Would You Rather?
My Review: This is an entry in one of my favorite genres: the rich guy who invites a bunch of people to participate in a “game” which actually entails very bad things for them. In this case, he offers them enough money to solve any problems they may have for life, if they can win an unspecified game against a bunch of other people who also need money. It turns out the game is “Would You Rather”, as in “Would you rather stab the person to your left in the thigh with an icepick, or whip this other guy 3 times with a whipping stick?”
Of course it gets very brutal and unpleasant, and also of course they shoot anybody who won’t decide or tries to leave. There’s only one part I couldn’t watch though, when someone is forced to cut their own eye with a razor blade. No eye stuff for me. No way. So it was actually pretty entertaining all around, wondering what would come next or how they would get out of this. And it has a pretty standard twist for an ending, but it was still fun. I enjoy these kind of movies as long as they focus more on the psychology and less on watching people be tortured. That is not my interest.
My Rating: 3/5 Water Barrels.
My Movie Idea: You’d think I would want to make an entry in this genre myself, and there are many such I would love to do, but in this case, something else came to mind in the early scenes of this movie. In my movie, there’s a megabillionaire philanthropist. Somebody like Bill Gates who is so rich that he makes millions (billions?) just from the interest on his money sitting in the bank. He doesn’t have to do anything, all his time is free, and he has limitless funds. So he is a truly
amazing human being - he spends all of his time on charity work, and donates billions of dollars to every worthy cause. Every step of the way, you see that this is all completely sincere and real - he absolutely is giving all of his time and money to help others. He is a fantastic person, who is directly responsible for saving hundreds of thousands of lives with his charity work.
Ah, but there’s the twist. Since he has saved so many lives, in the after hours, he truly and honestly (and just as sincerely!) believes he can kill people if he wants. It’s not even balancing the scales, it’s just a tiny drop on the bad side compared to an ocean on the good side! He’s kind of like Batman, except instead of fighting crime at night, he stalks and murders people, maybe torturing them even. Maybe they’re people he thinks deserve it - others from his social circle, super rich people who
don’t help others with their money. Or maybe not, maybe they’re just homeless people who won’t be missed, but that seems counter to his helping-people thoughts. Either way, he is totally above suspicion as how could this guy possibly ever commit a crime?
Maybe the story is about one cop who is onto him and pursues him relentlessly and gets no support because of how loved the guy is. Something like that. It’s something of a character study, of a really twisted character who truly believes that he is just having one tiny little vice on top of all the great stuff he does. And probably there’s a bit in there about “okay, maybe he does kill somebody once a week, but if we lock him up, he won’t be helping thousands every week. Is it really better for the world?” And in the end, the cop probably has to shoot him to save someone. So he saved one life, but now the whole charity train is dead (maybe his will gives all his money to his good-for-nothing nephew instead of to charity as you might expect for a guy like this) and on balance, a lot more people will suffer than be helped. Weird and scary.
