The Incite Mill - 7 Day Death Game | インシテミル ７日間のデス・ゲーム [ Movie Review ] **1/2

The premise for The Incite Mill sound like a blend of Battle Royale and Liar Game The Final Stage. Like Liar Game The Final Stage, this group of people stands to win a huge amount of easy money by following very simple instructions while being confined in a enclosed place. Similar to Battle Royale, they soon discovered that they have been duped into a treacherous survival game and they are each given a unique weapon to participate in this game. While having similar concepts, The Incite Mill was nowhere as controversial nor suspenseful. It's so ridden with loopholes and poor characterization that it's hard to stay engage with the plot and character.

It started with ten people from various walks of life taking part in a short term job in a remote complex that pays extremely well. The job requires them to be monitored 24 hours for 7 days in a psychological experiment. They are each given a room and few simple instructions. The first instruction would be to return to their room by 10pm and the second instruction would be by the 7th day or when there are only two surviving members left alive, the experiment will come to an end.

If a murder is committed, a member of the group could deduce who the killer is and with the support from the rest of the group, the killer will be put away. In a sick twist to incite the players into murderous behavior, the detective, the deceased and the "convicted" murderer will all get a bonus sum of money. They also realize that in their individual rooms, a different weapon is planted to aid them in this psychological experiment. The next day, they discovered a dead body at the corridor and their cushy job has turned into a horrifying job.

What went wrong for The Incite Mill?

Head Squeeze!

First of all, it didn't make it a convincing argument that this experiment would incite someone to actually murder another person. Money baits and dubious characters were thrown into the mix but the movie lack the screen time and effort to effectively draw out the fractured personality of a person that would behave in such way. Contrasting this movie with the movie Cube (which handle proximity paranoia well), the latter had the captives thrown into enclosed maze without giving them the reason why or how they will be able to get out. In this movie, the participants were aware that they were monitored and it will only be 7 days before they are re-release back to normal life. Would anyone resort to killing his or her fellow participant? It's just seemed so unlikely and the film did very little to validate the murderer's motivation.

The second problem with the show would be how the rules were forgotten as the movie progressed. For every murder, someone in the group was supposed to figure out who was the murderer with the rest voting on that deduction. But after the first murder, this deduction and judgment process was conveniently forgotten until the plot awkwardly requires it again. 
 
There are the twists that were added into the climatic finale which felt pointless and bland. Such as the live streaming of the murders which was last seen in Untraceable. The issue of taking pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others seemed clumsily inserted and does nothing to incite emotion from viewers.

As a whodunit thriller, The Incite Mill would work if the viewer would not question the flawed plot devices and simply accept the movie for what it is. In the midst of movies with similar themes that were released recently (Kaiji the Ultimate Gambler and Liar Game the Final Stage), this movie pale in comparison in deploying witty games that intrigue and challenge the viewers. It also failed to create the doomed atmosphere in movies like Battle Royale and Cube that will draw out the primitive instinct to survive. It's a pity because this movie had potential and was a page turner until climatic revelation which turned out to be rather disappointing.

Movie: ** 1/2