Heading out to a remote cabin, a group of friends hoping to have a weekend getaway together are drugged and captured by a sadistic madman intent on getting them to reveal a deadly secret between them as he tortures the group to get them to confess everything to each other.
This was an immensely difficult film to get into. The only really enjoyable feature with this one is the rather brutal and graphic gore on display, which comes from the wholly fun games that are played. With the whole thing generating the kind of homage to the torture genre of the past where everyone is forced against their will to perform these actions or face gruesome consequences, the idea of ripping fingers off, stabbing, slicing, or bashing others in the context of the game, it leaves this with some pretty graphic encounters through these different games throughout the night. With the final confrontation coming about rather nicely since the target of the retribution is a bit of a shock with how the scenario plays out, and the lengthy interaction is mildly amusing, these factors are enough to give it some positives. There are plenty of drawbacks keeping this one down. The main detriment to this one is the absolutely asinine group of people that we're supposed to be following as a means of being sympathetic to the situation. Starting off at the beginning, when we meet them upset about going on the trip since they're going to be with their unlikable friend, which turns into a shouting match almost immediately after getting there, and it's even worse in that the whole thing is justified. The snap for what he does to the group to cause them to scream and curse him for trying to do that is perfectly acceptable based on what he says, so that it's impossible not to care about the group or why they're friends with him, especially when he continually acts as selfish and unconcerned with everyone else that emerges throughout the games. The other big issue here is the absolutely dull and lackluster central setup present here involving the actual game itself. The whole experience of trying to force people to play deadly games against their will to the point of trying to uncover a special secret between them is so played out and tired that it doesn't match the cruelty, inventiveness, or cleverness of other efforts to try the same scenario. By the time the secret is revealed, which is admittedly hard to guess, it's just not that interesting or worth going through all this trouble being around the rest of the group as much as we are to get there. As the whole thing is wrapped with an indifferent, by-the-numbers atmosphere that's just utterly painful to sit through, there's just not much to this one.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
