DVD Artwork
I’ll start by saying that Reality TV really gets on my nerves. The shows seem to be less about reality and more about finding people that are about as removed from everyday life as possible. I mean you never seem to find your everyday Joe in these shows. No, everyone has some wild and wonderful background, or character that is larger than life in order to bring in the ratings.
Sure, they can be fun but at the end of the day enough is enough, they are getting very boring indeed.
Due to their popularity I guess it was only a matter of time before they infiltrated the movies. In-fact not so long ago we had the dire Halloween: Resurrection and the far superior My Little Eye. Both played on the Reality TV idea to mixed results.
Now we have Reality Kills, the newest addition to this sub-genre. To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It could have gone one of two directions, the first being the serious and straight route, or the second playing everything with a pinch of salt and taking up the whole phenomena. Personally I’d like to think that it takes the latter route.
The premise of Reality Kills is very simple, actually it is beyond simple. Take seven young adults, all of whom have their very own distinctive personalities, which means absolutely no average boring folk, and stick them in a house way out in the middle of nowhere.
Their goal? To stay there for three months, avoid getting voted out and having absolutely no contact with the outside world. Ha! No contact with the outside world you say? Well that’s going to bite them on the ass isn’t it!
As well as the misfit group of contestants there are a few other folk to boost up the body count, sorry I meant cast. You have the producer of the show, along with his staff and camera crew, who again have their own unique personalities. Finally there is the caretaker. You have to have a caretaker, it’s an unwritten rule, you need to have a creepy fella lurking about that doesn’t do an awful lot except to add themselves to the suspect list.
Right from the start there is friction between some of the characters, and believe me some of them are truly annoying. There’s the usual sexual tension, so much so that you are just waiting for them all just to get butt naked and you know the rest. All in good time though.
This is a horror flick though, so it is only a matter of time before people start dying. I don’t want to give too much away but the first few to go are the ones that you would expect to die.
It’s all fairly predictable stuff. It is however quite enjoyable in a strange kind of way. You will see what is coming a mile away, but the movie moves along with such a high energy that I found myself quite liking the movie.
There isn’t really anything new here, and it certainly doesn’t add much to the horror genre, but not all movies need to. Sometimes all you need is some good mindless fun, and that is pretty much what you get here.
The whole Reality TV scenario is played up perfectly, almost to the point where this would actually make far better TV than what is already on air, minus the murders of course!
There isn’t really one likeable character in the movie, which in all honesty helps tremendously as you don’t know who will survive, or who the killer is. Obviously the further the movie goes the easier it is to work out. Nonetheless the cast do a nice job in hamming it up.
The whole feel of the movie is of a Reality TV show, as you would probably expect, with cameras all over the place. Unlike My Little Eye though, not everything is shot from the perspective of one of the house cameras, this gives it a little more depth if you ask me.
One thing you won’t find here is much bloodshed. So if that is what you want you will be sorely disappointed. All of the kills are virtually bloodless due to the method of murder employed by the killer. Saying that though it does make a fairly refreshing change when most other movies released right now seem to be trying to out-do each on the gore factor. Credit should be given here for not trying to compete on that level.
A quick mention of the extras before I sum things up here. There aren’t any. Told you it would be quick. It’s a shame but I won’t grumble too much as I have been impressed with some of Xenon’s recent releases, such as Blood Ranch and Headhunter. Hopefully though they can continue to maintain the quality of their movies, AND add a few extras to some of their future releases.
Reality Kills was a fun little movie, nothing spectacular but it did do a good job of sending up Reality TV, and for that it should be commended. It’s definitely worth a rental.
