Watch Series 7: The Contenders For Free

Great Film overall

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

An Exercise In Nonsense

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Series 7: The Contenders is the series finale (or, more accurately, the final 3 programmes of series 7 of the reality show The Contenders, in which half a dozen, er, contenders are pitched against each other. Each has a camera crew and a gun, last one alive wins. Current champ and favourite is 8 months pregnant, but all have backstories which become clear is the thing progresses.This film - which purports to be a horror film and a black comedy - is so accurately observed, and seasoned with the trimmings of a reality TV show, that anyone walking in while it is in progress may take some while to realise that they are not watching a genuine reality show based on murdering people.And that is both its strength and weakness. It is a scarily accurate satire, but it's not actually very funny, and the fictitious programme is not very entertaining, and filled with people who are unpleasant to be around (the cast do very well in performing unpleasant ordinary people on a reality show).I suppose it succeeds in being what it set out to be, but that's not really much of a recommendation in my view.

During a time when reality-TV was going full swing (though that annoying phase of our society has now thankfully passed) Minahan theorised, through this film, what it would be like if we placed guns in the hands of the contestants and told them that the last one left alive was the winner. Well, what we would have in this movie, and to be honest with you, if you gave everybody in Big Brother guns and turned the house into a shooting gallery, I would still not watch it, and not because I don't like violence, but because I find these shows really boring.In fact, I found this movie really boring. There was simply way too much D&M (deep and meaningfuls) in this film to keep me at all interested, and the fact that these characters were all fictional, sort of, not actually did, make the D&Ms all that more pointless and painful to sit through. In a way the violent scenes are few and far between, and even then that stupid voice over makes it even worse.Okay, yes, I understand that the whole idea of this film was to speculate on where society was heading with its craze for reality-TV, and it is not like society has not been there before. Ancient Rome was famous for its blood sports, and the gladiatorial arena did not have foul conduct rules. Basically you were given a sword and told to kill the other gladiator, or, if the audience simply wanted blood, throwing some unarmed prisoner into a pit full of wild animals and see who won.Actually, public executions have been a form of entertainment for quite a while, and in many cases still are. When somebody is executed on death row, apparently there is an audience (though you can't actually buy tickets for it). Granted this film may be a little far fetched, but still, it is really, really, boring.

I saw this a couple of years ago with very little idea of what what was in store. Since then it has bubbled up to the top of my consciousness maybe once a week or so. As a point of comparison I don't remember too much about the original "Running Man" but I do recall it was a ham-handed "what if" scenario of a brutal futuristic game show that asked me to believe in the fairy tales that good is 100% good and always wins, bad is 100% bad and can't survive the light of day - if only it were so. In these times of corporate dominated media and government domestic spying such notions seem naive in the extreme.So, to me anyway, this film was more about how incredibly effective the corporate media is at manipulating one's persona, and how anyone can fall victim - on both sides of the screen. None of the contestants seemed to have any choices. They couldn't not participate in the killing, but almost more important they had no control over how they were portrayed on the screen, their humanity subsumed absolutely by the stereotypes thrust upon them in the editing room. And we, being the flawed creatures we are, fall for it time and again, even if we suspect we are being manipulated, which I find profoundly depressing.I've seen tons of all sorts of movies, and this is one of the few that I desperately wish I'd had the idea for. The intentional cheesiness of the acting and intentionally lame TV video quality only enhance the reality of the experience. What a totally genius, high impact, low budget, incredibly effective project. Bravo!!!

I turned this off about 50 minutes into it! Whoever the moron was who decided to steal the idea of Koushun Takami's book(Battle Royal), & make it into a pathetic reality TV show scenario, deserves to be shot!It has done the Film Industry a good turn though. Now Directors like William Malone(Fear Dot Com) can say "well at least it's better than Series 7" This piece of crap & Dracula 3000 tie for first place in the worst 100 movies ever made! Be warned this is not a 'So bad it's Good'Flick!This is a disgrace to Film Makers everywhere! Never see this movie!