Five video game champions have been summoned to a mysterious amusement park. Greeted by a host who acts like a coked-out, dollar store mutation of Krusty the Clown and Pee-Wee Herman, the teens are presented with a game: Complete physical challenges and collect hidden Game Boy cartridges to advance to the next round. Or die! Each challenge leads the players to encounter an ever-escalating onslaught of surreal threats, including killer eggs that are the size of a Prius, possessed crossbows, and haunted rubber hoses that fill people with water and make them burst like in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Although the movie looks like it’s held together—and sometimes not held together—by duct tape, Asato doesn’t let a choppy script or inconsistent pacing impact her confidence. She’s all in. You can see it in the unreal green screen effects (face explosions, cosmic black holes, landscapes rendered by a pointillism filter in MS Paint). You can feel it when the movie shifts from daylight to moonlight, and the hellish clowns appear. Just like real-life nightmares, the characters are faced with a distressing situation that they can’t control. There’s no escape. The fact that Asato enables us to relate to those feelings with such limited resources is a true accomplishment. - Text Courtesy of Bleeding Skull