Virtual Death Match

A fun film playing on the aspect of gaming. An enjoyable watch for a low budget film with a great pace!

Normally I can accept a budget film, and 3.5/5 stars, in fact I don't mind a movie with no effects or glam. This movie can be summed up by one word - lazy.

The story script and acting are both beyond awful.

Just listening to what they are saying is painful, but the actors inability to act, look sincere and even portray facial expression made me want to get into VR and cut myself up with a chainsaw.

Bad guys are the scarecrow, the nun, and the mime. The writer or writer has zero thought. From the outset it's going to be very predictable. I've no idea what others are talking about on here or how much they were paid.

Lasted all of 15minutes.

Appearing for a big tournament, a group of gamers start a new game where they have to survive a series of levels against various villains and killers sent against them to complete to win the grand prize offered by the game organizers, but soon learn something far more dangerous is occurring.

Overall, this was a decidedly decent if somewhat flawed genre effort. One of the better aspects of this one is the way it manages to bring about a rather modern setup with some intriguing work here. Going for a strong lifeline on gaming culture with the appearance of the group signing up for the tournament, running through the rules of the process, and the base strategies of each level, the whole experience makes for a wholly intriguing starting point with enough hints and highlights that something's wrong. That they're all playing with the implication that they can be hurt in the game as well as real-life, hiding a really dark secret with the dark rules of the game, how they're going to get everything together for the viewers, and the purpose behind the whole setup which makes for a strong starting point. As well, once it moves into the individual games, there's a lot to like with the way everything comes together. Treating the experience like mini-movies with how the levels are designed with tasks, challenges, and villains unique to that level come together, it allows for a nice series of encounters throughout here, including the fight with the scarecrows in the cornfields or the series of stalking scenes against the nuns. As the characters are allowed multiple lives until they're truly dead, this adds some fun where they can return multiple times are the different levels, which keeps the body count decent enough at such a small level. The intensive fighting going on in the final levels adds a decent touch to this, where it relies more on strategy rather than brute force, which makes an intriguing enough aspect with this one. There are some issues here that hold it down. The biggest factor against this one is the wholly unnecessary sense of change that goes on with the rules that provide this one with the chance to offer up expected and unsurprising twists throughout the film. It's not that shocking to see blatant betrayals throughout the gameplay, which comes off as incredibly obvious how they would act, even though the goal of the game was teamwork. These all bring about some generally lackluster revelations about their true purpose for being involved in the game, which comes about especially once the more nefarious members are allowed to come about and show their true colors. There's not much about these that shocks or even registers since they're all expected, and with the low budget on display also hindering this one are its biggest issues.

Rated Unrated/R: Language and Violence.

What moron made this? A group of people apply to play a VR game they think will earn them a million-dollar prize, fame, and superstardom. None of them seem to be gamers of any kind - just randomly selected nobodies.

The plot blatantly rips off *Rat Race*, only it's not a comedy, and the goal isn't to find the money by any means necessary - it's to survive a bunch of lame VR death levels.

The first thing the film does is throw in a bunch of characters you couldn't care less about. Next, it showcases the atrocious acting of the so-called "exclusive viewers" watching and betting on the results. Then it fails to make anything feel remotely like a VR world, aside from some god-awful life bars that pop up occasionally and rancid CGI slapped around here and there.

Nothing convinces you this is VR - just poor editing and misuse of CGI as these dopes slowly realize their three lives gone means actual real-life death.

Setting up the game, playing the game, figuring out the game - none of it works. Nothing even resembles a game. It's just a lame movie pretending to be one, with bad actors in a badly made mess.

There's no memorable scene or character. No cool horror moments, no decent CGI, nothing. The film is as forgettable as every character in it.

Not worthy of anybody's time.

I don't know if I've ever seen a video production that was so awful. Is it intentionally bad? Please stop. Never make another movie. The cinematography was as if you handed a monkey a camera and asked it to film. Actually, it's like they took every angle, reviewed it and said, "yeah, but could you do it worse please". The script writing was abysmal, and the actors didn't know how to portray emotion. The premise is actually pretty interesting. I really don't know how it's possible to start with something interesting and make it terrible unless there was an individual, possibly, Louise Warren, constantly saying "yes, but worse please."