Nemesis Game [Import]

Personally, I hate riddles - but the characters in this movie certainly love them. College student Sara Novak (Carly Pope) spends her nights wandering through seedy parts of town trying to solve riddles/puzzles assigned to her by her own little riddle guru, comic book store owner Vern (Adrian Paul). It's all fun and games of course (well, games, anyway - I can't say any of it was fun) until someone gets hurt (or violently murdered). It turns out that there's a much bigger game in town, one that promises enlightenment to whoever makes his/her way to the end. Ultimate insight into the Design is not easily won, however - this is a most dangerous game.

Vern is none too happy to discover that Sara has started playing the Nemesis game, ostensibly because players either end up dead or stark raving mad (even the winners). If ever there were a game where nobody really wins, it's this one. As if the whole concept of the Nemesis game isn't bad enough, watching Sara and Vern go about their riddle-obsessed lives is torturously boring. The only halfway interesting person in the entire film is one of Sara's classmates who (for reasons I can't fathom) actually finds the young lady mysterious and intriguing, to the point that he is determined to find out what she does at night - the poor dope apparently has no life whatsoever.

Maybe this film is meant to serve as a larger metaphor for life - or maybe there's no meaning whatsoever to take away from it. Personally, I'm going with the latter choice. With its depressing atmosphere, uninteresting characters, convoluted plot, rather flimsy premise (to my way of thinking), and hackneyed ending, Nemesis Game never succeeded at pulling me in to its cinematic world. Some may find it to be an interesting, thinking person's film, but I found the whole experience pretentious at best. Even if you're one of the lucky ones who actually find something stimulating in this whole ordeal, the ending is likely to leave you feeling cheated. I really don't think your average horror fan is going to enjoy Nemesis Game very much at all; this is really much more of a psychological suspense thriller (with very little suspense and almost no thrills).

It beat my expectations I can say that much. Actually I thought it was really good while I was watching it, I was very interested in the story line and how it would end. BUT unfortunately they go ahead and ruin it with basically no ending. You are left with too many questions. It just leaves you hanging, which would be fine if they were planning on making a sequel, but we know thats not happening. So I have it at 3 stars, I took a star off because of the ending.

I Love Adrian Paul and I believe that he is beneath his acting ability in the choices he is making in the movie choices he is making. I have followed him since his fancy role as Highlander in the 90's ms. Pope is also a wonderful actress I have seen her work before on tv and in small parts in movies and think they should both reach higher, but they gave this movie the credability it needed and kept me on the edge of my seat. I searched every where to find out about this story since at the end they gave a record of everyones outcome I believed it was a TRUE story laugh if you like but desperate people do desperate things and I was obsessed with finding out if this story was true or not... needless to say I couldn't find anything to verify the story, but that is how much it got to me, and I know the abrutness annoyed alot of people, but that is what really got to me the most because that is life folks, things don't drag out till you get your happy ending all the time do they, the car hits a tree, the fire burns out of control, someone hits your cat. it's over. Period. And I think that is why we were all so shook up and left so mouth hanging open and stunned by the real life of it all. TY isn't supposed to give us that. It's supposed to give us an nice happy ending in about 30 min. and send us off feeling like we've just taken a valium and all is right with the world WAKE UP...Life Is Everywhere Even In the Idiot Box...