The 'Wrong Game' Review

A couple weeks ago, I was with Jamie Berke to watch The Wrong Game at Gallaudet's Foster Auditorium. Little did we know we'd be sharing the campus with a festival and what looked to be a basketball game. The movie itself was quite good, the first time we've watched a full-length ASL/signed movie. The first thing I'd noticed was no sound. Next thing I noticed was that it had no captions/subtitles for those who don't sign well or at all. Not a problem there.

All through the movie, I noticed little elements from other movies and books here and there. It's rather difficult to list them, but suffice it to say that some major elements seem to have been taken from the SAW movie series. Namely, people being stuck in a room and having to do something in order to exit a maze or room. Even though the movie was low-budget, you know they had to fake, but otherwise their acting 'told' you what was going on. Very little blood and gore was used, with the most being in the Lion's Den when a character put his arm into one of the lion's mouths on the wall... Hardly a gush by Hollywood standards.

Other elements I'd noticed came from books I'd read over the years, a little Hitchcock here, a little Stephen King there, and a few other things here and there. Some of the props and scenes were made to look even more scary and menacing by the use of spiders and snakes. It was interesting seeing Bernard Bragg, both in one of the pre-show ads and in the movie.

Whatever questions I had through the movie were answered at the end. The signing was clear, although with the "old man" character in the attic with the blue gloves was a little hard to understand what with the dark gloves color against a dark background. The camera tricks were pretty well-done as well.

No spoilers here for those who haven't seen it. Let's just say the ending was quite interesting.

Move over, Hollywood... There's a new player in town and it's called Deaf Cinema.