The Odds

It's nothing like SAW. The only vaguely similar thread is that the victim must complete a series of tasks that continue to be more difficult. Other than that, they have nothing in common. It's not really a horror film, more of a psychological thriller. There are only a handful of films that have been successfully done in one setting with 2 characters; I include Bug, Open Water, & Scenic Route. But The Odds is more similar to EXAM (2009). I believe The Odds is about 2 people in a room who are both playing a game to win money and neither of whom know the real rules, although one of them thinks they know. I feel the Master was simply performing as he was instructed (some reviews say he 'took advantage' but it's called Grooming. The game was not 'rigged'; it seems more like neither the Player or the Master knew the true rules. I felt this was an interesting story but the acting lacked the tension and intrigue that it could have. The Player was just not someone we could connect with. And after agreeing to play the game, she then questions everything as if she is being held captive. She lacks either the emotion of someone being tortured nor the stoic demeanor of someone prepared to endure what may come. There was simply not enough anticipation or emotion to make the long moments rewarding. I also thought there were a lot of very rookie filmmaking mistakes, like the clean loose bandages (and suddenly dirty in one scene); and the Player's shirt was wet in one area then suddenly in a completely different area. All in all, I found the film entertaining enough to watch through to the end and thought the ending was rewarding, although very unrealistic. Almost a character-study that could have been much more engaging. I can see why the story itself won The Poe Contest.

Woman plays a game showing how far she is willing to self-harm for a million bucks. Film is almost entirely about her interaction with the referee.

This is probably as low budget as anything-- basically one setting, two speaking characters, most gore is insinuated rather than shown, might have been filmed over the course of a week or less-- but they do a good job with the budget by making those choices, and while it might have a late-night Showtime feel to it, it's at least just a B-movie, not a C-movie; production values are still high.

As I said in the title, this is basically a suspense film, about character interaction, although there is some torture porn to it. The gore is mostly off-screen, but if you don't like gore, stay away. Character interaction is with a cookie-cutter misogynist, and I'd be willing to bet there are some deeply individual misogynists who would resent the portrayal; I guess they should probably stay away as well.

Acting is strong, but character writing is on the two-dimensional side and serves narrative convenience over strong characterization. It's no Streep vehicle. Still, good enough for this film.

I suspect some of the reviews here are from shills, people involved in production, but this isn't a bad film, acceptable for what it is, although very far from high art.

This started off fairly promising but boy did it get dull fast! By the time it was half way through I was skipping forward as I'd stopped caring and just wanted to get to the end!

It was trying to be very clever, psychological and deep but (with my limited medical knowledge) I couldn't help feeling the main girl recovered from assorted torture methods rather quickly!

I don't know why people are giving this movie a bad review, I'm a cinephile and I've seen a lot of movies! And I liked this movie a lot. Don't trust the bad reviews, watch it for yourself!!! The ending was great!

This movie isn't terrible, but it isn't good either. I think it was okay for being kind of low budget, but it could've been better. For it being a movie about how much pain a person can take, most of the "tests" violence is off screen. The dialogue - oh man. I don't think it's meant to be funny, but it is. It's probably 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. That said, we had fun watching it.