Step by Step, David Fincher's 'The Game' Drags You Into a Living Nightmare

Leonard Zelig

Nov 2

The most overlooked entry in David Fincher's filmography is also one of his best.

Matthew Mosley
November 1, 2022
Collider

The Game had a lot to live up to. It was the film David Fincher chose as his follow-up to the wildly acclaimed Seven, a film that had thrust the young director into the limelight and prevented his career from reaching a premature end after the mixed reaction to his debut, Alien 3. Suddenly, he was no longer the man who'd killed the little girl we'd spent all of Aliens trying to save. Instead, he was a fully realized auteur ready to carve out his place in the annals of cinema, and all eyes were on him to see what he would do next. What he came back with was The Game, a Hitchcockian thriller for the modern age that toned down the controversial subject matter of its predecessor to focus on being a more straightforward genre pic – a decision that raised a few eyebrows.

The film centers on Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), a wealthy investment banker who has everything but the one thing money can't buy – happiness. For his 48th birthday, his estranged brother Conrad (Sean Penn) gives him a voucher for a mysterious game operated by the equally mysterious Consumer Recreation Services. Nicholas initially rejects the gift, but curiosity gets the better of him and he agrees to participate. However, it doesn't take long before reality and the game become one and the same, and Nicholas finds himself caught in a web of conspiracy that grows tighter the more he tries to escape. It's classic thriller stuff and would make for perfect late-night viewing for someone looking to escape into the fantastical world of movies. It's the sort of thing Alfred Hitchcock excelled at, and while it's an oversimplification to say that that's all the film has going for it – touches of psychological thriller era Brian De Palma are scattered throughout, alongside the occasional moment of surrealism that feels closer to what Charlie Kaufman would later popularize – it's undeniably a more crowd-pleasing experience than Fincher's previous work.

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