‘Dirty Games’ VOD Review
Stars: Emily Eaton-Plowright, Daniel Godfrey, Ocean M Harris, Danielle Scott, Jacasta Townend, Mark Holder, Chrissie Wunna, Luke Maskell, Danielle Ronald, Coco Taylor | Written by Sophie Storm K. | Directed by Jack Ayers
The latest film from Proportion Productions, Dirty Games, aka Game of Love, is the latest erotic thriller from the company following the likes of Graphic Designs, Cam Girls and one of their earliest films, Darker Shades of Elise. And like the aforementioned Cam Girls, Dirty Games seems to be a part of a new wave of erotic movies released by UK distributor Left Films – who also recently released director Louisa Warren’s Dirty Work, a film I mentioned not just because of the similar title, but because of Warren’s association with Proportion Productions’s Scott Jeffrey… who also produced this erotic affair.
Dirty Games follows contestants in a new reality gameshow where the participants, including our protagonist Lucy, compete for cash prizes by completing challenges, watched online, 24/7, by the audience who can send in requests to increase the prize money. What begins as a fun and flirty experience – playing games, swapping partners, and winning cash – soon turns sinister, as the viewer requests become more perverse and dangerous.
Let’s be honest, like its recently released Brit-lensed brethren, Dirty Games is the kind of movie you’d rent as a teenager in lieu of actually watching porn. The type of film that, back in the day, Jag Mundhra or Andrew Stevens would have produced – on a low budget, like this film, but looking FAR slicker and therefore a lot sexier. Here everything seems a bit too clinical… However, that can be forgiven thanks to the plot device that the people involved are doing as the audience asks; after all if you’re paying money to request things who cares about making things sexy, you just want to get down to the nitty-gritty!
Thankfully, and much like Graphic Designs, there’s more to Dirty Games than just watching people get naked and simulating sex – you just have to sit through all that first. When I say sit through it I actually mean suffer through it, for despite being penned by Sophie Storm K., who previously penned the likes of Bloody Mary and Easter Bunny Massacre for Scott Jeffrey, this film feels like it was written by a horny 13-year old boy. Nowhere does that feel more prevalent than the film’s multiple scenes of women stumbling across other people having sex and then having them masturbate whilst being a voyeur… or helping out! Everything about Dirty Games literally feels like a teenage boy’s wet dream.
It’s not until halfway through Dirty Games that things finally turn a corner and the “thriller” aspect of the film starts to come to the fore, with one character bumped off and the other blamed for their death. Well I say comes to the fore but there’s not one but two sex scenes with Lucy and the introduction of Chrissie Wunna’s character Georgia before anything more ‘thrilling’ happens… and by thrilling I mean that Lucy discovers that the death in the house was at the command of the mobile phones that give the contestants their tasks during the game – turns out the mind(s) behind this twisted game are willing to add a whopping £650k to the prize fund for one contestant killing another; and Liam is tasked with getting revenge on Lucy for having sex with James, which is essentially the force majeure in the latter portion of the film.
Eventually the conclusion of Dirty Games arrives and the audience will be just as confused as the final contestants. Though it also takes until the end of the film for Dirty Games to have something to say… something to about the pursuit of fame through reality TV and the price people pay, in terms of lack of privacy, recognition etc. But by then it’s all a bit “too little, too late” for that to have any true meaning. Instead, it feels tacked on to make Dirty Games seem more profound and more philosophical than the T&A shows it really is!
Dirty Games is out now on digital from Left Films.
