Series 7 - The Contenders [DVD] [2001]

The film's premise is simple: There's a gameshow, called The Contenders. It's currently shooting season 7. You "win" your way onto the gameshow by a national lottery, and you have no recourse but to enter, even if you don't really want to play.

The downside is that the game is Last Man Standing. Each of the seven contenders is given a gun and a cameraman to catch the action, and they have to hunt each other down. The last one standing moves into series 8.

Theoretically, with the dearth of reality shows around, this is an extreme scenario which may need to be employed purely to hook viewers. This is the main theme of the film - violence for spectators. Conceptually, perhaps, not that different to The Running Man - in that film, convicts on Death Row are given an opportunity to play for their lives against futuristic Gladiators who have all the celebrity of today's pro-wrestlers. Series 7, however, has none of that glamour. It's set in the here and now, and all anyone unlucky enough to be in it wants is to get out alive.

The filmmakers, though, have gone one step beyond that, and stereotyped the Contenders into recognisable moulds. Dawn is the reigning champion, pregnant and unmarried, with some history of a turbulent childhood. Tony is an angry old man who has no intention of playing the game. Jeff is Dawn's childhood friend, unhappily married now and currently dying of cancer and preparing to commit suicide. Connie is a conniving nurse with delusions of grandeur who seems to have thought more about a gameplan than anyone else. Lindsay is just a teenager, only just old enough to enter, who thinks it's quite cool and whose parents have aspirations of her winning fame and fortune on the show, to the point where they drive her around looking for her victims and get her revved up to kill in the car. They also buy her an extra gun, a big one.

It's not a happy scenario. However, with a hugely upbeat power-punk soundtrack and omnipresent gallows humour, complete with a Rescue 911-type narrator/voice over in the background, the film comes across as gleeful; just good old-fashioned family fun for everyone to enjoy round the TV at night. The fact that it is all so tragic seems not to occur to anyone bar one or two of the contestants.

The characters are richly textured, the plot fast-paced and unpredictable. At times your stomach will turn, at others you will burst out laughing. As the story winds up, and people's attitudes change, the climax comes completely out of left-field to blindside you.

The film is cutting-edge stuff with razor-wire social commentary. The humour, when there, never seems set-up, and there are no "punchlines" so you know when to laugh. It all just happens. I found it to be hugely enjoyable indeed; and I think the film tells us a lot about ourselves as a species.

The soundtrack by Girls against Boys is also excellent.

The audience views the film in the style of a television series marathon, in which we mainly follow the action through the eyes of Dawn, the eight-month pregnant reigning champion. This series is especially important to her for two reasons; the first being that she is likely to give birth at any moment, and the second being that this battle is being fought out in her old home town, from which she left in disgrace fifteen years previously.

There are mainly funny parts of this film that deserve a mention. The overly pushy parents of teenager Lindsay and the song played in the final showdown are notable. Equally, the reconstructions of events by the producers who accidentally "destroy" the original footage of the most crucial part of the film are very amusing.

As well as being humorous, this film also casts a serious light on the media's obsession with reality television and continuously pushing the boundaries to keep audience's entertained. While the idea of a show where the contestants have to kill each other may seem at first both ridiculous and exaggerated, it is not completely unimaginable that the media of the future will stoop depths as low as this. With people prepared to humiliate themselves on television for a quick buck and the fleeting chance of fame, television has no limit. Many questions can be raised throughout the film over the ethics of the current media in its unending quest to please an insatiable audience who lust for sex, violence and action. Real-life gruesome death on television does not seem so implausible when viewed in a future context.

Either way, this film is both enjoyable in the way that it provides humour, with food for thought. I feel that it is definitely worth viewing; both for the entertainment factor and the way that it will enable the viewer to sit back in ten years time and say, "Told you so!"

Shocking, repulsively funny, provocative, and most importantly - utterly believable, this movie will keep you thinking for weeks.

What makes a movie truly scary, in my opinion, is not ghosts and battles of good and evil. What is truly scary is a system of evil on a foundation that will almost undoubtedly last forever: no happy endings for eternity. George Orwell's "1984", for instance, enslaved mankind, but the political system was perfect and untouchable. Developing countries fear the United States because they see it as an infinitely powerful entity that will exist forever. "Series 7: The Contenders" Is exactly this- but unfortunately more honest

"Series 7" is a picturesquely disgusting look at mankind and our ability, and need to hate. Built on a foundation made invincible by the media, and embraced by the government, the series is everlasting and a kind of universal lightning rod. Never, I believe, has a movie been so real and scary that the viewer actually feels like it IS reality television. The line between fact and fiction is broken beyond repair, and repeating to oneself "It's only a movie... It's only a movie" somehow doesn't feel convincing.

A must see.