Cheap Thrills

A pitch-black satire that functions equally well as shockingly dark comedy and brutal, can't-look-away horror. It's well-made, well-acted, and the strong central conceit - an ever-escalating sequence of dares - is manna from heaven for this kind of low-budget indie gorefest. Excellent stuff.

Cheap Thrills is a definite success. It's a dark comedic thriller, one in which you watch people embarrass and injure themselves in order to entertain both some of its characters as well as the audience. It's wickedly funny, incredibly entertaining, wonderfully paced, and gives you far more food for thought than you'd expect from something that, on the surface, sounds like exploitation garbage. The performances are great, and there's a lot of intelligence to the screenplay. You should see it.

Cheap Thrills has a great premise that it executes well. The escalation of tasks and quickly eroding comradery work for a good illustration of greed and desperation. The tone shifts from comedically dark to downright grim; a facet mirrored in the lighting, making the final "lights-on" shot quite brilliant. The acting is good and the film succeeds in its plausibility despite being ridiculously farfetched at times.

Now that's a Hunger Games film. Despite the lack of subtlety, I really enjoyed the one night stand build-up -- the friendly encounter between two old friends ends up with lots of blood, a dead dog turned into food and one killing the other --, specially Agent Orange's Bloodstains playing after the last shot -- that was the song of my adolescence.

You keep waiting for David Koechner to break into Champ from Anchorman, but against all odds, he keeps it restrained, even though his character is doing coke through the whole movie. The dynamic between Pat Healy and Sara Paxton is almost jarring after seeing them together in The Innkeepers. And Ethan Embry. What? Aren't you the goofus from Empire Records? I guess we all grow up eventually.

Why should you watch Cheap Thrills? Well, it's not every day you get to see a man eat a dog (unless you work at a Chinese restaurant in Tijuana), and if you illegally download the film, the thrills won't get much cheaper than that! Bu-dum! But seriously, if you illegally download the film, the thrills won't get much cheaper than that! Bu-dum!

I had a blast watching this. Its greatest strength is its restraint. I could imagine a movie like this going way off the deep end; a myriad plot complications and unnecessary twists. But this had none of that. Instead it relied on tight writing, dark humor and good acting to tell a straightforward story. I predicted where it might go in general, but I never knew exactly how it would get there. I also didn't predict that it would have something interesting to say about human nature.

Despite the flat ending the rest of the movie was well made. Sara Paxton was mere a good face but Pat Healy in the lead was the best choice.

A moral tale exploring the dangers inherent in gambling. Includes violence, gore and frivolous use of money. I'm not sure which I find more disturbing.

Quite good dark humour and thrilling flick. The film shows the degradation of society through it's dark and twisted imagery. All four characters are well thought out and perverse in their own way. If you like a little sick and different movies definitely give 'er a go.

This is a fun movie. David Koechner as the bad guy is a treat. The movie is a little predictable, but I don't feel like that hurts it in any way. its just a good movie to get cheap thrills from. see what I did there? yeah, im ashamed too.

Brilliant, fantastic fun. Even a little profound. Great performances all-round.

Ramps up nicely and provides the promised cheap thrills. Nothing really more to it than that, though. And holy shit, Ethan Embry is completely believable playing totally against type.

Top badass moment? Seeing a viable alternative to Universal Credit; you don’t have to wait weeks for your money and you’re more likely to get it. This is a fun film that does everything pretty well. But it gets you thinking, would you do any of those things yourself for the money? It’s something to discuss in the pub with your mates before you, powered with the fortitude and bravery only beer can truly provide, go off and prove it. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations. But poor little dog!

Fits a lot into the short runtime and it does what it's trying to do perfectly.

Another take on the story done in Would You Rather (2012), with some shocking scenes where people are pushed to their limits for very little reason. By the book, and executed very well.

Good Sunday afternoon fodder. I would watch a sequel where the stakes are even higher.

A very effective thriller, but a bad comedy. Disturbing, but dynamic. Reminds me a lot of Hard Candy.

A little fun here and there. Nothing I'd necessarily recommend but has its moments.

Oh, capitalism~

Although it has its fair share of enjoyable moments, overall this movie mostly made me feel aversion. Its apparent pointlessness combined with its nastiness just didn't work that well for me. It feels like the kind of movie that would have sharp threads of social criticism weaved into its episodes of violence and dark humor, but this movie just... doesn't. Mildly enjoyable but not memorable or exceptional.

More interested in gradually upping the ante of shocks than telling a coherent and well-formed narrative. The commentary on desperation, poverty, the educated poor, etc. is all really glossed over like the writers realized there had to be some kind of character arc or grander point. But there isn't. It's aggressively unpleasant, and not in a very interesting way.

This film definitely isnt a comedy because there isnt much to laugh about but the simplicity of the plot is definitely a success. Some of the scenes are incredibly graphic and difficult to watch but delivered in a very captivating way. The motives for the characters taking part in the main story arc is well documented througout the film so its interesting to see how far they will go to get what they want. The film is quite entertaining but its not something I would watch again.

'Trickle down' in action; capitalists turn the middle against the working in a short, gross-out-twilight-zone-y allegory.

Seen this kind of thing a million times and it's never really that rewarding. It is a decent thriller tho. So I gotta give it props for that.

That's nasty!

78.500

Hard to recommend as there will be some parts that make people very uncomfortable. That is partially the point but it will definitely turn people off regardless. Many of these moments are darkly comedic and they do serve a point even if it's not the standard 'badpeople receive justice and good people get redemption' trope. I really liked it, and while I can look back and see some flaws related to story heightening I was too engrossed to care while watching.

Torture porn.

I wasn't expecting much from this. After seeing the trailer it looked more like a decent black comedy but somewhere along the line the comedy disappeared. Right from the off it didn't turn out to be the dark laugh I was hoping for. However it did turn out to be a half decent thriller with scenes that will make you squirm.

While the film acts as a fairly heavy-handed metaphor for the gruesomeness of capitalism with all the elaborate ways by which the ruling elite turns the working class on one another, there's a kind of pathos from the performances that keeps this film compelling as it chugs along to its obvious, inescapable conclusion.

This is one dark fucking movie.

Grows much darker than the trailer leads you to believe. Be prepared. Engrossing.

A little vignette-y, but a solid, if a little predictable, a-to-z ramp-up to inevitable conclusion. I do like the energetic filmmaking on display (especially with limited sets/cast/resources) so I look forward to this filmmaker's career, if they can move away from one-note hooky gimmicks.

A title has perhaps never been a better description for the movie. Predictable outcome, but the "what's next" concept kept me engaged.