A film’s title is a kind of promise: if you call your movie Snakes On A Plane, you better make sure you put snakes on that mother fuckin’ plane. Similarly, given they slapped the name Game Of Death on their new film, French-Canadian directors Sebastien Landry and Laurence Morais-Lagace were pretty much committed to delivering a full-on gorefest – which, happily, they have.
The blood-soaked horror flick, their second full-length feature, is a messy love letter to the slasher films of the ’80s; a violent free-for-all based around a deadly board game that coerces its players into offing each other.
“In 2013 we made a short film called Caged that got some attention from French producers and distributors,” the directors jointly explain over email. “They asked us if we could write a new original story in the same genre – gory horror – for a younger audience. At first they wanted a series of ten episodes, about ten minutes each, but we come from an internet [filmmaking] background, and we were bored of telling small stories that needed to have a cliffhanger in each episode.
“That’s why we decided to say, ‘Fuck it, let’s write it as a movie and we’ll figure out the rest after we cut it. Let’s just not think about that episodic version.’ Now as a result, the movie is its own thing and is also an episodic series [in Canada]”.
Game Of Death has clearly been made with one of horror cinema’s most dedicated audiences in mind: adolescents. It’s the kind of film you can imagine a bunch of 15-year-olds downloading while on a sleepover, their parents snoozing upstairs, and it has a jubilantly youthful, almost puerile feel to it.
The film’s central band of heroes – old friends who transform from unwilling murderers into committed killers – are astonishingly well-written, and come across less like the usual pack of self-absorbed millennial tossers we are conditioned to expect, and more like a fully formed bunch of living, breathing human beings.
“We wanted a real and authentic feel to this group of friends,” Morais-Lagace and Landry explain. “We didn’t want a classic horror movie cast; we more wanted them [to be like] the characters from the movie Kids, directed by Larry Clark … We got actors from all over Canada to audition through Skype in order to find the perfect performers, but also the perfect group of believable friends.”
That’s not to make the film sound like some kind of buddy dramedy, mind you. Although anchored by its believable heroes, more than anything Game Of Death is defined by its splattery, textural set pieces; scenes of almost cartoony violence, shot with aplomb.
“We talked a lot about how to achieve what we wanted [with the FX] and managed to find solutions. Sometimes we were like, ‘OK, how can we kill this guy in a way that would be amazing but fits in with the budget and time constraints?’ We stayed realistic and open about how to get shit done knowing we didn’t have much money and time.”
The budgetary constraints only helped Morais-Lagace and Landry further enhance their vision, and they treated the restrictions they were faced with more as obstacles to be hurdled over than solid brick walls. “Making the film was a big ride but a really fun one. We were prepared, so nothing surprised us and we were able to make compromises right there on the set. The fact that we shot in chronological order was also a blessing. The actors could really get in the mood of the killing spree for real.”
Game Of Death is playing at Event Cinemas George Street on Wednesday June 7 and Dendy Newtown on Tuesday June 13 as part of Sydney Film Festival 2017.
