13: Game of Death
13 Challenges. $100 Million. What would you do?
Things aren’t going too well for Chit (Krissada Terrence). He’s missing his sales targets and is getting deeper and deeper into debt. Then, to top it all, he loses his job. Things are pretty desperate, then, when he receives an anonymous phone call telling him that he has a place in a game show. All he has to do is complete 13 tasks in order to become a multi-millionaire.
The first task is pretty easy and the second is pretty gross. But, after a long hesitation, chit finds that the money on offer is enough for him to go through with it.
From here on in things get much, much worse.
Based on a comic by Eakasit Thairatana, 13: Game of Death follows the descent of the film’s everyman hero, and willing victim, as humiliation after humiliation is heaped upon him. Terrence does a superb job here of maintaining our sympathy as his character becomes increasingly degraded and disconnected from the rest of the world. And it’s because he manages to remain a sympathetic character throughout that the film packs such a horrific punch.
Thematically the film is reminiscent of Falling Down, but goes further and takes a look at the sort of social and economic pressures that lead to the emergence of people like Chit.
Chit, like those around him, is under pressure to conform to the expectations placed upon him by society, his friends and his family. He feels the contradictory pressures to be materially successful, to maintain a successful relationship, to have time for his family and to be a model citizen. There aren’t enough hours in the day for him to be able to meet all of these expectations and, by trying to do too much, he ends up failing to do any of them.
And whoever it is that is organising the game in which he finds himself knows this as becomes apparent in the way that the tasks set for Chit repeatedly echo the humiliations and traumas he faced as a child. Someone has spent a huge amount of time building a very detailed picture of Chit merely so that he can be tormented for the entertainment of an unseen, online audience.
13: Game of Death is a shocking and smart horror/thriller with a darkly comic streak and a lot to say. Not only does writer/director, Chukiat Sakveerakul have plenty of visceral observations to make about materialism, the increasingly debased nature of reality type entertainment and and the connection between the two, but the film also reflects on the rapidly shrinking nature of the private space.
No matter where Chit goes, no matter what he does, his every move and action is being watched, recorded and transmitted. And in many ways, this is the most frightening aspect of this film.
Sunday 16 Mar 2008 | Paul Pritchard | Horror, Thriller
