From
The Belko Experiment and
Gamer to the cultural phenomenon of
The Hunger Games and
Squid Games, criminals, tributes, and down-on-their-luck strangers have entered arenas in a fight to the death and earn a victory garnering freedom, wealth, a second chance at life. The types of arenas, violence, and contestants have changed over time, but the spectacle of survival, moral compromises, and engineered chaos reimagines the same question -
what would some do to be the last one standing?
Just when one might think the underlying genre had tackled the concept in every imaginable way, director and writer Ryan Bellgardt entered the domain in 2018 with
The Jurassic Games, a sci-fi flick where ten death row inmates were thrown into a virtual reality gauntlet against prehistoric beasts in exchange for freedom.
