Directed by Nicolas Wendl and Dani Abraham who also co-wrote this alongside Tanner Adams, Stupid Games is a low budget indie horror film that nearly entirely takes place in the one room. It might take a heck of a long time to get going but when it does it really does.
Jaxon (Saad Rolando) and his best friend Rex (Gage Robinson) have been invited to a games night at the apartment of Celeste (Alyssa Tortomasi) and her house mate Riley (Cass Huckabay). The only problem is that Celeste was very insistent that he bring two friends with him, and the third has dropped out. As a last resort they invite nerdy cable guy Stanley (Grant Terzakis). Arriving at the apartment they meet Mia (Ashwini Ganpule) - a friend of the two house mates who had been staying with them. During dinner the power in the apartment goes out, but luckily with a variety of candles they are able to keep the night going. They decide to play a strange board game (titled something like 'Quest for Truth', apparently it was custom created for the film). The longer they play however, the weirder things begin to get, with various people seeing hallucinations and hearing strange noises. It turns out that there is something evil connected to the board game, and that it is very unwise to stop playing...
I didn't mind the majority of the film but it did feel like a lot of waiting around for the horror to begin. It really was only in the wonderful third act that it felt like things finally got moving. There are slight moments of horror, such as the hallucinations people have of seeing their eye bleeding, but mainly this is just a bunch of people playing a board game super seriously, even when it felt to me quite a dull game to play. The focus is more on the conversations between the various guests, the game offering chances for the characters to provide some backstory.
I thought the special effects were well done, doors and drawers opening and closing on their own, game pieces and dice moving around unaided and people being dragged around the place all looked really good on screen. The first two thirds might not have had much horror at all to speak of, but the film's score really kept the atmosphere going.
There were hints to a larger story playing out below the surface but this wasn't really reflected with the way certain characters act. Without going into spoilers, some of the characters know more than they are letting on, but it is only when the story gets to a decisive point that a sudden transition happens with previously normal acting people suddenly acting very strange with not many real hints of this before hand. The mystery of the story did keep me going, and it was worth the wait, but it really was a slow first hour. I loved how the little breadcrumbs came together for the final act, and I thought having a flashback sequence take place within the film world (a VHS tape that begins playing) was a neat way for both the viewer and the characters to be brought up to speed on what was really happening.
Despite the lack of much real horror for a good chunk of Stupid Games I did find myself really into the story. I appreciated the comedic elements around the sides of the main plot, and I did really enjoy where this eventually ended up heading. I found the characters interesting enough to want to root for at least a couple, and it all finishes up with a pretty fun finish. Stupid Games was released in March 2024 and can be found on Tubi as well as streaming for free on the Mometu app.
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