Would You Rather

Let' s kick this year's binge into gear! The first film to start us off was Would You Rather. Let me preface this by saying that I am not much of a torture porn type of horror fan. Hostel is just terrible, yeah I said it. The closest I can get are the Saws of the world, which I actually think is a really solid horror movie. Which is interesting, because Would You Rather is essentially if Saw had a child with Clue and their offspring kept trying desperately to be the films their parents were. Well, little Saw Clue spawn (Slue? Claw? D'awww, little Claw!), you tried. You had blood and torture and even a British butler! Here's your gold star.

Yeah, so really, Would You Rather is Saw-lite. A group of people desperate for cash get offered salvation for playing a game by a mustachioed bad actor who is desperately trying to be creepy, intimidating, and rich. He's not really any of the three as he attempts to be a Jigsaw-type figure, teaching his victims a lesson (and being real high falutin about it). When the victims arrive to the house they find themselves in a deadly game of Would You Rather (because why not). Progressively each gets picked off one by one, most tragically so Darnell from My Name is Earl.

 RIP. Never forget.

Despite the movie desperately trying to be Saw, it does manage to pack in a few unsettling scenes. Mostly the movie is terribly predictable, to the point where I saw pretty much every semblance of a twist long before it happened. It even comes complete with an inept and worthless rescuer who gets killed like 4 seconds into his rescue (if you thought he had any chance to survive or save anyone you've never seen a horror movie). That said, although it was predictable, I appreciated the darkness of the ending of the game: people really will do anything for money. 

Despite the relative lazy predictability of the rest of the movie, the last 5 seconds are killer and unexpected. I made an audible, "Oh, damn. Damn!" when it happened. I'll hand it to you, Would You Rather. That ending damn near saved the entire movie. 

Ultimately though, Would You Rather ends up as a fairly lazy imitation of better films with some brief smatterings of brilliance. If every scene had the surprise of the last 5 seconds we'd have something, but at the end we're left with something fairly forgettable.

6.5/10