MGFF MOVIE REVIEW: GAMING INSTINCT (SPIELTRIEB)



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Ada is an outsider. She is good at school and good at sport, but not particularly pretty and her classmates bully her because she is smarter than them. It all changes when the new boy, Alev arrives at school. Alev mystifies Ada. When a strange accident occurs during a school trip, the two begin a dangerous game of sex and blackmail. Pushed forward by the idea of the complete liberation, the two high schoolers go a little too far with their gaming instinct. Will they be able to find the way back?

GAMING INSTINCT is a darker version of CRUEL INTENTIONS. It is sexy, strange and completely mesmerising. It sends us back to the Dostoyevsky’s supremacy of one and puts it on its head. Young actors are pushing the boundaries of what is allowed on screen and the sympathy for the devil is what you feel all the way through. Who is the victim and who is a vicious manipulator? Is the greatest evil of all to abandon the things you believe in for the sake of love?

The movie is ominously shot with the gothic visuals of German little town and a tense cut for some nerve wrecking scenes. The soundtrack is carefully chosen, it’s a mix from independent musicians and the tunes are memorable and appropriate.


If you forgive its rather abrupt, unbelievable, but strangely uplifting ending and go along with the dark tone of the film, GAMING INSTINCT may be one of the few genuinely pleasant surprises you will come across this year.

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