The Most Dangerous Game

As the classic short story, of shipwrecked sailors being hunted by a crazed tracker, became copyright free in 2019, it was only a matter of time before a low budget effort hit the screens. Sadly, this one is too low in budget and just doesn't have the ability to get the suspense onto the screen.

In this version of the story, men in a room, tell you they are on a ship (because it's not obvious), then wake up on a beach and discuss how their ship must have exploded and they've been swept ashore. There wasn't even the budget for a CGI or model ship. Seriously, they said, "We're on a ship," then we cut to them on a beach and they say, "our ship must have exploded." - That should tell you everything you need to know.

Overall, the acting is on the poor end and the thrills of the original story are completely absent here. However, the one stand out feature is Casper van Dien who is surprisingly charismatic. It's a hammy kind of role requiring a hammy kind of acting and he seems to understand what is expected; as a result he manages to carry the film whenever he's onscreen, (which isn't enough). I would not call it "good acting", but at least he manages to inject some life and personality into it.

Even Judd Nelson was horrible.

And that guy C. T. was so bad I thought my eyes were bleeding. How anyone ever cast him in a movie is beyond me.

The story was a re-hash (or an attempt at a re-hash) of the old movie of the same name, but the sheer stupidity of this thing distanced itself from the original by thousands of miles.

Avoid this like the plague. It's really that bad.

I watched this film as I had recently re-watched the 1932 original, and found the story and premise to be a fascinating one.

The basic story is as it has always been: a group of people on their way to a hunting trip (in this case a father and his son) get stranded on a remote island after a shipwreck, where they meet a reclusive baron who hunts men for sport. The cast aways, along with some others who were stranded there before, of course become the target of the baron's latest hunt. So far pretty interesting right?

The first thought when I watched it was that it felt like a really cheap made for TV film. But on deeper reflection, that is giving it too much credit. The quality of this (in terms of acting, production values, script, direction) is more akin to the 'story' in an adult film where it seems like they did just one take to tick the box that yes they've done it and then move on to the next scene.

The film really feels like it was made for a high school film club, in terms of both a near non-existent budget and people who couldn't act if their life depended on it. The delivery of lines of dialogue, both what is said and how its said, is silly to the point of making me laugh. In fact the only redeeming quality in this film was that some of the stuff was so bad that it was funny. I have no idea how the director shot some of these scenes, watched the replay and then thought that "yes, that's a good piece of filmmaking, leave this in", and how the editor later on didn't die of laughter splicing this together.

The script also takes the viewer for a complete moron. The main character, played by Chris 'CT' Tamburello who's only claim to fame has been some reality TV shows, is a former soldier suffering from PTSD. You'd think mentioning this once would be enough? Not for the makers of this film who bring it up five or six times, plus numerous hilariously bad flashbacks to his time in the combat, just to make sure you didn't forget that he's a soldier during the c90 minute runtime.

In some ways, the badness of this film is reminescent of Tommy Wiseau's The Room with the occasional unintentional laugh. But while as that film was made with passion and heart (as misguided as it may have been), The Most Dangerous Game was both bad and done with no effort and no budget. Its not even good enough to laugh at how bad it is.

Truly a 2/10, watch the 1932 version of the story instead which is a really good film.

...and worse than I thought it would be with this cast, which made me think there was something new or good about it. Nope, no creativity, no story, no excitement. Casper has no German accent to offer and the script was as if written by a high school freshman. Avoid avoid avoid.

There's a whole lot of talking (bad exposition, bad writing, bad acting, incomprehensible dialogue) for an action movie. A razzie is too good for this dreck. CT is the man, but he should stick to his day job. I recommend only as a drinking game, even if I haven't come up with the rules yet.