Have you ever been at a point in your life where you just wanted to throw in the towel and be done with it all? Perhaps you’re sitting in a nice cushy massage chair pondering the mysteries of life when all of a sudden you are presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. The opportunity set forth is a Squid Game-esque competition in which the winner will find themselves and answers to questions about life and also a slightly used habanero-orange compact sport utility vehicle.
Would you be like Maria Barbizan (Susanne Wuest) in Oscilascope’s latest film Stanleyville? Maxwell McCabe-Lokos directional debut Stanleyville provides viewers with an interesting array of players that must undergo rather ridiculous but somehow entertaining challenges.
The film seems to lack answers to questions that may arise and I feel as though this might have been the point. I must admit that I thought as soon as she was presented with the “sales pitch” that this was going to be another Squid Games. This would be the satirical version in my opinion though. It did seem to offer the sense of “I must know who wins and how did they win”.
I wouldn’t call this film a gem however, I do think it is worth a watch. In all of its bizarre and quirky antics, it turned out to be somewhat thought-provoking. Perhaps not in the way of finding out what the meaning of life is but more so who those characters really were and why they are truly there.
3 out of 5
