By Sarah Maciejewski

Next time just go with beer pong.

Sickening bros Jaxon (Saad Rolando) and Rex (Gage Robinson) have been invited to a dinner party with a trio of young women, one of whom, Celeste (Alyssa Tortomasi), has recently ghosted Jaxon. When their friend bails on them, they invite an awkward acquaintance, Stanley (Grant Terzakis), to keep the 1:1 male-female ratio, Celeste and her roommates, Riley (Cass Huckabay) and Mia (Ashwina Ganpule), insisted on. After some food and drinks, they decide to play a board game (what could go wrong?) and wind up unleashing a sinister force (oh!). 

While haunted games have certainly been done before, Stupid Games still feels fun and surprising, thanks in part to the suspense built during the dinner scene and the eventual reveal of what has truly transpired. The men are unlikable from the get-go, so the tension feels as though it involves Celeste’s past with Jaxon, and that it’s all part of some elaborate revenge dinner scheme. Once the game starts, though, the evening feels less planned and increasingly uncomfortable and frantic.

The movie works thanks to the script, which cleverly asks the viewer to fill in the blanks about why the men were invited and then flips the script with a bizarre reveal. Directors Nicolas Wendl and Dani Abraham also effectively use a few key props, lighting, and a minimal synth score to set a genuinely creepy and nerve-wracking mood. This is indie horror done well, and it makes excellent use of simple resources to create a dynamic story with a good twist.