Synopsis:
“Bored Games” is a 2024 British horror-comedy film focused on psychological tension and sprinkling of dark humor while showing the dystopian world. Joel Stern, the film’s director and writer, uses the acute tension of group relations, which develops with a bunch trying to hold their sanity through isolation. This film is different as it has an interesting subversion of what appears to be a fairly straightforward tale of survival and tackling monotony as it embraces simpleness of props that were used to create the film.
We meet three couples, Elliot (Christy Coysh), Kat (Alanna Flynn) and Paul (Jonathan Oldfield), who are in the company of their partners, moving to a shelter within a bunker during a mass extinction crisis. The groups seem to be in confusion as the extent and the cause of the apocalypse still remains unclear. The stage is set to their story however, they feel safe but still feel trapped knowing that they are not performing defined roles. In an attempt to inject a bit of normalcy in their lives they participate in several board games. Their reason for engaging in these nonchalant activities instantly turned into a means of being sane as their world slowly started to drift away.
Shackled in the bunker week after week, the crew is cut off from the fresh air and sunlight and are hardly getting the supplies they need. These things are adversely impacting their mental health which is causing them to fight, hate and distrust each other, which in turn, shatters their love and friendships. It all begins with a game that, as time passes, involves a lot of pettiness around the rules and even cheating. The issues regarding the pettiness that starts off as fun results in the group revealing even deeper unresolved conflicts when they fight, which makes everything worse.
The situation escalates further when they finally lose their sanity and the games rule them instead of the other way round. Wherever a character imagines something, you will have trouble figuring out whether it’s the result of their imagination or a result of a supernatural phenomenon. There is a distinct aim throughout this film to portray paranoia blurring the lines between reality and delusions, especially as the film makes progress towards a climactic end where there is nothing but chaos as humanity is thrown out of the window – merely leaving a battlefield of survival.
Cast and Crew:
Director and Writer: The helm of this project lies with Joel Stern making his directorial debut. Stern’s background in short films and experimental theater helps him in crafting the tension within the bunker.
Main Cast:
Christy Coysh as Elliot: As the group’s unofficial leader, Coysh’s character can be delt with as a quiet and composed individual, but the delicate nature of her character gets revealed as time passes by her performance.
Alanna Flynn as Kat: Flynn seeks to be the level-headed member of the group, unfortunately her attempts to intervene in an argument or help the group solves its differences does not go well resulting in sparks of anger from her.
Jonathan Oldfield as Paul: Oldfield is set to be the character dealing with most of the humorous events. Paul appears to not care about anything but as the story unfurls, he loses his ‘carelessness’ becoming more of an enthralling character.
Luke Rollason as Grant: Rollason plays a thrilling character that works as a team but leaves everyone on the edge at the same time making him an important wildcard of the group.
Sara Segovia as Nina and Lorna Rose Treen as Lindsey: The two actresses finish the ensemble and provide intricate performances that paint the picture of how hard it is to have personal relationships in stressful work environments.
Cinematography & Direction:
Stern’s vision together with the work of James Friend’s cinematography transformed the bunker setting into an ideal space for filming. It is rendered using darkness which fosters xcloseups. As the characters of the film feel claustrophobic, so does the audience. Similar to the narration and set design, the camera work holds cinematic importance and provides insight into the plot. Augmenting suspense resulted in a shift from sharp screen angles adapted to the more desensitized angles that mimic the groups mental breakdown visual effects.
The screenplay did not disappoint as Stern’s script is on point with a blend of dark humor and basic drama when things get too dark. There is humor in dark realism and bleak humor in sarcasm when the conversations grow in in size and breadth and captures how real people sound when they are aggravated. However, there has been arguments regarding the pacing of the film as some viewers felt that a few build-ups took more time than they should have while the more thrilling moments were still out of reach.
Themes and Social Commentary:
On the other hand, Bored Games has more in terms of its theme which is more on how people cope in difficult times as a unit. The lasting aspect of the movie is interdependence, relationship, time, and being bored. The lack of trust and restraint raises the question of how long civility can outlast when time manages to run out. Board games were there to distract, entertain, and bring people close but rather ended up breeding chaos and uncertainty.
It aims at commenting on the impacts of extreme deprivation. Which becomes quite relevant to the current world that is dealing with the consequences of the pandemic. This also speaks of how relationships between the characters change over the course of the plot, their power struggles, and their interplay with cabin fever as well as how petty issues become major ones when people are cut off in close quarters.
Critical Reception & IMDb ratings:
“Bored Games” has a user rating of 4.5/10 out of 65 user reviews on IMDB. The film has received mixed reviews. The concept was praised as well as the dark humor but said to suffer from pacing issues and written characters.
As an example a reviewer said, “This will certainly not win any awards but it is sort of clever and amusing enough and at a 75 minutes length aims to just finish without leaving echoes in your mind.” Another critique highlighted the film’s lack of clarity as to whether the supernatural is real or just fantasy is frustrating.
At the other end, a numbered of viewers praised actors for their portrayal of characters and including Christy Coysh and Alanna Flynn on their commendable roles. The film also received recognition in terms of how practicality turns into creativity and focuses on telling the story in as few words as possible making the most out of the small space.
Finale:
“Bored Games” is quite an ambitious project, if a little messy, that attempts to fuse horror, comedy, and psychological drama together. It doesn’t truly exploit its content but at the same time, it finds enough moments of engagement and dark comedy to stay afloat. The more subtle social commentary about loneliness and man adds complexities to something above a run of the mill genre film.
This is not a film for everyone and has a zero-budget and very character based film approach which focuses more on mood and tone rather than the visuals. Be it the outlandish plot or the dark humor that is at the back of the mind, this is a solid film that can be watched by people who like bizarre storylines.
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