mainstreamed by “The Hunger Games,” “Game of Death” is more nasty fun than most viewers — at least those past voting age — will want to admit. A feature repackaging of the Quebecois creative team’s same-named web series, it’s a stylish, self-aware exercise in which seven bratty best friends discover the titular board game they’re playing has all-too-literal life-or-death stakes. The film is sure to develop a cult following among viewers in the same general age range as its protagonists. But don’t expect their parents to approve.

“Kill or be killed” is actually the main directive in the instructions that come with the game a group of suburban teens find themselves drawn to during an unchaperoned summer afternoon. That turns out to be bad news for them but good news for us, since before they settle down to play, these horribly crass and jaded brats have already proved exhausting company as they fool around with drugs and sex. Under threat of mortal peril, they grow more relatably human.

The first unpleasant surprise they get is when the game, requiring each to lay a thumb on the board, makes a stinging collective blood-prick. That awakens the central video-screen counter, which reads 24 — supposedly the number of people who must be killed before the game ends. If someone isn’t snuffed every few minutes, the game itself will claim a victim from among the players.

No one takes the rule seriously — until someone experiences an abrupt demise no doubt deliberately reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s 1980 Canadian horror classic “Scanners.” At first the panicked kids assume there’s a sniper about, blaming an elderly neighbor who unwisely comes over to investigate their screams. But when a second

The first run opens July 29 with six shows through Aug 11. Tickets go on Friday at prices from $76 to $501.

The Who have sold more than 100 central character’s head goes ka-boom all by itself, they realize it’s Game On.

Reactions to this discovery among the rapidly dwindling protagonists run a gamut from homicidal self-preservation to skittish survivor’s guilt, with dueling couples (Sam Earle and Victoria Diamond, Catherine Saindon and Erniel Baez D) eventually defining those two poles. In any case, police have been called, so all must flee the house. With the counter ticking, woe be unto anyone who crosses their path en route to a local medical facility where the tale, and its body count, reach their climax.

As vigorously tasteless as it is in concept and tenor, “Game of Death” actually exercises a certain artful restraint in that most of its mayhem is implied (or only seen in gory aftermath) rather than graphically depicted. There’s a certain witty meta quality to the goings-on — though their video-game-like structure and imagery may recall Uwe Boll’s “House of the Dead,” not a film commonly given much credit for being tongue-in-cheek.

Montreal-based co-directors Sebastien Landry and Laurence Baz Morais manage enough variation in pacing and design elements that the film hardly seems as thin as its short run-time might lead one to expect. (The screenplay co-written by the directors with Edouard Bond, sports an “adapted by” credit for producer Philip Kalin-Hajdu, who Anglicized the dialogue.)

The film’s playful intent is furthered by some showy, disparately staged gambits: occasional animation and graphics; an arbitrary aspectratio shift; and a surreal running gag of underwater nature-documentary excerpts. The original score by Julien Mineau is redolent of ’80s shlock horror. The young performers spotlit here are nothing if not, well, game.

Opening a film with a claim like “Inspired by true events,” though practically de rigueur by now, isn’t always

million records since forming in 1964. Their hit albums include “My Generation”, “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia.” (AP) wise — especially if what you then offer is melodramatic contrivance that can only be made to look sillier by the pretense of fact-based seriousness. Such is the case with “The Archer,” an OK action thriller whose first half is uncomfortably close to women-inprison exploitation terrain, while the remainder mixes a dash of “Freeway” with wilderness-flight suspense.

Horrific

If none of this feels remotely original, it’s executed competently enough. However, its reference (expanded upon in closing onscreen text) to one of the more horrific institutional scandals in recent years — when it emerged that two Pennsylvania judges had taken kickbacks of nearly $3 million for sentencing thousands of kids as young as 10 to for-profit juvenile lockups, often for trivial offenses — has an unintended effect. Instead of confirming “The Archer” as an earnest fiction drawing attention to a real-life tragedy, it makes the film seem like a crude potboiler riding reality’s coattails.

Lauren Pierce (Bailey Noble) is a straight-A high school student with no history of trouble when she intervenes in a spat between her best friend and the latter’s jerk boyfriend. The b.f. is hospitalized as a result, and Lauren is charged with assault, but her friend doesn’t show up in court to bolster the claim of self-defense. With her right to legal defense waived by her weakwilled mother, Lauren doesn’t get the expected wrist-slap. Instead, she’s shipped off for an ominously indeterminate period to a rural detention facility by a judge who appears to treat most juveniles like career criminals.

The inaptly named Paradise Trails is a former summer camp in the desert mountains a couple hours east of Los Angeles. It’s certainly no picnic for the female youths housed under the watch of stern warden Bob (Bill Sage), whose son Michael (Michael Grant Terry) enjoys sadistic guard duties a little too much. (RTRS)

NEW YORK:

Snoop Dogg aims a toy gun at a clown dressed as Republican President Donald Trump in a new music video featuring a population of clowns.

The video was posted Sunday. In it Snoop Dogg shoots at Trump a gun that releases the word “bang.”

The music video also shows a TV airing a news conference with the headline “Ronald Klump wants to deport all doggs,” airing live from “The Clown House.”

Most of the people in the video are dressed as clowns aside from Snoop Dogg. (AP)

LOS ANGELES:

To play a lethal spy in the upcoming tentpole “Atomic Blonde,” Charlize Theron really had to suffer for her craft. “It was so hard. Are you kidding me?” Theron confessed at a Q&A following the film’s premiere on Sunday night at SXSW. She’d call up the director, David Leitch, with her extreme doubts after she spent her first two weeks of training only fine-tuning a fight stance. “I said, ‘This is never going to work!’ I look like Big Bird,” Theron recalled.

But she got the hang of it, thanks to her team of eight trainers and months of gym time. “Atomic Blonde” is a throwback of sorts — an action thriller set in 1989 Berlin that would make James Bond proud, with shades of “Alias” meets “The Bourne Identity.” (RTRS)