Lack of good storyline.

Don't Believe the Hype

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Series 7 sees reigning champion Dawn pitted against five new contenders in a fight to the death.I didn't really get into The Contenders until Series 5, which ended with a tense three-way Mexican standoff that, at the time, I thought couldn't be beaten. Series 6 somehow managed to top this with a brutal knife fight between finalists Rick and Daniel guaranteed to satisfy any viewer's bloodlust.How could Series 7 possibly be any better? Answer: by introducing a romantic angle. It sounds sappy, but by having contenders Dawn (heavily pregnant) and Jeff (dealing with terminal cancer) conflicted by their feelings for each other really adds to the emotional wallop and leaves one reeling at the final outcome.Series 8 is going to have to come up with something really special to outdo this.

If, like me, you're sick of the wealth of reality TV programming that has swamped television stations as of late - I'm talking about stuff like Big Brother and Survivor - then SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS acts as a pleasing satire of the shows, emphasising the ridiculous nature of over-the-top voice-over commentary, the exploitation of the weaknesses of the people involved and turning real people's lives into a slick, sick documentary. The film drags you into the lives of the six people and viewing does indeed become as gripping as the producers had intended. Be warned, though, that this production is not for all tastes and indeed it often does tread the line of good taste. The violence is hard and brutal (especially during a supermarket massacre) without being unnecessarily gory and adds to the strong realism of the production - imagine a drama in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT mould and you'll be halfway there.The strength of the film lies in the excellent acting involved from the entire cast, characters who really do embrace the roles they have and get under the skin to really understand them. Of particular interest are Brooke Smith, who's scarily believable as the heavily pregnant gun-toting Dawn, a veteran of the game show who doesn't think twice about shooting a fellow participant dead in cold blood; then there's Marylouise Burke who happens to be very frightening as the friendly-nurse-turned-angel-of-death. Glenn Fitzgerald also excels as the man dying of testicular cancer who has a complete character transformation as the film progresses. None of the actors are recognisable but a brief look at their resumes reveal that most are veterans in film. This is undoubtedly their finest hours to date and all come away with honours in my opinion.Elsewhere the film achieves a high standard of technical competence, and resembles the shows which it seeks to emulate very much so indeed. Razor-sharp editing and the smarmy, eager narration adds to the experience and of course the realism. Although the pacing of the second half is a little slow - my only complaint about the movie - things pick up for an ending which packs more twists in than most and finishes with an epilogue you won't see coming. Renters looking for a movie out of the mainstream and with a nice original concept for a change may find their curiosity rewarded with this amusing but often disturbing satire.

There are very few films that would ever be improved by being more like a comic book fanboy, but Series 7 is one of those films. The premise of this movie is that it is actually a marathon showing of back-to-back episodes of a reality TV show called The Contenders. Except this show isn't about boxers or Muy Thai fighters. In this show, 6 people are given guns and told the winner is the last one left alive. TV camera crews follow each Contender around as they kill each other off. The reigning champion in this 7th season of the show is Dawn (Brooke Smith), a very pregnant woman who has already killed her way through two previous seasons and 10 people. Now Dawn's been brought back to her hometown to square off against 5 final opponents; Connie (Marylouise Burke) - a nurse who takes to killing like a duck to water, Tony (Michael Kaycheck) - a drug addicted Guido who decides he doesn't want to play the game, Franklin (Richard Venture) - an old crank who has coated the inside of his mobile home with lead foil, Lindsay (Angelina Philips) - a teenager with the world's stupidest parents and Jeffrey (Glenn Fitzgerald) - Dawn's old boyfriend who is dying of cancer and is married, even though he's really gay. These 6 people fight and don't fight, kill and don't kill, all while a smarmy narrator teases the audience with their eventual fates. Clearly, Series 7 is meant as a black comedy take on the reality TV genre and it does a decent job of mimicking the conventions of the genre. There are confessional moments where the characters talk directly into the camera. The show is constantly building up to big moments and then cutting away from them to stretch the suspense out as long as possible. There are even a couple of good bits where they are obviously mocking the way reality TV show producers edit these shows together to manipulate the audience into thinking and feeling certain ways about the people in the show. But the basic problem of Series 7 is that it doesn't take itself seriously enough. Being too serious is usually bad for any movie, especially a black comedy, but this story needed to be thought out a lot more. That brings in the comic book fanboy. I am one, so I can speak from experience. We take our comics very seriously. Not only can we rattle off ridiculous bits of trivia, but we actually sit around and think about stuff like…who would win in a fight between Werewolf by Night and Vixen from the Justice League. We try and figure out how Iron Man's boot jets would work in real life. We try and explain why Modok doesn't kill Captain America when he has him tied up and at the big giant head's mercy. We don't just enjoy out comics, we enjoy coming up with our own explanations for how the things in comics could and would actually happen. Series 7, however, doesn't spend any time at all thinking about that stuff. It establishes that people are chosen by lottery to participate in The Contenders, but that's where the background information ends. I t's never explained who is running the show. It's never explained how a show like this exists. It's never explained what these people are playing for, other than their lives. I t's never even really explained how the game works. Imagine watching an episode of Survivor where no one ever explained to you that the players can win immunity by doing certain things. The way the contestants behave wouldn't make much sense, would it?Series 7 doesn't bother to think about how a murderous reality show would have to be set up. It just has these people being followed around by camera crews wearing bullet proof vests, but that doesn't make any sense. There'd be camera guys getting shot left and right, both deliberately and accidentally. A reality TV show about people killing each other would have to be different in certain ways than The Amazing Race or Big Brother, but this script never bothers to wonder about any of that. That lack of intelligence or care undermines the whole film. The actors all do a decent job, but the script puts them in situations and behave in ways that don't make any sense because the script never bothers to consider how a show like this would work in real life. Series 7 was made when reality TV was still a newish genre. Perhaps back then, you could more appreciate the satire because how a reality show worked was less certain and less well understood. Today, though, we know so much about what reality TV is and how it's made that it's hard not notice that Series 7 is rather lazily put together.

Series 7: The Contenders, is a very twisted black comedy about six contestants on a reality show. The premise of the reality show is that the contestants are given weapons and have to murder each other in order to win. The contestants include a mentally insane man living in a trailer park, a cancer patient, a religious nurse, a high school teenager, a middle-aged father, and (the reigning champion) a pregnant woman. The film is structured as a marathon showing and is played as a series of episodes strung together each following these contestants. The film depicts these people as normal and everyday people who are forced into this terrible situation against their will, but the real meat of the film comes in when we get to learn about the histories of some of these characters. That's the point of the film where the film grows out of being a spoof of reality shows and begins to manifest into a social commentary. The high school teenager has parents who encourage her every step of the way and help her suit up for the murders that she is about to commit. The pregnant woman has been disowned by her own mother due to past incidents. The middle-aged parent has his own troubles at home. There's a lot more going on here than at first glance. This is an angry and dark satire that really challenges some of the concepts of reality and the satire of itself.There's a lot here that I truly admire. For starters, the performances. They are pretty awful in a way that, at times, seems cringe-worthy. However, when you take a look at reality television shows such as Survivor and The Real World, the acting in those is even worse. It's supposed to be reality, yet the people in them are not believable. That's what makes reality television such a joke, and so in a roundabout way of saying things the performances here are good because the actors are good at capturing the melodramatic mannerisms of the contestants at large. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Brooke Smith as the pregnant woman. She is ridiculously cold and cruel and monstrous, and you can really feel the bitterness that she feels. Yet her mannerisms are so sarcastic and almost pathetic. The same goes for the rest of the cast, but Smith has a visual presence to her that I've always admired. She's a terrific actress. Nobody can forget her performance as the kidnapped victim in The Silence of the Lambs. I've seen some of her television work as well and she almost always sticks out in a good way. Merritt Wever and Glenn Fitzgerald do an equally good job as the teenage girl and the cancer patient, the former being the most likable person in the cast and the latter having all of the best lines and being the most interesting of all the characters.My favorite thing about this film, however, has to be the momentum of it. Series 7: The Contenders is almost never boring and there's always something going on. It's virtually impossible to stop watching once you've started, even if you pick up in the middle of it. I think this was done intentionally. I think a lot of televisions shows have that same kind of watchability factor, and what I appreciated the most about this film is that there were no commercials that cut into the action. The satire of the film itself is simple and clever, but even if you put all that aside, you still have one hell of a captivating film. Putting the climax of the film aside, you do get to care about almost all these characters and you don't particularly want to see any of them die really.If you want my personal opinion on the film, I cannot say that I like it too much. I don't personally find the film itself to be very funny. I like dark humor, but I thought that this was too sick, really, to be funny. I also really don't like the ending. It felt like I was being beaten over the head by the satire. I also find that the film itself isn't exactly re-watchable. Once you know how it all ends, you really don't have any desire to ever really sit down and watch it. There are films out there that are sick and that you never really WANT to watch again, but at the same time you feel you should and can't help but feel the need to sit through it, but Series 7: The Contenders plays all of it's cards in one sitting and as a result you really don't feel any desire to absorb any of it. It's more the type of film that you just appreciate rather than like and enjoy. I can imagine a lot of horror fan and readers of Fangoria would love it to pieces or at least get a huge kick out of watching it. In my opinion, as brilliant and as clever as it is, I definitely wouldn't advise mainstream moviegoers to watch this. I thought it was a brilliantly directed film in a lot of ways, and the satire was effective, but I can't exactly recommend it. I'm glad I saw it though.