I was expecting something good out of this movie from the initial setup, but it lets you down quite often.
SPOILERS
Movie opens with immediate gore and violence. Special effects are good. We see that this is centered around a game where random women get kidnapped and thrown into a forest with random psychotic killers. Some of the girls die, and some killers kill each other. It's a nice start for a horror movie.
Then we shift to the scene that is supposed to establish our main characters. Maddie is writing some graffiti under a bridge at night. Kayla is there, and we get the sense that they are best friends. Maddie suddenly turns on Kayla and starts a huge friendship-breaking argument about how Kayla can't do anything for herself and is always a victim. Kayla calls Maddie a loser. They both storm off and get immediately kidnapped.
That setup makes ZERO sense. Kayla is the baddest bish in this entire movie! She saves people, kills some killers, and does everything the hero would do without much hesitation. There's literally no character change or development for her. She starts out BAMF. Should've proofread that beforehand.
So Kayla wakes up in the forest, inside an incredibly expensive-looking black box. She gets out and meets someone. They meet the first killer. Kayla has epilepsy, and as she's randomly seizing while the killer approaches. Someone her eyeballs tap into the eyeballs of the killer? And she watches him kill the girl who saves her. She wakes up, finds the girl with her actual entire face cut off, and barely flinches. Usually people in movies (and always in real life) gag at seeing a freshly-dead corpse missing a face, especially if they were voyeuristically doing the chopping-off themselves. But Kayla doesn't. Kayla is BAMF. Or is that poor directing?
Kayla keeps running and finds a boundary. She crosses it, and the klaxons immediately start going off in her brain. It's an ultra-sonic boundary. She turns back and sees a girl running and screaming at her. Then she sees the axe-wielding killer whose eyes she watched through as she had her seizure. He waves at her and she...waves...back? Why would you wave back? Anyway, she tells the girl to run towards her, but Axe Guy throws his axe and hits her in the back.
As he's going to kill her, Sickle Bro--another killer--comes running out of the woods. Axe Guy looks at Kayla, then goes off to fight Sickle Bro. Kayla grabs the girl and hides her. Sickle Bro beats Axe Guy and runs after Kayla and the girl. He finds the random girl and kills her.
Kayla meets Machete Porker and starts fighting him. Suddenly, his head explodes. Kayla wipes the brains off her face, picks up the machete, and makes her way to an abandoned mining town. Nothing phases this chick.
The mining town should've been called Dullsville, because this is where characters hide in buildings for the next 20 minutes. Kayla finds her shack of plot stagnation and hunkers down. Suddenly, she has the sense that someone is behind her, and she swings the machete around...only to land it in another girl's neck. She's all "OMG I'm sorry" and two other girls come in while the first one is dying. Kayla doesn't care and is all "it was an accident." The other girls stay in the shack with her for some reason, after she just killed one of them.
Now the blonde girl, Sheena, seems like a fun character. Unfortunately, she leaves almost immediately for whatever reason. The girl that stays with Kayla is Rose--an actress in her mid-20's who pretends to be a CHILD. Are we supposed to believe she's young because she's Asian? She's dressed in young girl clothes. Are we supposed to think she's mentally challenged, despite the fact that she displays competency and faculty? Who knows. Kayla gets another seizure and sees her friend, Maddie, being "kept" (?) by a killer. Why doesn't she escape? No idea.
Sickle Bro comes barging in and grabs Rose. He doesn't kill her, so both Kayla and Sheena like...push him out of the door. And he doesn't come back. Weird fight scene where nobody really even attacks anyone and nobody gets hurt. Sheena leaves for some reason.
Here we get all of the exposition the writer could come up with. The killers are assigned a random girl to save, while killing everyone else. There's an arbitrary stipulation for the killers that if someone kills their assigned girl, they also die. It makes for an interesting setup, where any of the girls could also start killing each other. But why don't the girls die if their killers die? And what do the killers even GET out of any of this? What do the girls get?
Kayla suddenly SPOONS OUT THE EYE OF THE GIRL SHE KILLED (and her best friend said she was helpless?) and finds that they also have CAMERAS ATTACHED TO THEIR OPTIC NERVES. How? No clue. Must've had a LOT of time to heal for their eyes to be fine.
Sheena comes back and learns about the new developments. Then she says the girls are easier to kill, but she doesn't attack them. Just lets them go. More running from building to building. Rose acts like she doesn't trust Kayla, and Kayla tells her they're friends. "Fwiends," a 20-something actress says in baby-talk, "you pwomise?"
Kayla and Rose tag team to kill Sickle Bro. We get introduced to another killer here: Knife Boi. He starts coming after them but gets intimidated by Kayla and runs away.
Sheena confronts Kayla outside near the stupid-looking "town map" and says she's going to kill Maddie for some reason? She knows that Maddie is being held captive by her killer, and both Rose and Kayla are right in front of her. Rose is watching, gets kidnapped by Knife Boi, and starts screaming. Sheena tells Kayla to go save Rose, but AXE GUY appears out of nowhere and kills Sheena. Knife Boi and Sheena are apparently linked, and Knife Boi's head explodes, saving Rose. Kayla takes the axe from Axe Guy and kills him with it.
Rose comes out and starts whining. "YOU PWOMISED YOU'D SAVE ME," she cries. Rose is one of the worst characters I've ever seen. Kayla tells her to close her eyes, and Rose is like, "why?" Kayla says, "they can see and hear us. Maddie and I used to write secrets into each other's palms like this." So Kayla starts writing out their "plan" on Rose's palm...BUT KAYLA IS LOOKING AT HER OWN WRITING? It's the second dumbest scene in the entire movie.
Kayla and Maddie reunite, and Rose suddenly becomes incredibly jealous of Maddie and adopts a very callous attitude. This CLEARLY indicates that she's neither a child nor mentally challenged. Maddie's killer, Pitchfork Pete, lurches from around a tree. Kayla suddenly has another seizure and is watching through his eyes, as Rose immediately grabs the knife and slits Maddie's throat.
Kayla wakes up. Rose is all "I SAVED YOU" and Kayla scream-cries "I SHOULD'VE LET YOU DIE." Rose starts screeching and runs off.
Kayla is now at the boundary. She cuts out HER OWN EYE--good thing they chose the left eye for everyone--and goes off into the sunset.
THE END...?
NO, wait! Now we're seeing the "face-getting-chopped-off-by-an-axe" scene again. Some guy is watching the footage in VR in his super nice house! And there's an intruder! It's Kayla, of course. She gets the best of him and starts interrogating him to find out more about the "company" putting on these games. YEAH, WE'D LIKE TO KNOW MORE TOO, KAYLA! Maybe we would've been more INVESTED in the movie! He's like "look it's some dude named (generic name) and that's all I know!"
Here's the dumbest scene: Kayla turns to the couch and looks at Maddie. She starts talking to Maddie. The guy looks at the couch and is like, "who the hell are you talking to?" Maddie gets up and starts writing in Kayla's palm, then walks out. WHAT? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? WHY DO WE NEED SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THAT AT THE END?
This movie had potential, but it was a major letdown. The writing was pretty bad. The writer retconned things when he could've just taken more time to set scenes and backstory up properly. We know absolutely nothing about anyone aside from Kayla, who is epileptic. And even her backstory with Maddie is wrong, since she goes throughout the whole movie killing people and ripping out eyes without even flinching.
Is this supposed to be feminist in some way? Because it's not. The "Beauty and the Beast" reference seems like it was written to be allegorically feminist by someone who doesn't understand feminism. There's no established patriarchy here. Both the females and the male killers are risking their lives in this game. The poor direction to get Kayla to act like a bad-ass makes her seem psychotic. The other female characters do absolutely nothing. It's more or less and homage to the one character the writer fell in love with, from my perspective.
This movie has been done WAY BETTER many times before. Severance (2006) and The Hunt (2020) immediately come to mind. Even older movies like Stone Cold's The Condemned are better. The interesting premise was ruined by total lack of character development, backstory, likable characters, and a general lack of plot.
SPOILERS
Movie opens with immediate gore and violence. Special effects are good. We see that this is centered around a game where random women get kidnapped and thrown into a forest with random psychotic killers. Some of the girls die, and some killers kill each other. It's a nice start for a horror movie.
Then we shift to the scene that is supposed to establish our main characters. Maddie is writing some graffiti under a bridge at night. Kayla is there, and we get the sense that they are best friends. Maddie suddenly turns on Kayla and starts a huge friendship-breaking argument about how Kayla can't do anything for herself and is always a victim. Kayla calls Maddie a loser. They both storm off and get immediately kidnapped.
That setup makes ZERO sense. Kayla is the baddest bish in this entire movie! She saves people, kills some killers, and does everything the hero would do without much hesitation. There's literally no character change or development for her. She starts out BAMF. Should've proofread that beforehand.
So Kayla wakes up in the forest, inside an incredibly expensive-looking black box. She gets out and meets someone. They meet the first killer. Kayla has epilepsy, and as she's randomly seizing while the killer approaches. Someone her eyeballs tap into the eyeballs of the killer? And she watches him kill the girl who saves her. She wakes up, finds the girl with her actual entire face cut off, and barely flinches. Usually people in movies (and always in real life) gag at seeing a freshly-dead corpse missing a face, especially if they were voyeuristically doing the chopping-off themselves. But Kayla doesn't. Kayla is BAMF. Or is that poor directing?
Kayla keeps running and finds a boundary. She crosses it, and the klaxons immediately start going off in her brain. It's an ultra-sonic boundary. She turns back and sees a girl running and screaming at her. Then she sees the axe-wielding killer whose eyes she watched through as she had her seizure. He waves at her and she...waves...back? Why would you wave back? Anyway, she tells the girl to run towards her, but Axe Guy throws his axe and hits her in the back.
As he's going to kill her, Sickle Bro--another killer--comes running out of the woods. Axe Guy looks at Kayla, then goes off to fight Sickle Bro. Kayla grabs the girl and hides her. Sickle Bro beats Axe Guy and runs after Kayla and the girl. He finds the random girl and kills her.
Kayla meets Machete Porker and starts fighting him. Suddenly, his head explodes. Kayla wipes the brains off her face, picks up the machete, and makes her way to an abandoned mining town. Nothing phases this chick.
The mining town should've been called Dullsville, because this is where characters hide in buildings for the next 20 minutes. Kayla finds her shack of plot stagnation and hunkers down. Suddenly, she has the sense that someone is behind her, and she swings the machete around...only to land it in another girl's neck. She's all "OMG I'm sorry" and two other girls come in while the first one is dying. Kayla doesn't care and is all "it was an accident." The other girls stay in the shack with her for some reason, after she just killed one of them.
Now the blonde girl, Sheena, seems like a fun character. Unfortunately, she leaves almost immediately for whatever reason. The girl that stays with Kayla is Rose--an actress in her mid-20's who pretends to be a CHILD. Are we supposed to believe she's young because she's Asian? She's dressed in young girl clothes. Are we supposed to think she's mentally challenged, despite the fact that she displays competency and faculty? Who knows. Kayla gets another seizure and sees her friend, Maddie, being "kept" (?) by a killer. Why doesn't she escape? No idea.
Sickle Bro comes barging in and grabs Rose. He doesn't kill her, so both Kayla and Sheena like...push him out of the door. And he doesn't come back. Weird fight scene where nobody really even attacks anyone and nobody gets hurt. Sheena leaves for some reason.
Here we get all of the exposition the writer could come up with. The killers are assigned a random girl to save, while killing everyone else. There's an arbitrary stipulation for the killers that if someone kills their assigned girl, they also die. It makes for an interesting setup, where any of the girls could also start killing each other. But why don't the girls die if their killers die? And what do the killers even GET out of any of this? What do the girls get?
Kayla suddenly SPOONS OUT THE EYE OF THE GIRL SHE KILLED (and her best friend said she was helpless?) and finds that they also have CAMERAS ATTACHED TO THEIR OPTIC NERVES. How? No clue. Must've had a LOT of time to heal for their eyes to be fine.
Sheena comes back and learns about the new developments. Then she says the girls are easier to kill, but she doesn't attack them. Just lets them go. More running from building to building. Rose acts like she doesn't trust Kayla, and Kayla tells her they're friends. "Fwiends," a 20-something actress says in baby-talk, "you pwomise?"
Kayla and Rose tag team to kill Sickle Bro. We get introduced to another killer here: Knife Boi. He starts coming after them but gets intimidated by Kayla and runs away.
Sheena confronts Kayla outside near the stupid-looking "town map" and says she's going to kill Maddie for some reason? She knows that Maddie is being held captive by her killer, and both Rose and Kayla are right in front of her. Rose is watching, gets kidnapped by Knife Boi, and starts screaming. Sheena tells Kayla to go save Rose, but AXE GUY appears out of nowhere and kills Sheena. Knife Boi and Sheena are apparently linked, and Knife Boi's head explodes, saving Rose. Kayla takes the axe from Axe Guy and kills him with it.
Rose comes out and starts whining. "YOU PWOMISED YOU'D SAVE ME," she cries. Rose is one of the worst characters I've ever seen. Kayla tells her to close her eyes, and Rose is like, "why?" Kayla says, "they can see and hear us. Maddie and I used to write secrets into each other's palms like this." So Kayla starts writing out their "plan" on Rose's palm...BUT KAYLA IS LOOKING AT HER OWN WRITING? It's the second dumbest scene in the entire movie.
Kayla and Maddie reunite, and Rose suddenly becomes incredibly jealous of Maddie and adopts a very callous attitude. This CLEARLY indicates that she's neither a child nor mentally challenged. Maddie's killer, Pitchfork Pete, lurches from around a tree. Kayla suddenly has another seizure and is watching through his eyes, as Rose immediately grabs the knife and slits Maddie's throat.
Kayla wakes up. Rose is all "I SAVED YOU" and Kayla scream-cries "I SHOULD'VE LET YOU DIE." Rose starts screeching and runs off.
Kayla is now at the boundary. She cuts out HER OWN EYE--good thing they chose the left eye for everyone--and goes off into the sunset.
THE END...?
NO, wait! Now we're seeing the "face-getting-chopped-off-by-an-axe" scene again. Some guy is watching the footage in VR in his super nice house! And there's an intruder! It's Kayla, of course. She gets the best of him and starts interrogating him to find out more about the "company" putting on these games. YEAH, WE'D LIKE TO KNOW MORE TOO, KAYLA! Maybe we would've been more INVESTED in the movie! He's like "look it's some dude named (generic name) and that's all I know!"
Here's the dumbest scene: Kayla turns to the couch and looks at Maddie. She starts talking to Maddie. The guy looks at the couch and is like, "who the hell are you talking to?" Maddie gets up and starts writing in Kayla's palm, then walks out. WHAT? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? WHY DO WE NEED SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THAT AT THE END?
This movie had potential, but it was a major letdown. The writing was pretty bad. The writer retconned things when he could've just taken more time to set scenes and backstory up properly. We know absolutely nothing about anyone aside from Kayla, who is epileptic. And even her backstory with Maddie is wrong, since she goes throughout the whole movie killing people and ripping out eyes without even flinching.
Is this supposed to be feminist in some way? Because it's not. The "Beauty and the Beast" reference seems like it was written to be allegorically feminist by someone who doesn't understand feminism. There's no established patriarchy here. Both the females and the male killers are risking their lives in this game. The poor direction to get Kayla to act like a bad-ass makes her seem psychotic. The other female characters do absolutely nothing. It's more or less and homage to the one character the writer fell in love with, from my perspective.
This movie has been done WAY BETTER many times before. Severance (2006) and The Hunt (2020) immediately come to mind. Even older movies like Stone Cold's The Condemned are better. The interesting premise was ruined by total lack of character development, backstory, likable characters, and a general lack of plot.