Directed by Nicolas Wendl and Dani Abraham, and written by Tanner Adams, a girl’s discreet attempt to assess her one night stand and his friends takes a deadly turn when she and her roommates host a dinner party where they unknowingly unleash a malevolent force. Starring: Saad Rolando, Gage Robinson, Grant Terzakis, Cass Huckabay, Larsen Deane, Ashwini Ganpule and Alyssa Tortomasi.
Characters being tempted by lust or greed and finding themselves neck deep in a game, they never knew they were playing is a beloved choice of horror cinema and Nicolas Wendl and Dani Abraham use that to their advantage here. Men being preyed upon for being blinded by their desire is always going to be believable, especially when you’ve got characters who seem concerned with little else. It doesn’t make them particularly likable, but it does build a good sense of anticipation to see how far they will fall.
That’s the struggle of Stupid Games, the story itself is well chosen and plays out naturally but there’s no real characters to get behind. All of them feel like classic horror fodder, there’s no true stand out for the final survivor which doesn’t give you a lot to invest in. Especially when the progression is quite slow, it would have been good to get things going earlier so it could really have fun with its finale. The sinister presence never gets the chance to make its mark, it’s hinted at for so long but doesn’t officially make its entrance until a bit too late in the game.
While that balance doesn’t quite strike the right chord, the atmosphere does. There’s a solid tension throughout, adding in a few jump scares and not overplaying its hand on the spooky quota, to keep things from spiralling out of control. The directorial style works well, keeping things contained and adding an intimate feel, dipping slightly into the claustrophobic in a good way. Although it does feel like a misstep that the final note it leaves audiences with is one of comedy, there wasn’t really the foundation for that throughout, but there was the potential. This interestingly could have been switched up to be black comedy.
The performances can be hit and miss, there’s a tendency to overplay things and that can make them feel stereotypical. There isn’t a lot of individuality to these personalities, particularly Cass Huckabay’s Riley, who is giving off the clichéd nympho vibe to an off-putting extent. Whereas Ashwini Ganpule feels more natural, especially when she’s interacting with Grant Terzakis’s Stanley, the two make a surprisingly charming pairing.
Stupid Games plays with the classic formula of getting more than you bargained for. While the tone and atmosphere hit the right note, the characters can go overboard, feeling somewhat heavy handed. The direction and the concept work well but with a few mismatched choices, a slightly slow pacing and not quite giving itself the room to go all out on the finale, it’s not reaching its full potential.
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