The Game

Part of the series B-Side Cinema: Five Overlooked Movies from Great Directors. Host Daniel Simpson will introduce the screening on Thursday July 6 @ 5:40pm.

The rich and cold-hearted Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is gifted a voucher for a free game with a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Unsure what to expect, Nicholas soon finds himself at the mercy of CRS as the mysterious organization stalks and psychologically tortures Nicholas through the streets of San Francisco. Also starring Sean Penn as Nicholas’s brother Conrad, The Game was David Fincher’s follow-up to seminal thriller Se7en. Though less iconic than his murder-mystery procedural, The Game is nonetheless an integral part of Fincher’s evolution and a wickedly entertaining thriller in its own right.

Regardless of how far one chooses to buy into The Game — and the ending ambiguously suggests that it could go on and on — there is no doubt as to Fincher’s staggering expertise as a director and his almost clinical sense of precision.

Variety

The Game is an intensely exciting puzzle-gimmick thriller, the kind of movie that lets you know from the start that it’s slyly aware of its own absurdity (which is why it can then get away with it).

Entertainment Weekly