Survival films have long been a steady genre within the medium of cinema. Fish out of water, man versus nature and other subgenres of the sort have been entertaining audiences since the days of the legendary stop motion King Kong. These stories have been told in a variety of settings that all elicit the same desired results. Enthralling the audiences whether the film’s main characters are fighting for survival in a tropical jungle, stranded on a remote island, or lost in a vast desert. These settings end up being as much a part of the films as the characters and the story are.
The Most Dangerous Game is the newest competitor in the arena of creating attention grabbing cinema to pump up audiences with. Koenig Pictures in association with Mini Nation Pictures and Quiet On Set are the creative minds behind this gripping thriller. This collaboration does a fine job of pushing the story into high gear as they ramp up the fish out of water aspect of this film where the main characters played by Judd Nelson and Christopher Tamburello (CT From MTV’s The Challenge) find themselves in an unfamiliar situation as they are forced to fight for survival by any means necessary.
The film team behind this is led by the talented Justin Lee who had his work cut out for him Directing this thriller while having a shorthanded crew. Luckily his Directing chops are strong, and he had the perfect crew behind him to handle such a tumultuous film shoot. The uber talented Producer Michelle Ng was thankfully on board as she has the talent and experience to right the ship even in the murkiest of waters. No stranger to hard work and with the crew being short-handed, she rolled up her sleeves and never shied away from getting the work done. Even pulling double duty and doing multiple airport pickups on her own.
Her wisdom ensured she came with the right troops to go into battle with, as she brought along her trusted Production Coordinators Paula Iglesias and Ines Kayali Varez to keep watchful eyes on things and make sure everything was running the way it was supposed to with the Production Assistant extraordinaire Irene Puente helping wherever she was needed.
Also, knowing this film needed to bring the visual beauty that the Director wanted, Michelle brought with her Tasuya Ueno to once again man the Steadicam, and with him of course are his trusted AC’s Madina Ismailova and Nicola Varoli. Their talents helped the incomparable Cinematographer Eamon Long in giving Lee a visually captivating backdrop for this film. This is a tight knit crew that works together like a well-oiled machine, which is exactly what you want on a low budget thriller like The Most Dangerous Game. This is a crew that knows how to make magic happen when the funds aren’t available, and that is very apparent with this latest film especially considering Production Designer David Jeter built Tom Berenger’s shack from scratch in under 3 days with the aid of Nicola Varoli.
As this tightly directed thriller keeps moving forward, and its main characters feeling lost and out of place, the tension rises as a new player enters the game portrayed by the always entertaining Caspar Van Dien who chews up every scene he’s in with his charisma. Once all the players have stepped up to the gaming board, Lee does a masterful job of letting out nuggets of information about each one’s background as a way of foreshadowing what’s to come in the explosive and climactic ending. That truly is the mark of a talented filmmaker. To be able to dangle a carrot that entices the audience enough that they must move forward with the story that’s being laid out before them instead of giving up. Because on the flipside of that coin, if you lose an audience’s attention in the beginning of the story than you’ve lost them for good.
Michelle Ng and her team have consistently been putting out quality work no matter the small budgets they are hampered with. They proudly hold the indie filmmaker flag high, but one could only imagine the gems that they’ll unleash on the world once they get a massive budget to match their creative talents. The Most Dangerous Game is a blueprint on how gung-ho indie filmmakers can use their creativity to tell an engaging and compelling story that is sure to entertain audiences regardless of budgetary restrictions. It is worth your time to give this thriller a watch which you can easily do on TubiTV.
