Kindan no ôsama geemu (1999)

"Kindan no ôsama geemu", aka "The Red Room", is a low budget Japanese film that sets four contestants against each other in a bizarre game show with a large fininical prize to awarded to the winner. The four players are interviewed one by one before the game begins and we learn that two of the contestants are married and are in a vary one sided, abusive relationship. The other two, a teen girl and a older girl in her mid/late twenties are also very focused on the prize for the their own reasons. The game is simple; each player turns over a card in front of them, if the card is a king, they get to choose two other players to perform some degrading, or perhaps dangerous or violent, act upon the each other. The winner is the last one to be able to still play. The film takes this concept to some extrememes, starting slowly and mildly before running straight into the the gruesome acts that await. There is a fair amount of character development, at least enough to reveal each players real motive for playing the game. The movie is creative considering it's minimal use for props and set. The most gruesome challenge involves a broken light bulb in a place that you should have a light bulb in the first place....