BY ADAM QUANDT | The Statesman
Director: David Guy Levy
Genre: Horror
Length: 93 minutes
Netflix rating: 2.5 out of 5
My rating: 2.5 out of 5
What would you do to get the money you desperately need to get out of a tough situation in life? In the 2012 thriller “Would You Rather” from director David Guy Levy, a group of strangers are faced with that very question.
The film focuses on Iris, played by Brittany Snow, who is desperate to save her ill brother and get him the medical help he needs to survive.
Iris is given the opportunity to become a player in a dangerous game by a local aristocrat with the possibility of winning the payout she needs to save her brother.
However, she and the other participants aren’t given the details and rules of the game until it’s far too late to back out.
Following dinner at the aristocrat’s mansion the players are forced to play a game of “would you rather?” Although, this isn’t your average teenage-girl-slumber-party-game of “would you rather?”
For example, the first question posed to the participants is a choice between shocking themselves or the person next to them at the table with a painful amount of electricity. However, that challenge is mere child’s play compared to the ramped up “would you rather?”s in the rest of the film.
As the challenges get more and more dangerous (and twisted) the players quickly learn that the concept of the game is simple: it’s kill or be killed with only one person winning the money in the end.
I found “Would You Rather” to simply be a less gruesome and slightly less twisted version of the “Saw” movies.
However, with the twists of the movie being somewhat predictable and an easily predicted ending this movie is an easy one for me to suggest skipping. Don’t let the interesting picture paired with the movie on Netflix pull you in, like it did for me. So if you find yourself too squeamish for the “Saw” films, but still need your twisted-rich-guy-making-desperate-people-do-sick-things movie fix (for some strange reason) then “Would You Rather” is the film for you.