The premise of Would You Rather is a pretty simple one: the idea that everyone has a price, and that if sufficiently motivated people will turn on each other and even themselves to get what they most want or need. It's also, of course, the conversation/moral philosophy game we've all played at some point.
Our protagonist is Iris, a young woman who has had to return home from college to look after her sick brother after their parents die. Money is tight and her brother's medical problems are an ongoing concern, so when she is given an opportunity by an eccentric milionaire (Jeffrey Combs, who chews on the scenery for nourishment throughout, but as he does so in nearly every film he's in we forgive him) to solve all their problems at once by just attending a dinner party where they will play a "game" she feels she has no other option but to take part. Of course things aren't expected (as it wouldn't be reviewed as a horror movie if it wasn't) and Iris and the other guests find themselves playing a very sadistic version of the old game for the amusement of a pair of sadistic rich men and their staff.
The biggest problem with Would You Rather is that it's so very shallow. Other than Iris, we know very little about any of the other characters in the movie, including Combs' character, and the movie is pretty resolute about us staying in the dark throughout. Maybe this was deliberate, so that we would only empathise with Iris, but it didn't really work that way. The other seven guests can be described in one or two-word titles - the Old Lady, the Gambler, the Black Guy, the Bitch et al - and the flm seems to be outright treating them as disposable characters only there to up the tension for Iris (and personally, I found myself more interested in what brought the other guests to the party than whether or not Iris would win the 'game' at times). By the time the film does try to tell us more about a character, it's a cheap trick for extra pathos at the end, too.
As for the other characters, they're not used much better. One character, a black doctor, spends a good portion of his screen time in the first two-thirds of the movie motivating himself to go and save Iris, who he delivered into the hands of Combs' character. When he finally arrives, he's treated to much the same welcome that Scatman Crothers had when he finally arrived at the Overlook Hotel. Combs' butler, Bevans, is described as "ex-MI5" with a speciality in interrogation, and I'd personally have loved to have known more about that - but he's just there to provide muscle and a homemade ECT machine mainly.
But here's the thing, and it's something that's surprising me: the movie's not half-bad. Most of its characters are shallow or walking plot points, true, and it's got plot holes you could drive a bus through - but taken at its most basic level, a dark character study, it succeeds really well. It's also very, very bleak, as you realise that it doesn't matter what happens, they are going to finish the game (the key point being when Iris, having survived an attempted rape, gets a personal, gentle and heartfelt apology from their host... who then immediately starts them into the next round of the game, where body parts start coming off). The ending is bleak as well, although it also makes little sense. It's not a film to watch if you're looking for a feel-good romp, that's for sure.
But I would recommend it. It's a good dark psychological nightmare of a film, and parts of it did even surprise me, jaded as I am. Just don't try to analyse it too deeply or look too far into its plot holes.
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