At the End of Eight (2019)

Allison, Will and Darian are chosen to be part of a social media game where they must sneak into a designated house and spend eight hours without being discovered. They’re dropped off with bags over their heads and the address of a home.  They must find the home and then find a way into it. If they successfully spend eight hours there, they’ll win ten thousand dollars.

The police can’t catch the people running the game which seems odd since it costs ten dollars to enter. The gamers must have an online presence and they’d need an account set up to collect payment which means they should be traceable. 

The group climbs in an unlocked window and after a series of near misses end up hiding upstairs.  Darian has done this twice before, which is odd since its supposed to be random.  His two previous successes have made him arrogant and careless. He goes downstairs to get a snack and isn’t even quiet about it.  He’s an idiot.  Allison and Will aren’t much better since they’re having a conversation and Allison mentions Will was talking in his sleep. Maybe they should try being quiet since they could either get arrested or attacked by a fearful homeowner.  There is lots of news coverage of the game and the town is in a panic with police urging people to lock their doors and be careful.

This isn’t going to be much of a movie if the players sit safely in a room for eight hours. So as you’d expect, they are discovered. Allison repeatedly yells about how they didn’t do anything and it isn’t fair to hurt them. She’s seemingly forgotten they broke into someone’s house and previous players killed a four year old child. The city is on the edge and people are sick of this crap. 

There’s some twists and turns, but there’s nothing really new about it. It was supposedly made for $4500, yet it looks better than so many of the low budget movies on Tubi or Amazon. I have no sense of budget for an indie film, but now I’m thinking a lot of the movies I’ve seen perhaps had budgets of $500 since this one didn’t look terrible.

The ending left me with questions, such as why did they bring the money if they never intended to pay? And if people can gat in touch with the gamer runners, then why can’t the police track them down?

Ridiculous dialogue

Why are they attacking us? This feels like so much more than self defense.

We didn’t do anything.