PAINTBALL - On DemandFebruary 09, 2010
IFC Films On Demand
On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the perspective of watching them from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: Paintball.
Directed by Daniel Benmayor (a featured commercial director for Anonymous Content) Paintball was produced by Filmax, a Spanish production company (though it is in the English language), that landed on IFC On Demand.
A group of eight "weekend warriors" arrive anonymously, in restraints and with shrouds on their heads via truck to a forest where they anticipate a rollicking game of realistically warlike paintball with another team. They check their weapons and depart. Soon, they discover they are targets of a real killing game by an unknown opponent. Sinister forces reveal themselves as an organization controlling the scenario for the pleasure of rich voyeurs. The group gets picked off one by one leaving a lone woman to try her best against "the hunter." Does she have what it takes?
Paintball is another take on Richard Connell's book The Most Dangerous Game employing modern "torture porn" trappings. This English-as-a-second-language production suffers all around from bad dialogue, choppy acting and a nonsensical plot. The actors remove their shrouds and are all handsome or pretty (not 50 year-old cubicle-jockeys) except for the token "fat guy" who constantly yells like an even more cartoonish version of Ralph Kramden for the majority of his screen time. There is no character development so we never get to know anyone.
Dialogue, written for Americans but spoken by mainly non-Americans, is reduced a lot of the time to swear words or repetition of lines like "We're trapped here!" The plot never makes sense -- they discover they are being targeted for death but are still playing by the rules of the game, capturing flags and following a map given to them by the perpetrators and there ends up being no mole among them like you thought there'd be. The "organization" running the game is reminiscent of Dr. Evil and his henchman in terms of realism.
From the start the only recognizable quality element of the production is the cinematography/production value and only in terms of picture quality -- it is very familiar in its shaky usage and there is a noticeable lack of close-ups that further remove the audience from getting to know any of the characters.
For genre fans who immediately peg the film as a Hostel retread, there is another film even more similar (but a lot better) in Marc Evans' 2002 reality TV/torture-horror scarefest My Little Eye. Still topping them all is Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale. "Paintball" feels very cynical and I'd give it a pass to investigate those.
Cinematography by Juan Miguel Azpiroz. Color.
Sean McPhillips is a new contributing writer to On Demand Weekly. He is a former vice president of acquisitions for Miramax Films (During Harvey's reign). He is a current writer/director for NY-based Secret Hideout Films.
PAINTBALL On Demand (85 min) TV 14
Begins: 1/13/10
Ends: 4/6/10
