Drinking Games review

Drinking Games, an independently-produced thriller set in a university dorm, isn’t playing in theatres nor does it have a UK DVD release, but it is available worldwide for download on vimeo. It is worth seeking out.

The film is set during the last days of autumn semester. A snow storm has left the remaining students bound to the dorm where a giant end of semester party is brewing. The action centers on the room of freshmen Richard (Blake Merriman) and Shawn (Nick Vergara), long-time high school friends who are growing apart in college.

Shawn’s new frat boy friend Noopie (Rob Bradford) has exacerbated the tensions between Richard and Shawn. What happens over the course of the short 82-minute running time (minus the credits) reveals the darker side of the American university party scene.

Noopie is a sociopath who manipulates those around him through alcohol, drugs and his raw charisma for no reason but that he can. He walks the line between reckless behaviour and malicious intent and is a reminder that monsters can come in the most unassuming packages.

Bradford makes Noopie a dangerously charming antagonist, who rarely reveals himself to be an outright villain. Instead he exudes a subtle unpleasantness or creepiness. His less than noble intentions are masked by a good-natured facade until it is too late.

Director Ryan Gielen confines most of the film in a single room and employs a variety of skewed camera angles to create an uneasy atmosphere and a sense of claustrophobia. A scene of partying is a visual stand out. Gielen utilizes 360-degree pans and a camera that is constantly pushing into and pulling back from characters to create a disorienting feeling.

Gielen enhances the film’s quietly foreboding tone with a sparse, moody score and a visual aesthetic of muted colors and minimal lighting that, according to Merriman who also wrote the play the film is based on, unintentionally recalls the Swedish horror movie “Let the Right One In.”

Drinking Games is just as much a character study as it is a thriller. One of the key themes of the film wanting to be liked and accepted. This is the motivating factor of nearly every wrong-headed decision the characters make. The tragic misunderstandings that can happen in college is something Drinking Games gets absolutely right.

Alec Kerr