Les Jeux de la Mort

'The Box, 2009', meets 'Saw, 2004', meets 'Eagle Eye, 2008'. Combine the plot, premise and mood of those three movies and you'll know precisely what to expect from this taut, energetic thriller/mystery. It most resembles "The Box" but focuses more on action than psychological thrills. It most certainly doesn't qualify as a horror.

It was a pleasure to see Rutina Wesley (HBO's True Blood) on the big screen, and Ron Perlman is always a delight. All of the performances delivered were good, some more-so than others. A comprehensible script along with some talented directing made it all come together nicely.

If you're looking for a film to keep you glued to the edge of your seat, this one misses the mark, just barely. If you're looking for a film that will have your mind reeling, it also just misses the mark. As an effective genre hybrid it walks the line and makes for a palatable, enjoyable, viewing experience for a wider audience set. It's plain movie fun that doesn't cater to idiotic 'tweens.

How far would you go to become a multi-millionaire? Can the promise of fortune turn the meek-mannered into a violent sociopath? Who is being entertained by this insidious game and how?

A desperate salesman in need of money to support his family agrees to take part in a series of challenges to gain money.

The set up is pretty clumsy but the fun of this film is seeing what the challenges are and how the salesman completes them. The challenges start simple but quickly get more and more sinister.

The film is greatly helped by a good and likable performance from the lead Mark Webber as the everyman put in situations he doesn't want to be in. Good, solid support is provided from the rest of the cast including Ron Perlman. The film is fast paced and there is a great air of tension built up as the tasks escalate and the web closes in. It does become a little SAW like and at times it does become a bit hard to watch. However it does always manage to keep your attention.

This is a film not to think too much about but just to enjoy and on that score this film delivered for me.

I've always liked psychological thrillers, and though I wasn't particularly blown away, "13 Sins" is a good pick.

The cinematography was rather mediocre and especially monotonous in the beginning, but Mark Webber indeed did a great job - you can see his posture and facial expressions change drastically throughout the movie, which I find pretty haunting. The plot is simple yet intriguing and smart. Somehow, all the twists seem predictable for me, but that doesn't mean they aren't good ones. There is some decent, mild gore along the way as well, as expected from Dimension Films. To be honest, I think it wouldn't hurt to show some more blood; but considering the fact that this is low-budget, it's not that important.

Though I did have fun sitting through 90 minutes of this movie, I wouldn't highly recommend this to everyone. Maybe just some who need a new breeze regarding horror / thriller genre (the exact reason why I watched "13 Sins" in the first place).

was pleasantly surprised by this film, it's not great, and nothing about it is great, but pretty much all of it is pretty good, the story, the acting, the twists.

you'll be talking with whoever you watch this with or know has seen it what stage you would stop playing the game. Which is tricky because if you go so far it's difficult to turn back, which is the whole point.

was a little disappointed with the end, can't help but think 'YOU IDIOT!!!'

Well worth a watch if your into similar films, not much to hate about this in my opinion.

"13 Sins" has a lot in common with another recent low-budget, independent film, "Cheap Thrills." In both, a down-on-his-luck young man, driven by extreme desperation, agrees to perform a series of unsavory/immoral/illegal acts in exchange for ever larger quantities of money.

The protagonist of "13 Sins," a psychological thriller written by David Birke and Daniel Stamm and directed by Stamm, is Elliot Brindle (Mark Webber), a harried and harassed insurance agent who has a number of people depending on him for their livelihood and support. These include his pregnant fiancé ("True Blood's" Rutina Wesley), his mentally- challenged younger brother (Devon Graye) and a cantankerous racist dad (Tm Power) who's been evicted from his home and now has to move in with Elliot and his black girlfriend. Then Elliot is summarily fired from his job, leaving him utterly bereft and desperate, until, that is, he receives a call from a mysterious stranger who offers to make Elliot a fortune if he successfully performs 13 tasks as part of a surreal "game show," the hitch being that he can't let anyone in on what he's doing or he'll lose all his winnings.

At first the tasks seem simple enough, but as they escalate in intensity, it quickly becomes apparent that the object of the game is to "show that anyone can be turned into a monster." And Elliot is only too willing to prove that point.

The mood is grim and the humor pitch-black in this Kafkaesque tale of an ordinary man caught in an incomprehensible nightmare from which he cannot awaken, a nightmare filled with shadowy figures and disembodied voices that hold him in their implacable grip - though, if truth be told, the lure of easy wealth can be awfully hard to resist, even when the price is as potentially dear as it is here. The movie is creepy and disturbing in its unflinching look at the morally depraved depths to which desperate people will sink in an effort to ameliorate their situation. It forces us to look at a lot of unsettling aspects of human nature - aspects we might not be all that willing to face - but that's what makes it an effective little horror film in the long run.