Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders (2022)

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Posted By: brian@brianschell.com October 31, 2022

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Hints of “Saw” and “Clue,” and definitely its own movie at the same time. The Horror Guys really enjoyed it. Excellent effects and acting, with an especially noteworthy performance from Jon Voight. And the house is really cool.

#JonVoight and #JonathanRhysMeyers star in the nail-bitingly suspenseful thriller #DangerousGame, now streaming on #Redbox!  A family reunion at a remote mansion takes a lethal turn when they are trapped inside and forced to play a deadly survival game where only one will make it out alive. Stream Dangerous Game instantly on #RedboxOnDemand today. Rated R. From #ParamountPictures.

Synopsis

A woman screams in a room full of photos. “Welcome to the murder castle,” says a distorted voice. Gas pours in through a vent, and she passes out. Credits roll.

The extended family converges at Grandpa’s house by boat and aircraft to celebrate his birthday. It’s a huge gothic house that was custom-built by the old timer on a private island. Grandpa Ellison is in a wheelchair, assisted by his butler Burnham. Son Alec is the first to arrive. Granddaughter Livie falls in love with the place. Three giant guard dogs scare grandson Cameron and his girlfriend Tara. Kyle and Joy arrive by helicopter. Sister Virginia is going to skip this reunion. Kyle and old man Ellison don’t get along.

It’s all going really well until the kitten ends up in the garbage disposal. Ellison laments the accident that left him in a wheelchair. He advises them all to “learn your history.” Kyle is a jerk, and he doesn’t get along with any of the others. They find one more big gift; it’s a board game. It’s getting late, and everyone gets ready for bed. Joy leaves for the weekend.

Suddenly, in the middle of the night, an alarm goes off. All the windows close and lock; it’s a regular security lockdown. Burnham the butler seems to have vanished, but the “Dangerous Game” is all set up and ready to play.

Alec finds a sign on the door to the smart house’s control room warning him not to go inside. He goes inside, and an explosion throws him across the room and blows one of his heels off. They have to stop the bleeding and don’t have any medical supplies, they can’t call for help because there are no working phones. Tara is a veterinary nurse, so she grabs a hot iron to cauterize Alec’s leg. Kyle blames Ellison; Ellison blames faulty wiring. Burnham and Virginia are mentioned as additional suspects. The voice announces that “The game is afoot. Best of luck. There are consequences to not playing the game.”

The game is remarkably detailed, and even includes information about each of them. Kyle and Cam go looking for Burnham, but they find bricked-up doors and hallways that go nowhere. Cameron finds the room where the woman in the pre-opening credits died. The door shuts on him. Could that woman be Virginia, the missing sister? Yes, it is, because he recognizes the body! That doesn’t help, because he’s soon gassed to death too.

According to the game, there have been nine murders 1971 to 2015. There are photos going back as far as fifty years ago. Kyle finds that the house is full of secret doors and passages. Marie mentions H. H. Holmes and the murder castle, and Kyle thinks Ellison is behind all this. Kyle confronts Ellison, who accidentally electrocutes himself with the wiring to his electric wheelchair.

Alec wakes up and tells the others about the Murder Hotel and Holmes. Burnham pushes Kyle into a trapdoor and ends up in an operating room. On the table is Joy, who has been cut open. Way open and reassembled. The whole room is a giant oven that switches on; he’ll be cooked if he doesn’t agree to play the game. The key to getting out of the room is literally inside Joy. He cuts the stitches holding her together. He gets the key, but Joy doesn’t survive. The key turns out to be a dog whistle, not the literal key to the door.

As he lay dying, Kyle admits that he knew about Ellison and tried to stop him. There was no accident; Kyle hit his Dad in the back and broke it. Alec figures out the cipher that unlocks the box in the game.

Inside is the complete confession of H. H. Holmes– No, it’s in Ellison’s handwriting. He describes his long career of serial killing. Murder is his legacy. Ellison is a copycat killer. Ellison explains that Holmes is actually Ellison’s grandfather. There’s quite a story involved. He even took Alec with him to some of the murders when Alec was a boy. Sometimes he was just a prop while Ellison did his stalking, and sometimes Alec was waiting in the car oblivious to his dad actually killing.

Alec gets angry and drags the old man upstairs and hangs him. Suddenly, the windows and doors unlock. This whole thing was arranged to get Alec to be the fourth-generation murderer. The voice on speaker says that only one of the four remaining survivors is going to get out alive.

They decide they’ve had enough of the game. Tara goes down into the incinerator room to get the dog whistle from Kyle’s corpse so they can get past the guard dogs. Tara, Alec, Marie, and Livie make a run for it while Burnham shoots at them. The group hides in a boathouse except for Tara, who is killed by the dogs. Suddenly, Livie kills Alec. She was in on it the whole time, well aware of grandpa’s story, and now it’s the fifth generation! After a bit of monologuing, Livie kills Marie with a gun.

Livie leaves the boathouse, and Burnham drives up in the car to pick her up. He works for her now, but he’s also family. She calls him “Uncle Burnham” as they drive away back to the main house.

Commentary

I’ve never been much of a Jon Voight fan, but he’s “a hoot” in this.

The story develops quickly and is really entertaining. The game all makes sense; the backstory all makes sense, and the characters are interesting. The acting is all good, and we had a lot of fun trying to figure out exactly what was happening.

That said, a lot of the plot is too intricate to be realistic. How would Ellison (or Burnham) know exactly how each player would die to make the game pieces match up so precisely? Alec could have killed old man Ellison a dozen different ways, so why choose hanging? How could they know Tara would be the one chased by dogs? If Livie was in on the plot all along, that would pretty much invalidate the whole “contest” aspect, and if she wasn’t, then some of these choices would be impossible.

Ah well, don’t think too hard— it was still a fun watch!