Gamebox 1.0

Directors: David Hillenbrand, Scott Hillenbrand
Writers: Patrick Casey, Worm Miller
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fantasy

Cast: Nate Richert as Charlie Nash, Danielle Fishel as Kate/Princess, Patrick Kilpatrick as Ronald Hobbes/Ao Shun


Wanna Play?
“You die in the game…you die for real”

The above tagline grabbed my attention. It is the same tagline I started using in 2005 when my book was picked up by Rockway Press. Reading the back of the video case I started to get worried. It sounded just like my book in more ways than one. So I bought it for around ten bucks. Ex-DVD rental.

The movie runs for 80 minutes and was released in 2006. The cover looks very B-Grade and the write up on the back sounds B-Grade.

However!

This DVD is NOT B-Grade in any way, shape or form once you press the play button on your trusty DVD player.

The story is about a game tester, Charlie Nash, who is still suffering over the death of his girlfriend, Kate (shot by a cop on drugs) when a mysterious package arrives in the post. With little else to do, Charlie opens the package and pulls out a VR headset and a small camera and a control panel with one button: START.

Naturally, he puts it on and presses the START button (if he didn’t there wouldn’t be a fantastic movie waiting to explode before your eyes).

With the headset on he can interact with the game, ask questions and start playing. He has three choices of what game to play. Crime land or story (or scene), Zombie Land and Alien attack.

Our hero makes his choice but there is some work to do before the games can play and that is it needs images of people you know to use as characters. Charlie happily clicks away at his friends. He then needs to chose a bad guy and he takes a photo of the police office that shot his beloved, Kate. He decides against taking a photo of Kate and just starts to play the game.

But, everything he knows, everything he feels, the game knows and uses in the storylines. What starts off as harmless fun quickly takes a turn for the horrid and it starts with him saving Kate. Although in the game, her name is Princess.

Things escalate at a rapid pace until we and Charlie learn that the only way to stop playing the game is to finish the 3 games. If you are shot, you die. If you are wounded, you feel the pain. And taking off the headset won’t pause the game for very long because you will play the game, as reality wraps around you and suddenly the game fills reality.

This is an awesome movie but so far I have only seen bad reviews by people who haven’t even viewed the movie (http://forums.firingsquad.com/firingsquad/board/message?board.id=movies&message.id=3787 if you have an interest in reading their forums). They saw the trailer (trailer sucks (but then again so does the trailer to Absolon but that movie rocked)) and made their choices from there. You know me. Would I lead you wrong? Probably. But not this time. The movie is good. Don’t expect super high-tech CGI, ‘cause you won’t get it.

There is a problem with this movie: The Cop. Unrealistic.

But that’s it.

A few things to note regard the review. It is based on the NZ DVD 2006 release. IMDB claims the movie is 2004. The covers are different but that’s about it.