How sad is this?

Brilliant and touching

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This film is a rare gem! It's b-grade horror exactly how it should be done! The fact that a bunch of celebrity wannabes would do whatever an all-powerful voice told them to do is DEFINITELY believable and the young Jaime Pressly (from My Name is Earl fame) is a sight to behold! Edward Furlong plays the role of a deranged killer perfectly and as the story unfolds you may even find yourself sympathizing with him just a little bit... (awwwwwwwww) This is not your typical horror flick - you'll have no idea who will and won't survive! It's no Terminator II but then again there isn't nearly as much money behind it so give the small guys a go and check this one out!Plenty of gore for the sickos out there and plenty of tense moments for suspense fans and well made film for the budget - horror fans look no further than CRUEL WORLD

If you're going to make a movie that lambastes crappy reality TV shows, you should be sure it's not going to suck so much it'll make the audience wish they were watching a crappy reality TV show instead. That's a lesson these filmmakers obviously never learned, because they churned out a film that makes VH1's Flavor of Love look like Masterpiece Theatre.This astoundingly idiotic story goes wrong from the very beginning. It's about a group of college kids who think they're participating in a reality show for a million dollars but are really the subjects of a madman's murderous scheme, where getting voted off the show means getting helped into an early grave. But before we get to any of that, the first 10 minutes of so of the movie is spent bizarrely focused on the backstory of the madman. It turns out the insane Philip (a bloated and doughy Edward Furlong) had been a contestant on a reality show like The Bachelorette, where he was rejected. So, Cruel World starts with Philip showing back up and killing the woman who rejected him (Jaime Pressly) and the other guy she picked (Sam Page), and THEN the college kids arrive and the actual plot of Philip killing them begins.I'm not sure I've ever seen another horror movie that starts out by not only explaining exactly who the killer is and what he's doing, but also immediately kills off the characters that should be his main target. It's like watching an episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk and Spock get disintegrated by the Klingons in the first scene and the rest of the show is watching a bunch of those guys in red shirts getting picked off one by one. I'm not sure if these filmmakers thought they were being clever by doing it this way or what. The effect, though, is to rid the story of any possible, mystery, suspense, tension or intrigue.The only way to recover from that sort of colossal storytelling mistake would be to make the slayings of the college students incredibly violent and compelling and the satire of crappy reality TV shows tremendously clever and sharp. None of that happens. What the viewer gets are unbelievably feeble pastiches of reality show conventions like "alliances", "elimination challenges" and "drunken hook-ups". The satirical extent of the script is to have characters reference specific reality shows in their dialog. There's also practically no sex or nudity in this movie and the violent scenes are so pathetic it's like watching Gargamel try and kill The Smurfs.The college kids in Cruel World are so shallow and contrived, they make Spencer and Heidi from The Hills look like characters out of Tolstoy. I can't really tell if any of them can act or if they're just natural douchebags. Edward Furlong, however, is genuinely pitiful. He looks and performs like a cleaned-up homeless guy who's still under the influence of various chemical substances. Furlong doesn't need to be making a movie about reality TV shows. He needs to be on a reality TV show - the one where celebrities go to rehab. The kid from Terminator 2 turning into this kind of a shambling mess is a more amazing transformation than Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Governor of California.Cruel World is so atrocious, it's not like it was made by people who had never made a movie before. It's like these filmmakers had never seen a movie before. Or a play. Or a book. Or even a puppet show. This is the type of film where 6th grade dropouts watch it and say "I could make something better than this". So, unless these filmmakers were all 5th grade dropouts…they should really be embarrassed by this disaster.Unless you're planning to show Cruel World to a child actor as a cautionary tale (watch out or you could end up like Edward Furlong!), there's no reason for anyone to rent this DVD.

This is what needs to happen on most reality shows.. then they might actually be watchable. Eddie Furlong captured the essence of a lunatic with great passion and enthusiasm. I've seen this movie about a hundred times now, and will probably watch it 100 more; its just one of those movies that never gets old. I don't think they could have hired a more perfect cast to fulfill this original heartwarming film. This movie is full of quotes that will be remembered throughout film history. Quotes such as "You win some, you lose some." and "Im the bad boy your mother warned you about.", and who could forget "I want Jenny.". If it was possible I would rate this movie an 11 out of 10, and would nominate Cruel World for BEST MOVIE EVER MADE.

Two brothers somehow sucker a bunch of young people into believing they're part of a reality game show in which they do whatever challenge the mastermind comes up with. Eventually it becomes apparent that the stakes are life and death, and the contestants start getting killed off, sometimes by each other.Perhaps the craziest part of this movie is Edward Furlong as the lead, Philip Markham, who overacts at every turn as he screams at the contestants from his control room, where he chain smokes and eats gas station food. His performance is not one of his finest, but given that he appears to be past his prime at this point, he does deliver something that is, at very least, entertaining (not always for the right reasons, though).As others have pointed out, Markham is a fairly lazy killer. Mostly he just yells a lot. It is often up to his simpleton brother, Claude, to carry out the dirty work for him.The big question is whether or not the flick is worth seeing. Well, for me, the movie came with four others in a small package that was located at the bottom of a bargain bin. Given what I paid for it, it wasn't too bad.