Retro Review: ‘Series 7: The Contenders’ (2001)
Brooke Smith in SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS
Reality meets satire in this completely insane and hysterical movie about the depths we will sink to and call it entertainment.
The title refers to the seventh season of a mock reality series, The Contenders, in which regular citizens are chosen by random lottery, handed a gun and a cameraman and told to kill the other contestants. This is not a choice but an order.
Our reigning champion Dawn (Brooke Smith, Silence of the Lambs) is eight months pregnant and returns to her hometown of Newbury, Connecticut (“Everything looks like it’s been dipped in plastic”), the site of the game, with an axe to grind. She turns a visit with her estranged family into armed robbery and grand theft auto.
The combination COPS/Survivor approach puts you right in the action and allows for some great humor (“I don’t do car chases, I think they’re tacky and innocent people can get hurt”) and irony as Dawn searches through a house with a gun and a flashlight a la Clarice Starling.
A bleak dead-end at our potential cultural void, it’s nevertheless a scary and hilarious film.
Movie matches: The Running Man, Death Race 2000, Rollerball
Check out the trailer below and you’ll spot the likes of Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, Unbelievable) and Marylouise Burke (Ozark).
How to watch: Available for purchase on Amazon
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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