I’d heard of the movie Would You Rather? a horror movie site that I frequent from Facebook (www.horror-movies.ca), and since I had nothing to do on a boring Sunday night, I decided that I would watch it. And it was entertaining to watch, but not in the best of ways. It was one of the most average movies I have ever seen. And it sucks because the concept of the movie was cool, but the execution was awful.
The plot of the movie is as follows: a young girl is seeking medical attention for her younger brother who needs a bone marrow transplant. However, they have no money to get the transplant done, or a way to find a donor. The girl, Iris, is introduced to a philanthropic billionaire named Shepard Lambrick, and he invites Iris to a dinner party at his house. There, Iris and the seven other guests are forced to play a deadly version of would you rather, where the winner would walk away with monetary support from Lambrick to do anything, while the losers would walk away with nothing. In order to be eliminated from the game, you must be unable to complete a round, whether that means through incapacitation or death.
The concept of the movie was really cool, but again, the execution was poor. the biggest problem with the movie was predictability. It’s obvious who is going to win the game because there is only focus on one main character. With a psychological thriller movie that plays out like this, you cannot focus all of the pre-game attention on one character: that makes it predictable. For most of the other characters in the movie, little backstory is revealed, and so you don’t end up caring if someone dies or not. You don’t know why they are in the game at all, and it makes everything less enjoyable. The writer could have easily spliced backstory together for each individual, and the beginning of the movie should have introduced everyone in some way.
Secondly, there is a sub-plot revolving around the doctor who recommends Iris to Lambrick. He was a winner of a Lambrick dinner party, and once he sends Iris to him, he has a change of heart and tries to save her. It’s a needless sub-plot that eventually amounts to nothing. There is no lesson learned, no moral to this sub-plot, it does nothing to further the main plot at all. This wasted time could have been used on the actual game, or the other characters. Seriously, the doctor has more backstory than half of the characters participating in the game itself, and that’s a problem.
Thirdly, the game kind of sucked. During the game, there is way too much talking out of the psychology behind the choices rather than just showing us through reactions and emotions, and talking at the end. The pacing of the movie should have picked up with the game, but instead it slowed down/ There could have been a lot more with this concept, but they had to add unnecessary plotlines and sub-plots that took away from this concept. The acting was also subpar depending on the person. Iris and Anna (Britanny Snow and Sasha Grey’s characters) were decently acted, Shepard Lambrick was well done as well. The others are really hit or miss depending on the situation, and many times they fall flat.
Finally, and this is just nit-picky, but some of the camera work was shoddy Camera angles cut off some heads, remained on a scene for a second or two too long, missed the action by a second, etc. Just a small thing, but good camera work dictates movies, and it didn’t help.
Overall, Would You Rather? should have been better than it was. The writer and director and everyone involved missed a great opportunity to bring a new concept to the psycho-thriller genre, but it was a misfire. It’s a movie that would be worth watching once, just because it was a cool concept and everything, but certainly has no replay-value.
I rate it a 4.5/10. Watch it once, but never again.
Monahan's Mind 