Would You Rather (2013) – Blu-ray Disc

½*/****
Image B+
Sound A-
Extras D+

starring
Brittany Snow, Jeffrey Combs, Jonny Coyne, Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

screenplay
by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen

directed
by David Guy Levy


Wouldyourather1

by
Bill Chambers
Iris (Brittany Snow) is a demure blonde vegetarian with a brother named Raleigh (Logan Miller) who's dying of
cancer.
These traits, the only things we ever really learn about her, add up to
a
plucky determination that preordains Iris to be the Final Girl, though it means her character arc hinges on a reversal of expectations that haven't been well established. In any case, mysterious
philanthropist Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs, magically transformed into
Stuart
Wilson from Lethal Weapon 3) spots potential in her and invites her to join
the eponymous high-stakes parlour game in David Guy Levy's Would
You Rather
.
Iris is poor as shit, and even if she did get that hostess job she's
interviewing for in the opening scene, the money it pays is hardly
cancer
money, ergo, she takes the bait: the promise of the best, most expensive
medical
care for her brother should she emerge victorious at Lambrick's next
gathering. What she doesn't know is that the alternative to winning isn't as easy as losing.

RUNNING TIME
93
minutes

MPAA
Not
Rated

ASPECT RATIO(S)
2.35:1
(1080p/MPEG-4)

LANGUAGES
English 5.1 DTS-HD MA
English 2.0
LPCM (Stereo)
SUBTITLES
English
Spanish
REGION
A
DISC TYPE
BD-25
STUDIO
IFC Midnight

Deeply annoying is the conversation she has with Raleigh prior to
leaving for
the party, which she keeps secret from him in a transparent sitcom
contrivance.
Instead, she tells him that she's meeting an old friend from high school.
Ever had a
brother or sister? The next question is "Who?" followed by,
"What does he/she look like now?" or, "What is he/she doing in
town?" It's a reflex, the result of growing up in the shadow of a
sibling's social scene. But Raleigh just passively bids her goodbye,
and Iris's
sisterly bond with him remains an abstract concept at best. That's
sadly typical
of a sketchy and impatient script that goes
from
zero to torture porn in a matter of moments; briskly-paced Would
You Rather

is not, but it is no slow-burn, either.

Iris is the last one to arrive at the
stately manor hosting the festivities, allowing for one of those
murder-mystery
introductions whereby the most gregarious person in the room (in this
case the
wonderful Enver Gjokaj, of "Dollhouse" fame) armchair-psychoanalyzes
the other guests for her benefit and ours. Now's as good a time as any
to
mention that the eclectic cast of potential victims includes the lead
Trailer
Park Boy, Crabman from "My Name is Earl", About Schmidt's
deceased wife, Kevin McAllister's dad, and Sasha Grey. It's a bit like
an
"SCTV" sketch–if only the actors were playing themselves or their
signature roles, although Grey looks as pleased with herself as
ever.
Seeming the most out of place, John Heard is the first to go, and when
I say
"go" I mean killed, of course, with the game prematurely escalating
from smug Lambrick demonstrating that Iris's vegetarianism is for
sale to
giving the diners the choice of electrocuting themselves or the person
seated
next to them. Chivalry plays a large role in the decision-making of the
male
guests, which is refreshingly quaint until one starts to suspect that
a certain bashfulness on the part of (executive producer) Snow–when I think of the actress,
I think
of her performance in Finding Amanda as the most
overdressed hooker in
Las Vegas–is exerting an even greater influence over the decision to
keep our
heroine, at least, relatively pristine.

"Undeniably suspenseful," reads a
pullquote from Bilge Ebiri on the cover of Would You Rather's
Blu-ray
release. Au contraire, I'm here to tell you the
film is very deniably
suspenseful. What it inspires is morbid curiosity (will that guy actually perform an un
chien andalou
on his own eyeball?), which isn't the same
thing.
Blame characters who are at the mercy of an increasingly transparent
"Ten
Little Indians" conceit and denied their own sob stories so as not to
cloud our rooting interest in Iris–there's just no generating tension
with
these ciphers. Not even Combs is much of a trump card: Although he
dials
down the crazy in a way that will be perversely captivating to those who mostly
know him as
Dr. Herbert West (he's constantly shovelling peanuts into his mouth, as
if in
lieu of chewing the scenery), he's stuck playing one of those horror
villains
who won't be interesting until sequels and prequels embellish his
mythology; so
much of his backstory is pointlessly cryptic (the mansion doesn't belong to
him, for starters), as though it's being hoarded for later. (He's also saddled with one of those
prodigal
sons that movie gangsters often have for some reason.) And a subplot
lifted
wholesale from Misery, featuring Lawrence
Gilliard Jr. in the Richard
Farnsworth role of thwarted saviour, is not only a travesty of
execution too
pathetic to laugh at, it also cluelessly sacrifices a black man at the
altar of
a white woman–maybe the whitest woman, what with a name like Brittany
Snow.

Would You Rather is a Frankenstein
abomination that mates Dinner for Schmucks
with Saw, though I have to admit there's potential here. It
would make a cracking episode of "The Twilight Zone", for
instance–not that its story drifts into the uncanny, but it is a
morality play
with a grimly ironic coda begging for one of Rod Serling's soothing
summations
to shepherd us back to reality, a little bit wiser. Of course, it
wouldn't be merely a matter of taking the colour out and pruning the running time: Would
You
Rather
would need significant infusions of wit, taste, and
soul before
Serling touched this with a ten-foot pole. On the bright side, Daniel
Hunt and
Bardi Johansson's simple but versatile opening theme sets an enticingly
sinister tone, then helps provide the film its only whiff of pathos when it's
reprised
for a flashback late in the story.

THE
BLU-RAY DISC

Would You Rather has a videographic finish on IFC
Midnight's Blu-ray release; if not
for the gore and cussing I'd assume it was produced for SyFy or
Chiller.
Imagine my surprise when looking up the film's "technical specs" on
IMDb and seeing it was shot on 35mm–but, no, the audio commentary
confirms
they used the Red, thus explaining the drab, purplish skin tones,
slightly soft
definition, and granular noise. Though it belongs to a grand tradition
of
scrappy splatter movies, Would You Rather has an
ineffable digital
chintziness I still can't quite reconcile with my concept of low-budget
cinema,
despite its 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As a transfer, however, there's
probably not
much improving it that wouldn't constitute revisionism. Comparatively
cinematic, the soundmix introduces space and depth into a
claustrophobic film
on the disc's 5.1 DTS-HD MA track, while a 2.0 LPCM alternative
basically
distils the audio to its dialogue, which boasts exceptional clarity either
way.
Stick with the former if you want those gunshots to really sock you in
the gut.

Said yakker, featuring director Levy and
screenwriter Steffen Schlachtenhaufen, doesn't exactly inspire confidence when
one of
them begins by draggily intoning, "All right… Thanks for
listening…to…this…" Ellipses, theirs–and they do
not…end…there. The odd
interesting detail surfaces, like the fact that the restaurant in the prologue belongs to the wife of the actor who played Bubbles (Andre Royo,
another
executive producer on the film) on "The Wire". (Too bad they shot the scene with long lenses and tight facial close-ups–they could've stacked chairs
in the
foreground of any spacious interior to much the same effect.) Mostly,
they crack the odd deadpan joke, reveal inside references that only the
referred-to could appreciate, and breathe and fidget loudly for
interminable
amounts of downtime. "Inevitable dashes of pretension" include the odd
mention of
The Shining as a visual touchstone and Levy
expressing surprise that no one's ever pointed out the
ugliness of the movie's food. Would You Rather's theatrical trailer (in HD) plus a step-frame gallery of unused
poster concepts–all of them superior to the Blu-ray key art, and many
of them
quite striking in their own right–round out the extras. A block of HiDef previews for On
the Road
, Antiviral,
My Amityville Horror, and The Jeffrey
Dahmer Files
cues up on
startup.

Wouldyourather2

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