Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders

The snow is coming down and coming down, but I stayed inside to try and find something to watch for review. If you’ve been reading my reviews for a few years you might remember my fascination with older true crime stories, mostly because of the laughingly bad “police” work of the times. One of the true crime stories I’ve read about over the years concerns “America’s First Serial Killer H.H. Holmes”. I’ve always found that moniker ridiculous because humans have undoubtedly always had serial killers. We’re a murderous breed. Still, when the first images in the film included a photo of an old building I decided to land on that movie. I recognized ole H.H.’s murder house.

The contentious Betts family has a reunion on an exclusive island bought for their father, where he built an American Gothic pile, complete with Victorian era furnishings. No one really wants to be there, but it’s the old boy’s 80th. Surely he’ll die soon enough and they’ll be rid of him. The family is contentious and not at all nice. But it is large, giving plenty of opportunities to kill them off one by one when a dangerous game is unveiled and they are forced to play it or else, with the omniscient voice reminding them “until all but one is dead”.

So, as a viewer I understood immediately that the murderer was one of the family. Who else would end up being last? The writing is like that throughout. On the surface it seems to be a clever rehash of the old locked house murder mystery. The elder Bett is played by Jon Voight (Deliverance), whose signature borderline normalcy is finely honed here. I spent a lot of time wondering why they were even trying to make him appear innocent when he’s obviously not. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Vikings) is one of the sons, the one who doesn’t take crud from ole dad and solves problems by brute force. I did notice that the characters mostly worked the game in a gendered way. The men stupidly went off to brute force their way through, while the women stupidly hung out wringing their hands and toying with logic-ing the problem.

That seems to be the biggest problem for me. There should be at least one character that is not a jerk and you hope doesn’t die. But I didn’t care about any of the characters, even the granddaughter in law who does nothing wrong but what does she see in her moronic boyfriend the youngest Bett boy? Like the supposedly clever writing, we’re supposed to take her for a smart, capable character but scratch the surface and she doesn’t do much at all. By far the best character is the house, which is gorgeous and beautifully appointed. I found myself rooting for the house to survive.

There are a lot of deaths in this movie, and they are gory. Watch out for the death of a pet, and yeah that’s gory as well. In great detail. There is at least one injury that should have completely incapacitated the character, but before long they’re hopping around spryly on a foot missing its heel. Another character gets their ribs slammed super hard by a fireplace poker, then runs off. Those are not the only improbable injuries.

I’ve mentioned the writers seem to think they’re clever. At one point grandpa castigates his family. “Read a book!” yells the boomer (the billionaire version of “Get off my lawn!”). I found this ironic, as the writers of the movie seem to have read exactly one book, H.H. Holmes confessions, which he penned while in prison waiting to be hung, and for which he was paid a large amount of money. The book is quoted often, and recognizing the words gave me the same feeling I had hearing Titanic court hearings language pop up in that movie. Besides the famous (to murder buffs) picture of H.H. Holmes 1890s

building in Chicago, there are also stairs to nowhere and doors with a wall on the other side, just as was reported in the day.

They did manage to be somewhat clever in the resolution of the story. I wasn’t blown away, but I thought it was interesting. Overall, I found this movie to be kinda sorta interesting. If you’re in the mood for a way gorier than normal locked house mystery, check it out. Don’t look at anything too deeply, just go with it.

Trigger Warning: Gruesome deaths, including of a pet. Foul language.

Available on: Paramount +, apple tv, prime video, plex, Row8

LINKS:

• Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders – Official Website
• Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders – IMDB
• Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders – Wikipedia

CFR: In Addition

Nope.

Ok Cranky told me not to watch this in the email she sent me and after reading her review I must agree.

AND! DO NOT HURT ANIMALS OR PORTRAY IT OR YOU MUST BURN IN HELL!

On a GREAT note Wicked is now available for purchase on streaming!!! YAY!!! Guess what I will watch later tonight. 😉