The idea is great. It's a satire of the glut of so-called "reality" television shows, but in this one the contestants actually have to kill each other. They are "randomly" chosen from the hometown of the reigning champion, a very pregnant young woman named Dawn (Brooke Smith). I put "reality" and "randomly" in quotes because (1) it is ridiculous to think that shoving a camera into people's faces and subjecting them to manufactured events is somehow genuine, when in fact it is the opposite (a point the film attempts to make with varying degrees of success); and (2) the game seems fixed. Of course, it is meant to seem fixed, because most of the "reality" television shows seem fixed. What were the chances that Dawn's high-school sweetheart Jeffrey (Glenn Fitzgerald), who is dying of cancer, would be one of the names chosen? The other "contestants" include a sadistic nurse who enforces her morality with her medical responsibilities, a terribly young-looking girl who still lives with her parents, an unemployed man, and an old man who initially refuses to play (apparently they can force you). They are quickly thinned out, but the primary characters are the nurse, Dawn, and Jeffrey.

I don't know what I expected. Perhaps a more explicit attack on reality television, its flaws, and the uncomfortable fact that they are so popular. My personal opinion is that it is very sad that people's lives are so empty that they have to watch the invented realities of other "real" people on television. The film didn't comment on the audience very much, aside from a few offhand comments. When it comes to cultural criticism, I think that the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man had more to say. The best parts were the infrequent comedic moments. At the beginning, Dawn stalks into a convenience store and guns down another contestant, then asks the cashier if they have any bean dip. More of this would have been nice. Its attempt to milk the situation for melodrama fell a little flat.

The film suffers from the same problems that the "reality" television shows it satires suffer from. The attempt to inject maudlin emotion and tension through the use of confrontational camerawork, eavesdropping, and artificial manipulation of the "reality" it is supposedly depicting doesn't work. It might be partly because the entire thing was shot on video. There's something about the harsh glare of digital video that sapped something from the film.

Maybe if it had been an obviously fictional film about some characters who were tapped to appear in the television show, instead of being presented as several episodes of that show. Paradoxically, instead of increasing the tension with the illusion of reality, the presentation merely distanced me from the events on the screen, to the point where, paradoxically, I think the muted graininess of film would have seemed somehow more "real." I don't know. There was just something missing, something that would have made me care, made me a little more outraged. But I already think "reality" shows are ridiculous and mind-numbing. It's nice to be reassured, I guess, but I wanted a little more from this movie. It's a great idea with poor execution.