Review of Series 7 (2001) by Larry Y — 22 Jan 2016

Written and directed by Daniel Minahan, (I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) and TV's Game of Thrones), this pitch black comedy satirises the grow in reality television. While this sort of thing had been done the year before in Battle Royale (2000), this has a brilliant sense of humour, and the way it's shot makes it looks like it's appealing to the lowest common denominator, but it's an intelligent film.

The Contenders is a TV show, where players are selected as part of a random lottery, and they're put together in one town and they have to kill each other until there's one person left. Series 7 is taking place in the town of Newbury, Connecticut.

Reigning series champion Dawn Lagarto (Brooke Smith) is back, and the new contestants are Connie Trabucco (Marylouise Burke), Jeffrey Norman (Glenn Fitzgerald), Anthony Reilly (Michael Kaycheck), Franklin James (Richard Venture) and Lindsay Berns (Merritt Wever).

The setting is also Dawn's hometown, and it turns out she was once lovers with Jeffrey, which puts her in a very tight spot. It's a very biting satire on reality TV, and it's almost like a savage, nihilistic version of The Truman Show (1998), filmed and edited as if it's the real thing, it's well put together and it makes a serious point of how far people will go to get their kicks from TV entertainment and the scary thing is, a show like this could really happen.

4/5.