Road Games

The lack of suspense was probably this film's greatest failing.

Waste of time Low budget film,Dont deserve to be watched

Though the mix of characters (hitchhiker, serial killer, young love, deranged couple) could make for an interesting thriller, Road Games didn't convince me for a minute. The acting is mediocre, some of the decisions the main characters make are completely unrealistic, the mix of English and French language doesn't work for me, and the role of one of the main secondary characters remains unexplained. This could all be forgiven if at least there was a good twist in the end, but unfortunately there wasn't - I saw the twist coming about halfway through the movie. And when the twist finally comes and the viewer gets the whole picture, some parts of the movie seem even more unrealistic. All in all a waste of time, I'm sorry to say.

As a fan of road/thriller movies, I saw this without watching the trailer or reading anything bout it. Was pleasantly surprised how good this movie was. Its a very good thriller with lots of twists n turns. Nice star cast, good acting, amazing cinematography, nice music, decent screenplay and an awesome direction n editing by Abner Pastoll. The lead actress Joséphine de La Baume is voluptuous and gorgeous. It is beautifully shot with fantastic French countryside. The fields, the forests, the rural roads, the pond (where she bathes naked), the cottages (the one from where Andrew Simpson picks up the golf club), they all lead to a nice build up. The movie is backed up by an excellent score with pulsing elements. It has fantastic picturesque locations and moody sets. The killer was not shown but the tension was created throughout. Even the slower scenes which focused on characters were able to hold up the anticipation. Barbara Crampton did a decent job of creating mystery to her character. One movie which came to my mind while watching this was High Tension. Maybe because of rural France or the psychological aspect. This movie is much better than The invitation n 10 Cloverfield lane.

Film's like 1986's The Hitcher, created such paranoia that would more or less put an end to anyone ever picking up a hitchhiker. Jack, the protagonist of this picture, must be completely oblivious of this paranoia as well as frankly everything that goes on in this film. Road Games follows clueless old Jack as he attempts to hitchhike back to England from the south of France without being able to speak or understand the Frenach language. This complete fish-out-of-water soon meets with a girl, Veronique and the two continue to hopelessly hitchhike towards England... That is until an overly friendly Frenchman offers the two shelter for several days at his home along with his ominous as * American wife. Oh and there is also the threat of a Hitchhiker killer on the loose that may be relevant I'm not quite sure. The use of the french language is interesting but also puzzling throughout this film. The majority of the film is spoken in French and this is to create the isolation Jack would experience by not being able to understand the language and also to add mystery as to whether Jack is being told the truth or not... At least this is what Director Abner Pastoll has said, but what I have a problem with is that Gizard and Vernoquie can speak English and know that Jack can't understand them. Yes I know they may speak the truth in french so that Jack can't understand it, but they do this all the time, like there aren't that many secrets to keep from Jack. The extent of French used to communicate with Jack is over done and in many scenes Gizard and/or Veronique speak to Jack one on one making the use of communication basically pointless. The film feels a little bit style over substance as there are some interesting choices of cinematography and iconography but for the most part very little actually happens. The films synopsis is the opening act of this film and the ending is underwhelming and confusing. Logic takes a little bit of a back seat at times as well so that the style can be dominant, for example; When Jack fires a shotgun long range, when Jack and Veronique prepare for Gizard and Mary to walk in the house only to hide next cut, and also the ring around the hail bale rosie, I especially like how actor Frédéric Pierrot demonstrates the stupidity of this scene in an outtake in the gag reel. The worst part of this film has to be what it all builds to... The ending. It may not sound it but I enjoyed the visuals and style of this film for the most part, but the film does build to its conclusion which fails completely. I don't really know what happened in the end. I found the ending really quite confusing with the french language use and twists embedded. I will discuss the ending here so SPOILER ALERT. So I understood that Veronique was Gizard and Mary's daughter but I failed to see what relevance this had on the hitchhiker killer story line that I was expecting to see more of. Gizard said that his daughter is now a murderer and won't stop and all that but she only killed one person and it was more of a mercy killing than cold blooded murder. Veronique doesn't even kill her parents which is what I thought happened until the end credit scene which by the way is laughably bad. So I really failed to see what the "big reveal" was because to me everything seemed irrelevant. But hey, I probably just didn't get it. Overall, Road Games is a hitchhiker thriller with style but lacking in logical or clear understanding for its audience. The film is too successful in its Lost in Translation goal that it lost me as a viewer. Go check out the film as you may or may not understand it better than I did, but for me its time for Road Games to hit the road.

I don't generally trust reviews of films by IMDb users, and always go to the outside critics first before reading some of the reviews here. That really held true with this film, because the reviews seem to be fake(only one review listed for a person's account, and that review is of this film). I could be wrong about that, because maybe the user wants their other reviews to remain private, but this film seems to have a great deal of fake reviews that either give it a great rating, or a poor rating. I thought the film kept you in suspense throughout, with good acting and direction, although some of the writing seemed to have lines that made no sense,i.e. "You say tomato, I say open heart surgery"(?), and the mother telling her own daughter that she's a night owl, leading us to believe she's a complete stranger to her daughter. I saw it on NF, which had subtitles for most lines in the script (except ones that the director didn't want us to know), and this is essential for this film, because it constantly changes from French to English- sometimes in mid-line. Once you know the plot twist, it is fun to watch the film again, up to the the reveal scene, because you can appreciate the parents' reactions to their daughter coming home again. The expressions on the father's face throughout are particularly subtle, without giving anything away. You can also appreciate what an idiot the boy is as he ignores the truth about his new girlfriend over and over.

well what a surprise. I have to admit I didn't expect much, but the acting is really, really good....and the story develops in such a way that I believed I knew what was going on. My wife figured it out, but the truth/reveal wasn't clear until the end. This is a psychological thriller that has clues to the reveal throughout, if you are paying attention. I almost did not watch this after reading the reviews - I don't know why people try to discourage others from taking in a film. I do understand there are schills on here, but I am a regular guy with 4 kids and a dog. Just a quality movie where they really cared about the story.

A very slow thriller-horror (which to be fair is sort of the norm these days for the genre). But that said it's not terrible; it's really nicely shot with rich colors of the French countryside, the acting is good enough to keep the interest going and the ending is pretty good. I find it funny how some reviewers complain that too many parts are in French, like really? Complaining about it being too many French-speaking parts in a movie set in France is like complaining about the water being too wet. But I guess they either don't know how to read or how to put on the subtitles, which says more about them than it does this movie. Anyway like I was saying, a movie with a bunch of positives but that still falls just a bit short with some unfulfilled potential; the script could have done with some improvement. That said I wouldn't recommend anyone against watching it, unless they are looking for a fast-paced thriller I guess which this is not.

The 1981 movie "Road Games" Written be Everett De Roche (screenplay), Everett De Roche (original story). Starring Stacy Keach & Jamie Lee Curtis is a much better movie. This is a poor copy. Pat Quid is driving a semi across Australia. On the way he encounters various other travellers, and the occasional hitchhikers repeatedly as they're traveling the same road. A favorite pastime of Pat is to play games to pass the time on the journey. (Such as to make up backgrounds of the other people on the road.) Pamela is one hitchhiker he picks up. But when she disappears, he suspects that the driver of a van who has been acting a little strange, (Smith or Jones) maybe the serial killer mentioned on the radio. But his pursuit of the van driver brings him to the attention of the police, who begin to suspect him.

What to say about this movie? Hmmm... I want to review it, but I can't even do that properly. It had an air of intrigue about it to begin with and I found myself enjoying it for about the first third, however, I unfortunately don't speak French. German? Yes. Italian and Indonesian? Just the basics, but no French. When a large portion of the dialogue began to occur in a language that I don't speak, I found myself flicking through the options of my player trying to discern whether I'd accidentally turned off the subtitles or had myself a defective copy. Only now and after watching the movie in full, I find that there were deliberately no subtitles and that this was somehow supposed to increase the tension and atmosphere. In my case, that did not work. Not at all. In fact, I spent most of the rest of the movie wondering if I was missing much of the plot and should turn it off or continue to the end and hope that the dialogue returns to mostly English at some point. Either way, I was completely disengaged from the film and that is a very bad thing. Normally I'd not give it a second thought, as I have seen many movies with dialogue in foreign languages that do not contain subtitles, but the difference here is the SHEER AMOUNT of movie that is spoken in French that made me zone out and spend more time focused on trying to fix my subtitles than actually watching the film because I thought that surely something was wrong. In retrospect, I would have done well to have researched it first, so perhaps the onus is on myself. Sad face. I'm giving it a 4 out of 10 because I enjoyed it for what I was able to comprehend. I liked the story, I loved the scenery and the acting... er... well, I can't even accurately comment on that because I don't even know how to rate the acting and dialogue of somebody I can't understand. The English-speaking parts seemed above par for a horror/thriller, I guess. So I'm warning you in advance, either learn how to speak French or have a friend there to translate the dialogue for you, otherwise, you'll simply drift off wondering what in heck is going on. EDIT - Another user has since contacted me to say that there were, in fact, subtitles. I'm leaving this review up, however, as that does not appear to be the case with all copies. The DVD I watched had only French subtitles, not English, and said user did not specify either way which language subtitles he was referring to. I suppose checking in advance would be the prudent thing to do.