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Do You Want to Play? Review
Image Credit: Nick Lyon
Loading...Do You Want to Play? Review
Quinn Aune– Emily
Leo Larson– Tommy
Maxwell Mushallo– Owen
Ricco Ross– Scary Gary
Atlas Gunes– Mr. Rotaru
Rachael Murphy– Michelle
G. Anthony Joseph– Dr. Velasquez
(check out the rest of the cast here)
Directed by Nick Lyon
Screenplay by Nick Lyon
Produced by Mad World Creative
Runtime– 97 minutes
https://www.instagram.com/doyouwanttoplayfilm/
Do You Want to Play?, a new low-budget horror flick from writer/director Nick Lyon that just had its world debut at FrightFest in the UK, is a sort of new take on the old “young people start messing around with an Ouija board and bad stuff happens” horror subgenre. There’s also a good heaping of gross out sort of slasher movie gore, featuring a vengeful ghost that would look right at home in a modern slasher movie. Do You Want to Play? is also a horror flick with a deeply unsettling look and tone, which is how it keeps the audience guessing as to what’s going to happen next. I’m not entirely sure I like the ending, but the killer song that plays over the end credits more than makes up for whatever misgivings I might still have about the end of the movie.
Do You Want to Play? stars Quinn Aune as Emily, a high school student with a seizure condition that starts to experience what amounts to weird as hell supernatural events after going to a marketing event where a fellow student, Owen (Maxwell Mushallo), debuts an app that was originally conceived as a school project. The app, known as D3mon, is essentially a digital Ouija board. As part of the debut of the app, Emily participates in using a regular old Ouija board in the house where a horrible murder took place five decades ago. Now, as we see in the beginning of the movie, this horrible murder involved a male child and his father and the child apparently being possessed by a supernatural force, killing his father, and then removing his father’s face. This child would then grow up to be the serial killer Ward Weaver (William Sibley). So Emily uses the old Ouija board during the D3mon app debut and apparently experiences something supernatural. The thing Emily experiences is something that only she can see, although she is recorded by her fellow students during this supernatural encounter and that recording goes viral on the internet. What the heck did Emily see?
Basically, Emily saw what could be described as the ghost of Ward Weaver, with Weaver as an adult wearing a mask of a face of a person he killed and then cut their face off. It’s terrifying, but was it real?
So then some stuff happens, Emily tries to get some sleep at home while alone (Emily’s mother, Michelle, as played by Rachael Murphy, has to go on a business trip), and she starts experiencing more weird as hell events, like the Ouija board from the app debut event showing up outside of her bedroom door. What the hell is that about? There’s a suspicion that these experiences are being caused by Emily’s seizure condition and her not taking her anti-seizure medication regularly (it makes her feel sick), but how would that explain the Ouija board just showing up? Was that just a hallucination? While all of that is going on, Owen finds out that his teacher Mr. Rotaru (Atlas Gunes) gave him a “C” on his D3mon app project, a grade that Owen doesn’t agree with at all. And while all of that is going on, the D3mon app starts showing up on everyone’s phone even though absolutely no one made an effort to download it to their phones. How the hell could that happen?
So then some more stuff happens, Mr. Rotaru looks at the code of the D3mon app and becomes concerned, Owen also looks at the D3mon app code and tries to figure out how it downloaded itself onto everyone’s phone, and Emily is “visited” by a demon ghost girl that looks like her for some reason. Emily’s boyfriend Tommy (Leo Larson) starts to become concerned about what his girlfriend is going through. He was there at the D3mon app debut and he saw what everyone else there saw and can’t explain what has happened since then to Emily. And while all of that is going on, one of Emily’s classmates is killed under mysterious circumstances while working underneath a car in a garage. Did that have something to do with the D3mon app, an app that no one can explain how it got on their phones and no one can remove from their phones? And how does the whole Ward Weaver thing figure into all of this?
Emily’s experiences keep happening and grow more alarming with each encounter. She eventually goes to see a therapist (Dr. Velasquez, as played by the great G. Anthony Joseph) to find out what is really happening. A Catholic priest turned YouTube/internet influencer called “Scary Gary” (Ricco Ross) also gets involved later on. Is Emily actually experiencing some sort of supernatural torment that has something to do with messing around with the Ouija board, and how does it connect to the D3mon app? And, again, what does Ward Weaver have to do with any of this?
And why the heck would a digital Ouija board app keep asking people “Do you want to play?”
I love how Do You Want to Play? starts off with a scene involving spooky CGI mist being transferred from one person to another and a child cutting off someone’s face and then that child wearing that cut off face like a mask. It’s absolutely insane to start off any sort of horror movie like that, especially when you find out that the bulk of the movie is about multiple Ouija boards, one that’s an actual physical thing and one that is a digital app. How the heck is bloody face removal going to connect to some bullshit about an Ouija board? Thankfully, writer/director Nick Lyon manages to connect the two ideas and makes an unsettling horror movie. And on top of that, Lyon also makes a horror movie about an Ouija board seem sort of new. That’s a huge deal.
The look of Do You Want to Play? is fantastic. The cinematography from Jeffrey Carolan is sharp and colorful, which gives the movie a sense of life that you sometimes don’t see in Ouija board horror flicks. And this color scheme and overall look makes the vengeful ghost parts of the movie freaky as hell. Both the Ward Weaver and the ghost girl moments seem a bit “too real” compared to everything else that we see. I wish more genre flicks tried out this look.
The movie’s special effects are top notch. From the practical effects, like the face carving sequence, to the CGI moments, they all look great and fit together and nothing looks out of place. It’s obvious that director Lyon and company spent a lot of time making sure everything in the movie looks right.
The cast of Do You Want to Play? is phenomenal. Quinn Aune does a great job as Emily Lawson, the teen girl that finds herself the focus of an evil supernatural force. Emily is a fairly typical teen girl that is just trying to live her life. She seems well adjusted enough, she has her friends in school, and she’s clearly into her boyfriend Tommy. Emily’s seizure issue is something that doesn’t define her and she does the best she can living with it. When she becomes the focus of the evil spirits apparently unleashed by the Ouija board, and when you find out what lurks in her background, it’s goddamn tragic and you end up rooting for Emily more than you did when you first meet her. I think Aune could have a terrific career in the horror genre if she chooses to pursue it.
Maxwell Mushalo does a fine job as Owen, the smart and somewhat popular kid that develops the D3mon app and then tries to help his friend Emily in her time of great need. At first, Owen is kind of annoying because he refuses to accept responsibility for what he created with the D3mon app. Even when he is told by his teacher Mr. Rotaru that his app is dangerous and he never should have created it in the first place, Owen doesn’t want to believe it. It’s just an app. But Owen does, eventually, come around when he delves into the code of his app and sees what happens to Emily. You will root for him to succeed when he teams up with Tommy to help Emily towards the end of the movie. If only the world had more mildly responsible tech creators like Owen.
Leo Larson does a nice job as Tommy, Emily’s boyfriend. Tommy is a perpetually good guy that clearly loves Emily and wants to do whatever he can to help her at all times. Even when he has a hard time believing in the possible supernatural aspects of what is happening to Emily, Tommy is still very much into helping her anyway (basically, he doesn’t dismiss her as crazy, which he easily could have done). I think some people may look at Tommy as too nice of a guy and “too good,” but I think you need to look at what he wore as his costume to the big app party. Tommy showed up with a fake meat cleaver through his head and a blood covered shirt. The guy clearly has a “cool horror fan” side to him that has to be respected.
Atlas Gunes does a good job as Mr. Rotaru, the teacher that tries to explain to Owen that his D3mon app is a really, really bad thing. Lyon could have easily made the entire movie about Mr. Rotaru both discovering that the D3mon app is evil and then trying to help Owen deal with what he unleashed. Mr. Rotaru has some sort of “old world” religious background that could be explored in a sequel somehow. I would have liked to see more of Mr. Rotaru, but I get why the movie couldn’t focus more on him. The movie isn’t his story. But, again, I would have like to see more from him.
Ricco Ross does an amazing job as Scary Gary, the priest turned internet influencer. Much like Mr. Rotaru, writer/director Lyon could have made the entire movie about Scary Gary if he had wanted to. Scary Gary is that interesting. I was disappointed by what happens to Scary Gary, but it makes sense and I can’t be that upset by it. Maybe there will be a Do You Want to Play? prequel one of these days all about Scary Gary? I’d like to know how he became a full on YouTube guy.
The movie could have used more of G. Anthony Joseph’s Dr. Velasquez, mostly because it would have been interesting to see a therapist (what amounts to a scientist) deal with something that couldn’t possibly be real but somehow is.
Like I said at the beginning, I’m not entirely sure I like the way the story resolves itself. I do like how the potential sequel sets itself up, using the old reliable “absolutely no one has learned a goddamn thing about any of this shit” plot, but does the main plot end satisfactorily? I don’t know. Sometimes I think it does, and sometimes I think the movie peters out at the end. I probably need to see it again to make a final decision. At least the song that plays over the end credits, also called “Do You Want to Play?,” kicks all kinds of ass. That kind of thing matters.
Do You Want to Play? is a well-made and entertaining low-budget horror flick. I’m still amazed that writer/director Nick Lyon found a way to make an Ouija board horror flick seem almost new. If you find Do You Want to Play? appearing at a film festival near you, be sure to make an effort to see it. If that isn’t possible for you, be sure to keep your eyes open for when it hits streaming and or home video. Do You Want to Play? is definitely worth seeing.
See Do You Want to Play?. See it, see it, see it.
So what do we have here?
Dead bodies: 4
Explosions: None. There are some big fires, though, so there is that.
Nudity?: None.
Doobage: A room that somehow doesn’t seem real. A foot chase. Face slapping. Chest stabbing. Weird supernatural black mist. Face changing. Bloody face removal. High school hooey. An app presentation. A special necklace. Hugging. Commercial filming hooey. Computer code. An old house. Ouija board hooey. Evil spirit hooey. A seizure condition. Medication. A door that opens by itself somehow. More computer code. A trending video. Face washing. An influencer video. Car fixing. Hammer dropping. Kid crushed by car. A girl in a cage. Bloody skin picking. A funeral. Multiple scary visions. Therapist hooey. Arm biting. A potential Nazi belt buckle (it’s what it looks like to me). Jealousy. More face slapping. Attempted seduction. Attempted exorcism. A levitating Ouija board. Exorcism bullshit. Meat cleaver to the head. An argument. A circle of candles. Multiple “Force” chokes. A basement fire. A burning house. The set up for the sequel.
Kim Richards? Yes. Big time.
Gratuitous: Bloody face removal. A story about a school janitor that hanged himself in the gymnasium. System failure. A costume party. A fake meat cleaver through the head appliance. Ouija board bullshit. Spirit strangulation. A ghost girl. A giant pumpkin skeleton yard decoration. Death by car. A dream. Old Romanian stories about evil spirits. “Bad eyes.” A school montage. The school track team. Saint Benedict medallions. Religious objects that only “work” when you believe in them. “Lord protect these two.” “Do you want to play, Gary?” What sounds like Latin. A demon scream. A news update. Reading out the exorcism rite. “Be gone, Satan!” Six years later.
Best lines: “Interesting presentation, Oh.” “What’s next? Goat sacrifices? Only on Wednesdays. Mondays are for updates.” “I didn’t even download this.” “Envy doesn’t suit you.” “What’s next? Flying tomatoes?” “There’s no way I’m touching that thing.” “This is ridiculous.” “I don’t want to live here anymore.” “Do you know the Romanian word for cursed?” “It’s just an app.” “It’s inside you.” “It’s just code.” “I swear, I’m gonna strangle Owen.” “She’s not herself, Tommy.” “Ghost data doesn’t answer back.” “Are you ashamed of me because you think I’m crazy?” “I’m scaring me.” “So, he’s a priest turned influencer?” “I didn’t install this.” “You’re not real!” “So, you really don’t care?” “We didn’t have time to fill out church paperwork?” “Owen, you crave me. I can feel it burning inside you.” “This is so creepy. It smells like something is rotting.” “I don’t think we should play with this anymore.”
