Arena Wars

This movie is terrible, my god

I've always had a soft spot of sorts for "death games"; everyday normal people being forced into an unwinnable scenario, forced to kill each other or beat some kind weird gimmick. Y'know, that kind of thing. When done right they're perfect for social commentary, deep cut thrillers or psychological horrors, or even just a fun time if they don't take themselves too seriously. Arena Wars fails to do any of that. With all the production value of a Nickelodeon TV movie and miraculously even worse acting, all we have here is a barebones Running Man knock off with a tenth of the budget. For every moment where it realizes its limitations and manages to play to them as a strength, there's a dozen more that show how massively they overestimater their filmmaking chops. As a result, the choreography, editing, and script take a blow they're never able to recover from, leaving us with effectively nothing worth salvaging.