The competitive reality genre was ripe for a good satire - unfortunately Series 7 isn't it.
The crucial element is that the contenders in real-life choose to be contenders for reasons of greed - for fame or money.
In Series 7 however, the contenders are chosen by some sort of government sponsored lottery draft-pick. They have no choice but to take part and kill or be killed. It might be a good idea but it's nothing to do with the reality genre and has more in common with the Vietnam war. In fact it was written years before Survivor and Big Brother hit our screens.
So all we're left with is an invented game show that isn't a satire of anything. As a game show with the appropriate stings, narration, etc it looks convincing. As a movie, however, it doesn't work.
Assuming you manage to get over wondering how and why this show started seven series ago there's still quite a few logic flaws to hurdle.
It's very difficult to keep a full-length movie going on such a one-note premise and the screenwriter resorts to credulity stretching plotting. For instance all the contenders are given guns but note the times when the contenders don't use guns and ask why. At the mall, it was so a contender could prolong a killing scene. At the hospital it was so my favourite contender could be killed off easily.
Which is another point. Due to the restrictions of the structure we don't get to know the characters too well so we don't care a great deal about them. The worst drawn character flip-flops so much between motivations just to keep the plot going it becomes plain annoying. Making the hero pregnant is clever but it wasn't enough to make me care about her. My favourite contender wasn't the hero but someone who was the underdog and proves to be resourceful and clever under pressure. Which made the aforementioned mistake at the hospital so unbelievable.
If contenders in fear of their lives don't always kill people by the quickest easiest method available then that's just silly. If you create a completely new world with its own rules and then you break your own rules then that's just bad film-making.
The crucial element is that the contenders in real-life choose to be contenders for reasons of greed - for fame or money.
In Series 7 however, the contenders are chosen by some sort of government sponsored lottery draft-pick. They have no choice but to take part and kill or be killed. It might be a good idea but it's nothing to do with the reality genre and has more in common with the Vietnam war. In fact it was written years before Survivor and Big Brother hit our screens.
So all we're left with is an invented game show that isn't a satire of anything. As a game show with the appropriate stings, narration, etc it looks convincing. As a movie, however, it doesn't work.
Assuming you manage to get over wondering how and why this show started seven series ago there's still quite a few logic flaws to hurdle.
It's very difficult to keep a full-length movie going on such a one-note premise and the screenwriter resorts to credulity stretching plotting. For instance all the contenders are given guns but note the times when the contenders don't use guns and ask why. At the mall, it was so a contender could prolong a killing scene. At the hospital it was so my favourite contender could be killed off easily.
Which is another point. Due to the restrictions of the structure we don't get to know the characters too well so we don't care a great deal about them. The worst drawn character flip-flops so much between motivations just to keep the plot going it becomes plain annoying. Making the hero pregnant is clever but it wasn't enough to make me care about her. My favourite contender wasn't the hero but someone who was the underdog and proves to be resourceful and clever under pressure. Which made the aforementioned mistake at the hospital so unbelievable.
If contenders in fear of their lives don't always kill people by the quickest easiest method available then that's just silly. If you create a completely new world with its own rules and then you break your own rules then that's just bad film-making.