Reality Kills (2002)
- Andrew Smith
- 9 minutes ago
- 6 min read
"They're dying to be on TV."
Plot
A group of people starring in a new reality TV show gather in a deserted house which was home to a mass murder years ago. However shortly after arriving, the murders begin again, with the contestants disappearing one-by-one. Without knowing who to trust, the contestants soon begin blaming each other in a desperate bid to win the $100,000 cash prize.
Review
I have a suggestion – just leave! If I saw that other contestants were going missing, I surely wouldn’t want to wait around until my number was up even if there was a significant cash prize on offer. It's a scenario that completely defies fundamental human survival instincts. When the threat of brutal death is introduced into an environment, normal people do not stick around for a game show payout. But then little details are never the greatest worry of low-budget shockers like Reality Kills, whose primary goal is to make a quick, simple slasher film to fill up some bottom shelf space in a video store somewhere. Reality Kills wasn’t the first to do the reality TV slasher flick formula and it certainly won’t be the last either. Released in the same year as two high profile reality TV-themed horrors in Halloween: Resurrection and My Little Eye, Reality Kills was clearly made to cash-in on a momentary fad. I absolutely loathe the vast majority of reality TV shows, making ‘celebrities’ out of idiots who should be denied oxygen rather than given large amounts of free publicity. The UK media is the worst for ‘celebritising’ some of the most moronic, unintellectual, bottom-feeding wastes of human space as thousands of copycats and wannabes suddenly realise that by going on TV, saying or doing some stupid things in front of millions of people, will give them their fifteen minutes of fame. Anyway rant enough over! Reality TV hit its peak around this time and though the likes of X-Factor and various international versions of ‘… Got Talent‘ still do the rounds, the obsession with knowing what Z-rate celebrities are doing in a remote house has definitely waned…. Nowadays its all about fly-on-the-wall documentaries, Love Island variations and the fact that any braindead bimbo with a trout pout or lunkhead sporting a dodgy Lego man-style haircut can reel off a few TikTok videos and become an overnight sensation.
Realty Kills already came off feeling dated in its dependence on the reality TV show format when it was released. When a film is anchored so heavily to a fleeting cultural obsession, it instantly ties itself to that specific moment in time like a time capsule which felt stale the minute it was buried. Despite this sub-genre being short-lived, the clichés were already rolling thick and fast, and Reality Kills never really manages to overcome any of them, pandering to the usual genre tropes to keep the film moving. There’s the obligatory individual monologues to the camera at various points in the film (you know where they talk directly to the camera on Big Brother and the like) which are designed to build character but are terribly written exposition dumps. There’s the inevitable ‘deaths caught on camera’ scenes where the other characters re-watch footage to find the killer doing their thing. There’s also the sense that the characters know that ‘death = ratings’ and staying in the house despite what is going on will make them even more famous.
The contestants are a wholly unlikeable bunch who, after literally just meeting, are already verbally tearing chunks out of each other. The ‘diverse’ nature of the group means you’ll get one of each major stereotyped character including the innocent virginal girl, a politically incorrect redneck (which is a politically incorrect term too!), the black ‘gangsta’ producer, the diva and more. It’s lazy writing because all of the hard work has been done for us in developing their characters – as soon as the redneck opens his mouth we know he’ll be hostile towards the ethnic minority characters, the diva will throw a strop because she wants to be the star, etc. The writers completely outsourced the character development to the audience's preexisting prejudices based upon what we expect from each character upon our first glance. There's no nuance to construct, no subversion of expectations to navigate. It's just a straight march down a predictable path. It's like the film is winking at the viewer saying, "Hey, we didn't write a personality for this guy, but he's wearing a trucker hat, so you already know he's going to be awful, right?" "Cool. Our job here is done." The quicker most of them are killed off, the better the film will be. Rapper Sticky Fingaz and two former Saved By the Bell: The New Class (yes the terrible reboot) alumni Natalia Cigliuti and Kristen Miller are about the only sort of recognisable faces here.
Post-Scream and every low budget slasher film had to feature a killer in a black robe and a white mask. Reality Kills is no exception. The kills are weak and a little overly complicated too. The killer has a signature move by subduing their victim with a Taser first of all and then gets out a hypodermic needle with something nasty inside to finish the job. It’s the same routine over and over again with no variation. if you think about this from a production standpoint, the reliance on a taser makes perfect cynical sense. Staging a dynamic fight scene or executing a creative traditional slasher kill, that requires a lot of resources. You need stunt coordinators, multiple camera setups, and most importantly, practical gore effects. Blood squibs cost money, and they take hours to reset for a second take if you mess it up. A taser means you just need a crackling sound effect, and the actor just falls down. It's budget-friendly murder. No complex choreography, no expensive fake blood to clean up. But while it saves the production company thousands of dollars, it completely destroys the tension for the viewer. There is hardly any suspense in the kill scenes. If the audience knows exactly what's going to happen every single time the killer steps out of the shadows, the fear just evaporates.
The film tries to compensate by throwing in a couple of cheap boo jump scares, but there is nothing that will actually get the heart racing. Furthermore, despite a pretty high body count that keeps the pacing ticking along, there's surprisingly little blood on offer throughout the entire runtime. Those with a keen eye will figure out who the killer is early on. The narrative clues are incredibly heavy-handed. The only thing that might potentially throw you off the scent is that the first two kills contain glaring physical impossibilities based on the killer's actual identity. The director basically cheats early on to preserve the mystery, but it just creates a massive plot hole later when the big reveal is made. The script simply hopes the audience won't think too hard about the logistics, but if you’re a seasoned horror veteran like me, it’s one of the first things I picked up on.
Final Verdict
Reality Kills is cheap, bargain basement horror designed to capitalise on a mini-fad that went nowhere. It’s dull, barely passable at the best of times and will be instantly forgotten after the end credits finish. It’s the perfect analogy for the type of real life reality TV ‘stars’ that are being created – dull, going nowhere and will be forgotten about once their fifteen minutes of fame are over. I rolled my eyes at the idea that the characters in the film knew that death equals ratings and that these contestants truly believed staying in the deadly house despite the ongoing murders would make them even more famous. I thought it was just another piece of lazy, illogical writing. Nobody would really do that. But I think about today's digital landscape and the lengths people go to on social media right now: the incredibly dangerous pranks, the life-threatening stunts, the absolute obsession with going viral at any physical cost just for online views and clout. Back in the Noughties when I first reviewed this, I thought characters risking their lives for fame in a murder house was a stupid, entirely unrealistic cliché. But looking at the world we live in right now, was that supposedly lazy cliché actually the most realistic and terrifying prediction that this terrible film ever made?
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Reality Kills Also Known As: Reality Check Director(s): Rafal Zielinski Writer(s): Brent Askari, Chum Langhorne Actor(s): Natalia Cigliuti, Timothy Lee DePriest, Nate Dushku, Julie Ann Emery, Sticky Fingaz, Kristen Miller, Courtney Peldon, Kym Hoy Duration: 88 mins |  |
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