Do you ever get the feeling that your boyfriend might be a little too good to be true? His smile gives you butterflies and his eyes seem to twinkle as he says all of the right things, but you just feel like he’s going to get you killed? This is the case for Harley (Christine Spang), the protagonist and heroine of Teddy Grennan’s Wicked Games, which made its Salem Horror Fest premiere this past weekend. It’s a tale as old as time: girl meets guy, guy takes girl to his mostly abandoned family estate for the weekend, and a murderous masked gang shows up to ruin all of the fun. In a very Ready Or Not meets You’re Next meets The Strangers manner, Wicked Games turns the cat-and-mouse format of slashers on its head by introducing its band of neighborhood bad guys to a woman who’s killing skills exceed their own.
Without doing anything major to reinvent the wheel of horror, Wicked Games provided a tense and thrilling viewing experience that felt just as unpredictable as its ferocious final girl. The opening sequence alone sent a jolt through the screen, delivering colors and contrasts that became a part of the film’s fun aesthetic as a whole. Wonderfully composed with angsty, sexy, moody music that complimented the film’s dark tone well, the soundtrack only elevated the level of excitement. The use of a handheld camera made for interesting visuals that were, at their worst, disorienting, and at their best, intimately suspenseful.
This film dedicates itself to creating an isolating, immersive experience, however this was not accomplished with artsy camera angles or quick cuts via the Ryan Murphy School of Editing, but with Christine Spang’s committed performance as Harley. Spang was a model final girl: full of charisma and spunk and an unwillingness to be fucked with. What makes the plight of a final girl so gratifying is her ability to escape, overcome, and destroy her assailants without getting killed. She doesn’t need to be sympathetic or special — just strong enough to make it out alive — and Wicked Games’ final girl was both sympathetic and special, it’s just that her final act seemed somewhat abrupt. For the amount of ass-kicking she so efficiently carried out, the final moments of this film tread into an ambiguous territory that was just a bit too unclear for me. Harley is a final girl with finesse and fortitude and an exhilaratingly unexpected energy, one that warranted a more decisive, delicious ending.
This is, of course, coming from a final girl aficionado who has been burned too many times by female stories told through male storytellers, but it must be said that Teddy Grennan’s female characters were the most interesting and well-developed of the bunch. Despite any nit-picky thoughts that might’ve popped into my oversaturated horror-obsessed mind, I was completely captivated by Wicked Games and its feminist undertones. While visually anxiety-inducing, I actually found the film to be pretty tame in its expression of violence and gore, but its level of grittiness still made me feel delightfully uneasy. If you have the chance to see it, Wicked Games is worth the watch, especially for anyone wishing to dip a toe, and not dive, into the dark waters of scary cinema.
