With Oasis, oversized clothes and outdoor raves all making a comeback, the ’90s revival is in full swing. The perfect time, then, for Portishead founding member (and frequent Alex Garland film composer) Geoff Barrow’s Invada Records to branch out into film – beginning with this tense, low-budget ’90s-set thriller.
The film starts promisingly, with a near-wordless 20-minute sequence intercutting a nocturnal rave with the aftermath of a woodland car crash that has trapped petty thief David (Prevenge’s Marc Bessant) in his upturned Austin Maestro. First-time director John Minton, best known for creating video backdrops for Portishead, Noel Gallagher, Peter Gabriel and others, juxtaposes the dunka-dunka bass with the silence of David’s post-crash predicament, and the rave’s lightshow with the car’s flashing warning lights, as Bessant struggles to extricate himself from the wreck. A violent encounter with a vicious German shepherd leads to a second collision, this time with a poacher – Sleaford Mods singer Jason Williamson in his acting debut – fed up with E’s and wizz-addled ravers swarming his hunting grounds, scaring his prey, and failing to take their litter home with them.
You can’t help but feel that Ben Wheatley would have made more of the premise
The stage is set for a tense two-hander, but screenwriter Rob Williams – whose comic book series Unfollow is being developed for HBO by Margot Robbie – fails to capitalise on the film’s early momentum, leaving Bessant and Williamson with little to work with in the second half. You can’t help but feel that Ben Wheatley, whose influence is felt more deeply as the film progresses, would have made more of the premise, and capitalised on the surprisingly fertile premise of the trapped-in-a-car subgenre, of which Cujo remains the GOAT. Perhaps most surprising is that the music, while sparse by necessity, is disappointing.
Game is best viewed as what it is: a first effort from a creative team whose reach, on their first foray into a new medium, exceeds its grasp. ‘Trip hop’ put Bristol on the music map, but Banksy’s home town has since become a West Country crucible of filmmaking talent, giving Barrow and co a rich seam to mine with their newly-launched production house
Whatever the future has in store for them, we’re game.
In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Nov 21.