Caught Inside AND The Game of Death

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Caught Inside AND The Game of Death

June 7th 2010 23:34

Caught Inside

Adam Blailock’s debut feature Caught Inside (2010) is a thriller in the vein of Knife in the Water (1966), Dead Calm (1989), and Donkey Punch (2008). Set on the sea around the Maldives, mostly on a huge gorgeous yacht known as The Hedonist, a tale of macho machinations, of lust and violation, where psychosis is unleashed at the drop of the anchor. Yet another Australian genre production that proves there is definitely talent afloat in these here waters.

Caught Inside Daisy Betts and Leeanna Walsman

Daisy Betts as Sam and Leeanna Walsman as Alex

Joe (Peter Phelps) is the skipper on a chartered twelve day surfing expedition around the beautiful breaks of the Maldives. Also on board for the escapade is Rob (Sam Lyndon), Toobs (Simon Lyndon), Bull (Ben Oxenbould) and young Archie (Harry Cook). It’s meant to be a guys-only affair, but Toobs has brought his lover Alex (Leeanna Walsman) with him, and Alex has her gorgeous girlfriend Sam (Daisy Betts) along for the ride also.

Caught Inside Simon Lyndon and Sam Lyndon

Simon Lyndon as Toobs and Sam Lyndon as Rob

Peter Phelps as Skipper Joe

Despite a few ruffled feathers, it seems the added cargo has caught more than one eye. Sam flirts with Rob, but not before Bull has tried his luck charming the doe-eyed brunette himself. When Rob and Sam actually hit it off, Bull decides the queue has been officially jumped and he’s none to happy about it. He takes it out on another surfing stranger who steals his wave, beating the living daylights out of the poor bastard on the sand of one of the atolls. But it’s Sam he’s most keen to impress, and she’s repelled by his violent nature. Bull doesn’t take a hint and pushes his luck. That’s when the seagull shit really hits the fan.

Caught Inside Daisy Betts and Ben Oxenbould

Sam is fooled into thinking Bull (Ben Oxenbould) is Rob

Director Blailock certainly knows how to build tension and create a suspenseful sequence, but there’s a feeling of familiarity that permeates the whole movie, and the payoff isn’t as dramatic or as satisfying as it should be. Part of the problem is that the villain isn’t psychopathic enough. He’s a sociopath, fair enough, but he slides into psychoville a little too easily, and yet manages to hold everything together. His comeuppance should be the movie’s highlight, but instead it’s a fizzer. The movie demanded an explosion of violence, there’s too much bubbling under, but this never happens. Instead the good girl falls prey to the nature as reprehensible as the villain’s and it leaves an odd taste in the mouth.

And for his violation Bull is temporarily banished

Caught Inside sports solid, charismatic performances, especially Oxenbould as the bastard Bull and Betts as the rabbit in his sights. The direction is fine, if perhaps a little on the pedestrian, but the screenplay, penned by Blailock, Matt Tomaszewski, and Joe Velikovsky, feels a few drafts short of the top-notch yacht nightmares it’s inspired and influenced by. It’s certainly not as brutal or explicit as Donkey Punch, nor as tense or pared-back as Dead Calm, nor as clever or artful as Knife in the Water, but it’s pretty entertaining nevertheless, and thank Christ it wasn’t made for the American audience with all the Aussie actors trying to mimic a hotchpotch of Stateside accents.

The Game of Death

A sobering French documentary about the deadly corruptive power of television and the moral conundrum of reality TV that is steadily pulling society closer and closer to the edge of the abyss. I’ve found myself wondering from time to time of where reality TV will end up in the future. There are only two areas; titillation and confrontation. The first would be upping the sex ante, so that morally dubious shows such as Temptation Island and Cheaters would end up showing actual sex in order to maintain audience interest. On the other side of the coin would be upping the violence ante, so that action and stunt-orientated shows such as Survivor and Jackass would end up showing severe injury and death. The result would be "pornTV" and "snuffTV". But I digress a little …

Jean-Leon Beauvois

Co-directors Christophe Nick and Thomas Bornot were interested in understanding the correlation between television, those who participate on television, and the influence these elements have on society, specifically, the power of televised pressure on the ordinary person and the effects on an individual’s willpower. Even more focus was played on an experiment devised by Professor of Social Psychology Jean-Leon Beauvois; an updated version of the infamous American Milgram’s Experiment - which Peter Gabriel sung about in his haunting song We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37) from the So album.

The original 1960s Milgram's Experiment

The basis of the experiment tested how far a person would obey the instructions of an authoritative figure even if it meant conflicting against their own moral and ethical code, even if it meant continuing to act in an inhumane way toward another person, albeit a stranger whom they couldn’t see, but could hear. In the case of the Milgram’s Experiment, a stranger was given an electric shock as punishment for a wrong answer in a series of questions by another stranger who was being told to continue the questioning, and subsequent punishment.

Actor Laurent AKA Jean-Paul is strapped in

In the French version, a ruse was created: a mock game show called The Xtreme Zone, which was in the developement stage, so 80 contestants were chosen to participate. A live audience was also brought in too. Neither the audience, nor the contestants knew the entire game show was a set-up. Television personality Tania Young, and an actor Laurent, were hired to play the glamorous host and the “victim” question answerer Jean-Paul respectively. Both were in on the ruse, unbeknown to the other eighty contestants or game show audience.

Game show host Tania Young

The crux of the experiment revealed that a disturbing amount of contestants were prepared to continue administering increasingly more powerful electric shocks to Jean-Paul right up to the final dose of 450 volts. The combination of poker-faced disarming beauty of the presenter telling them “Do not be impressed and continue” after they hear Jean-Paul yelp in pain and express his increasing upset from within a special torture booth, and the fear of being booed by the audience compels them beyond rational thought. This is reality television as supreme manipulative authority. With no actual power the contestants obey.

The agentive state kicks in; to be able to bear what we do that goes against our values, the escalation of commitment takes hold, there’s nervous laughter at the 80 volt mark as a kind of perverse relief sets in, the contestants can’t actually believe what is happening, the psychosomatic reaction calms the questioner, they eventually begin to ignore the victim, even speaking over his cries, in a way hiding their culpability. A nightmarish and utterly disquieting scenario of totalitarianism is apparent. We are living in a world where horror is the new God. What are the limits of control? Will the future of television be an arena of sadism? It currently occupies on average 14 years of our lives in total viewing time.

The Xtreme Zone shock console

The Game of Death is an academic and intellectual treatise on this most topical of actual sociological nightmares, but it makes for stark and fascinating viewing. This doco is guaranteed to provide enough flesh for thought for a dozen conversations.

Here's the trailer for Caught Inside:

Here's a UK news brief on The Game of Death:
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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

1 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by JohnDoe

June 8th 2010 20:48

Film & TV on DVD

You really are getting your cinematic quota in with the festival this year Bryn,

These both sound impressive with Game of Death being immediately assigned to my must see documentary list.

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