Movie Review: Surviving the Game

The preceding moments were filled with trepidation. A DVD, held solidly in the hand, its contents a fog of ambiguity, returned the gaze I cast upon it. ‘What,’ asked I, ‘is this beast I’m about to watch?’ All this talk of survival, talk of games, words of promised action and forthcoming exhilaration, provided little in the way of answers. The central question, turning my senses wild with speculation, was the following: what game?

Monopoly rarely gives a man cause to fear death. Are we to expect some formula-tweak along the lines of Killer Monopoly? Is that what this is? Persons sit down to play the old property game only to find their rent being paid in blood? In the fashion of the finest Asian spook-fests, the curse of the Killer Monopoly, I presume, would circulate the area, an inner-city suburb, dealing death to a group of teenagers before falling into the hands of a young couple moving into their first home. What better way to break in a new abode than an exciting bout of Monopoly! But oh no, fun and games are not to be. A hotel on that square?! No, don’t do it, you don’t know what evil lurks beneath that red block! Don’t pick up that Community Chest; your husband’s already gone into anaphylactic shock, that’ll finish him!

Such were my expectations. These were the only answers I could summon forth from the bowels of the unknown. But to my great surprise, and also a painful blow to my skills of prediction, it turned out to be untrue. No menacing minutes spent glued to a board game, no city-sized strolls into Mouse Trap, no Scrabble modified to be playable with human organs. The game spoken by this DVD is a wholly different game.

Commiserate not, wise reader, for the games on display are of a quality equal to any flights of the imagination. I dare say not even the playful prose of Nabokov could concoct such an intriguing burst of ludic spirits. Surviving the Game is its own world of play – a sphere of gleeful competition peppered by faces both respected and adored.

All the board games have been retired, yet the logic remains. The screams of chess pieces taken with brutal rapidity echo in the background.

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic, the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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