Movie Reviews

Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (the duo that wrote the okay-ish Horrible Bosses and Spider-Man: Homecoming), Game Night is about the competitive couple Annie (Rachel McAdams) and Max (Jason Bateman) who look forward to game night with their friends every single week.

That game night gets taken to the next level when Max’s annoyingly successful brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) shows up and drags the couple and their friends into an elaborate murder mystery that doesn’t take long to completely derail. Not in the least because Brooks actually gets kidnapped by a bunch of dudes who are not part of the play.

From there on, everything goes and it’s one twist after the other thanks to a clever script by Mark Perez that keeps throwing you for a loop and ultimately ends up in Absurdistan. The chemistry between McAdams and Bateman is pretty strong and Bateman’s deadpan look alone helps lift the film to another level (as it does in Ozark). But it’s not just them. The supporting cast offers plenty of solid moments as well. There’s Kevin (Lamorne Morris) who is weirdly eager to find out which celebrity his wife slept with after a particularly awkward round of Never Have I Ever, and then there’s Jesse Plemons who steals every scene he’s in as the couple’s neighbor desperate to get invited to their weekly game night.

Like a more lighthearted version of David Fincher’s 1997 thriller The Game, Game Night keeps you guessing right up until the end. Meanwhile, it stays funny for its entire 100-minute running time, which is no small feat, and on top of that it manages to keep out any notion of standard Hollywood sentimentality. All of that combined makes Game Night an undisputed winner.