The dying game

She almost auditions until she's spooked by something she over hears another actress say. A friend of Gre Read all. Van Dirk Fisher Karen Page. See more at IMDbPro. Photos Add photo. Top cast Edit. Phillip Andre Botello Cj as Cj. Damion Lee Damion as Damion. Dwayne A. Thomas Security Guard as Security Guard. Frances Lozada Delores as Delores. Liesel Leddin Alison as Alison. Rick Apicella Rick as Rick. Top review. If you have already watched a slasher, you have already watched this movie.

A mysterious serial killer is killing the members of a sorority, so a detective begins to investigate, and falls in love with the final girl, a gorgeous woman is killed in the shower in a reference to "Psycho" , and there is a plot twist that makes no sense what is actually common in slashers. Practically no gore. If you enjoy slashers, you may like the movie, but do not expect to watch a classic, or to see gore, if it is what you like.

Details Edit. Country of origin United States. Paihnidi thanatou. Rampant Lion Productions. Technical specs Edit.

Runtime 1 hour 30 minutes. This is not the sort of movie Matt Damon would star in. Or Kate Beckinsale. No no no. This would be a subtle art house film, full of European actors you've never heard of. They wouldn't have beautiful skin and teeth. This did also remind me of Agatha Christie in some ways too. Because it is meticulously plotted and too much is never revealed but enough is visible in hindsight.

It is not a character study in a 21st century Americans-spill-their-guts kind of way. It is European in mood and expression. Hello, the author is Swedish. Happily, it was just what I needed and I thank the author again and again. You can try to figure it out as you go or just enjoy the ride, and once it is done you'll wonder who really got it right. And you'll feel a little tired and worn out yourself. But what a lovely ride. Jul 25, Danielle Steenrod rated it it was ok. This is one of those books where the synopsis makes the book sound better than it actually is.

I wanted action, suspense, and unexpected twists and what we got was just a boring book with not much plot and an annoying main character. Anna is offered a chance to comfortably live with her daughter for the rest of their lives if she agrees to collaborate with the government and be part of a test for a top-secret intelligence position.

All she has to do is fake her own death and then spy on the cand This is one of those books where the synopsis makes the book sound better than it actually is. All she has to do is fake her own death and then spy on the candidates and report back how each handles the pressure of her unexpected murder. Sounds like it would make a pretty interesting and entertaining read, right? I was so bored reading this that I had to force myself to finish it. My biggest issue was that I did not connect with any of the characters.

Our main character, Anna, was boring and annoying. I hated every decision she made, starting with leaving her daughter to live with her mother for her entire life. This really made me sad that she didn't care to have a relationship with her daughter. I have a really hard time liking a story if I don't like the main characters, or in this case, any of the characters at all.

If Anna didn't make such dumb decisions, I might have been able to get over the boring plot. But no. She just got more annoying as the book went on. She made horrible decisions that I just did not agree with and spent the majority of the book pining after unrequited love.

This book is supposed to take place in the future, but I did not get that feel at all. It seemed like the story could have taken place in present time and it would have had zero effect on the story. This book is supposed to be a dystopian society but the book didn't go into world descriptions at all besides talking about some sort of war.

You get no information on the war or the world whatsoever, besides the fact that our main character was in charge of a refugee camp. I wish the world had been described a little bit more so we could get a better dystopian vibe and a little more insight as to what was going on.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. Publication date is August 1, Thank you to Penguin's First to Read Program for a copy of this book in return for an honest review. This is the kind of thriller I didn't even know I needed. The kind where everyone has a different role to play in a game but in the end the details get so messed up. Some parts were a little predictable but the ending was just perfect.

The bit at the end where it's explained that its all based on a silly childhood game really fucked me up inside. Sep 09, Colleen rated it liked it Shelves: whodunnit , thriller. Which is fine and there are parts of this book that are very strong but ultimately weak overall. Not really a big deal when this book is such a fast read--really the slimness of this hurts it, because it's why it fails ultimately I think. Future dystopia where Russia controls all of Europe in some bleak Union of Friendship and the main character Anna in Sweden, a bureaucrat recovering after unnamed horrors I was expecting Agatha Christie but got served RL Stein in the guise of like Stanislaw Lem.

Future dystopia where Russia controls all of Europe in some bleak Union of Friendship and the main character Anna in Sweden, a bureaucrat recovering after unnamed horrors in war zone, is tasked with faking her own death on a island with no way off, hiding in the walls, and scoring the rest of the applicants in how they deal with the ensuing fall out and accusations of murder.

We should have had a look into everyone's file or at least why the people called to the island are important instead just hints and guesses. I see how many have already complained that it's not a true murder mystery and it's not really.

There's no real investigation or scoring or suspects--the events are too sped up and micromanaged to allow for that and again the other characters, besides maybe Henry, are not fleshed out at all. Then a few twists and a couple of surprises and the book is over.

Besides being a murder mystery without a real mystery, it was too shallow I think to really depict some futuristic nightmare successfully either. What it does succeed at if you ignore all the above quibbles is like an adult Lois Duncan novel, and the best parts are her coming around from her faked death, the scramblings in the wall, and when she was being active.

Sep 12, Linda Robinson rated it it was ok. As in absent human emotion. Anna is a government Union of Friendship worker, employed as we don't know. Could be an analyst, could be a psychological evaluator, could be anything. The author doesn't enlighten us. Henry is a government worker employed as we don't know. Could be an analyst Totalitarian as the author wants UofF to be, Anna's mother has been drummed from the Party, but she's still alive and in her father's non-UofF-acceptable home.

Telling us totalitarian and th Cold. Telling us totalitarian and then not writing the evidence. Something happened on Anna's last embedded assignment, one on which she shouldn't have been. Also murky. The new assignment, which she is neither qualified for, nor well enough to undertake puts her, Henry and several other characters on an island for 48 hours.

No way off. We're told there's no way on, but people run around the island looking for an intruder anyway, which serves as a plot device, but also served to make me want to skip ahead.

Frankly, the title is bad; the subtitle actually gives away a major plot element. Neither twisty nor exciting. If Avdic had stuck with cold related to the shell-shocked inability to get warm, and the demeanor of state government, stayed with Anna and given us more background, the novel would have moved from cold to chilling.

As it stands, this is an ok read with a predictable ending. There were definitely some nice ideas behind it and I quit liked the writing style. However, it took much to long until the real experiment began in in that time we only had Anna's sad backstory, that was done ok, and people just judging each other and having superficial conversations.

I never really got why we needed Henry's perspective, I think the whole thing would have worked just as well without it, especially before Anna faked her death he offered nothing to the story. The experiment itself w There were definitely some nice ideas behind it and I quit liked the writing style. The experiment itself was over way too fast and suddenly the author was throwing millions of plot twists at me. All in all, I liked where it was going just fine, but it was so sudden and so much that I stopped caring about them really quick.

I thought the last scene with Anna was well done and introduced a lot of very interesting facts about this world, but everything that led to it would have needed some adjustments, I guess, but I really don't know how it could have been done except for taking more time with it, but since the first half was so dragged already, I wouldnt have liked that either. All in all, nice idea but it just didnt work. Maybe it would be better as a film, but I don't know. Jul 31, Jasmine rated it liked it.

Thanks to Penguin for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review. Government agencies. Murder game. Instead, I got Anna, a single mother, goes to work each day trying to forget her past and stay out of the limelight. She was managing her life but not really living it when a summons comes from the Chairman of a Thanks to Penguin for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

She was managing her life but not really living it when a summons comes from the Chairman of a highly dangerous government agency, RAN.

RAN has an open position, and while they don't want Anna herself to fill it, they ask her to help them determine the correct candidate for the position by participating in a field test. Anna's roll? To pretend to be a candidate herself until she fakes her own death and then observe the others reactions from hidden rooms.

Simple enough, right? Things fall apart almost as soon as the program begins when Anna realizes she knows one of the candidates, but when the other candidates start to die, Anna must decide whether she will follow government orders or her gut. The beginning of The Dying Game was a strange combination of too slow and diving in too fast. It felt like being dropped in a pool of molasses. The author, Advic, plopped you in the moment the action began while withholding backstory that you needed to make sense of the plot.

I knew I needed to keep swimming to get the answers, but the plot was moving so slowly I wanted to give up and drown. I persevered, and ended up being glad that I did. Once Anna begins the program, the pace picks up considerably. Advic makes good use of multiple perspectives to answer our questions while adding more to our list.

My Clue vision of this book was brought to fruition in a few scenes. However, the dystopian setting almost seemed to be a distraction. The meat of this story, that of the test, seems like it could have been performed by any current government agency, at least in fiction. The book is set twenty years in the future, but with the exception of the political details, it reads like contemporary fiction.

There was also much more of a psychological thriller aspect than I anticipated. What the government agency does is just twisted. Anna was a fascinating character. She began the book quite flat, but Advic added layer after layer until she became someone with compromised morals and real emotional issues. Anna somehow showed a personality that was confident and insecure, and while that could have come across as inconsistent writing, instead it appears to be her personality mixing with what her life experiences have done to her.

Overall, a ok quick read, but I would recommend it more for someone interested in the mind games of the government than a dystopian world. Jun 11, angharad rated it it was ok. Aug 04, TheRavenking rated it it was ok Shelves: owned , 21st-century , mystery , scandinavian-literature. This makes the book sound awfully tempting especially since I could never resist a new take on the Christie novel.

After all, is there a greater concept than a few people trapped in a remote location getting picked off one-by-one by a ruthless killer? So, I had certain expectations towards the book, unfortunately they were not fulfilled. First we are treated to a very short introduction of a only a few passages which tells us, that in Sweden became a Protectorate under the Union of Friendship whatever this means.

Apparently it is not a democratic country anymore. Some sort of dictatorship was installed and … well, I wish I could tell you more, but the author is not exactly forthcoming with explanations.

So, I kept wondering throughout: What exactly happened and why, but we never find out. This whole dystopian angle remains very vague, it is not more than an annoying gimmick, and I believe the story could have easily worked without it. Our story takes place in the year Anna Francis is leading a miserable life. She is in a very bad physical and mental state since she took part in a humanitarian mission in Kyzl Kum obviously a fictional name for some Middle Eastern?

It is also hinted at, that Anna made some mistakes on this mission. Now she has a chance to redeem herself when she is selected for a special assignment. She appeared to have aged ten years since we last saw each other.

From thin to emaciated, from pale to transparent. Her skin seemed to strain across her skull, and what used to be sharp features were now more like gouges. It was clear that the project in Kyzl Kum had been no vacation. On the contrary, it seemed to have cost her a great deal. Despite all this there is just not enough going on with her character, she is simply a decent person trying to survive in a not so decent world Later we are introduced to Henry, our other main character.

Henry and Anna were almost romantically involved once. It is difficult to say, who will enjoy The Dying Game the most, those hoping for a well-thought-out dystopia will most likely be as disappointed as readers expecting a smart new take on the Agatha Christie classic, still it is far from a terrible book, it just seems a bit pointless and superficial.

Jul 12, Rachel rated it did not like it. When I read what this book was about I was so excited But the story I had made up in my head of what I wanted this book to be was so much better than the reality of actually reading the book. It read a lot like "Annihilation" by Jeff Vandermeer which I also did not enjoy.. I found it super vague, very anti-climactic and generally disappointing. Not at all as advertised and if someone had told me what the book was actually about I wouldn't have even thought of picking it up off the shelf.

Jun 24, Carli rated it did not like it. There were just too many holes in this story. In a totalitarian dystopian future Sweden, a foreign aid worker with PTSD is given an assignment that she can't turn down: go to an island, fake your death, and watch how the other "candidates" respond.

Everything, of course, goes wrong and Anna discovers an entirely different plot happening behind the scenes. With very little background information given and a lack of character development, it was hard to really care about the story. I picked it up from a desk in a library where the most borrowed books lie An island? I have to say that I have started to read it three times. Read a couple of pages Then, a vacation, enough time for reading Finally, I came over the first chapter and met Anna.

I was in. How did I know that? Whenever I wanted to look at the final chapter, the last pages, I knew that I will not be able to leave this book until I finish it. I like that kind of riddles. Two groups. Two no-name investigators, a woman, a man.