In ‘Series 7,’ Contestants Can Really Lose

A dark satire on the current rage for “Survivor�-type shows, “Series 7� posits a weekly program called “The Contenders� in which, rather than just being voted off, unlucky contestants are literally offed. “Real people in real danger of their lives,� the promos promise, and that’s what is delivered.

Written and directed by Daniel Minahan, himself a survivor of tabloid newsmagazines, “Series 7’s� premise of reducing those kinds of shows to absurdity--not that great a distance, it turns out--is a promising one, but it sounds better than it actually plays. Intriguing for the first reel, the concept gets tedious surprisingly fast and, even at a short 85 minutes, isn’t really suited to feature length.

The notion that anyone can be turned into a killer if the inducements are right is a potentially provocative one, but “Series 7� muddies the water by fudging on the details. Though the six contestants (five plus the reigning champion) are chosen at random, given a weapon and assigned a cameraman, it’s not clear who is forcing them to participate and what the authorities think about all this mayhem. Allusions to an underground opposition hint that the government is in fact the sponsor, but it’s all left irritatingly vague.

What couldn’t be clearer is who the current top dog is. That would be Dawn “Bloody Mama� Lagarto (Brooke Smith), eight months pregnant and unmarried, who explains her kill record by saying, “All I can allow myself to think about is my baby.�

A chip-on-her-shoulder type whose success on “The Contenders� has allowed her to feel she’s made something of her life, Dawn has to go back to her fictional hometown of Newbury, Conn., (the film was shot in Danbury) for this seventh in the “Contender� series. “As the competition mounts,� the voice-over bombastically blares, “Dawn confronts her past but can’t escape the present.�

Dawn’s rivals are a mixture of ages, sexes and stereotypes. They include:

* Connie (Marylouise Burke), a devout Catholic who gets huffy about Dawn’s single-mom status. “She’s unkempt,� Connie says. “She has no morality that I can see.� An emergency room nurse especially deft with needles, Connie believes, “God never gives us more than we can handle.�

* Franklin (Richard Venture), a cranky senior citizen, 72 years old and proud of it, as dangerous with a crutch as with an automatic weapon.

* Jeff (Glenn Fitzgerald), a suicidal artist stricken (get the laugh track ready) with testicular cancer and, it turns out, a former high school classmate of Dawn’s.

* Lindsay (Merritt Wever), a teenager with especially meddlesome parents who has as much trouble pronouncing semiautomatic as using one.

* Tony (Michael Kaycheck), an unemployed husband and father who proves that being on the show is not good for your marriage. Looking like a “Sopranos� reject, he insists his rivals need to watch their backs.

“Series 7� is in effect a marathon group of “Contender� shows combining video of murder attempts, both successful and otherwise, with cozy, up-close-and-personal interviews in which contestants get to say things like “sometimes you get so angry and so confused all you can think of to do is go out and kill.� It’s all held together by the voice-over, which provides philosophical bits like “the rules are as simple as life and death,� “the prize is the only prize that counts, your life� and the always popular “these cats don’t have nine lives.�

One of the problems with “Series 7� is these “real� people don’t feel especially real or particularly interesting. There’s not a trace of nuance in the pedestrian dialogue, and the film’s forays into dark humor aren’t noticeably funny. Getting progressively less involving as it goes along, the strongest feeling “Series 7� creates is the passionate desire to change the channel and move on.

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* MPAA rating: R, for strong violent content and language. Times guidelines: The violence is supposedly played for satiric purposes.

‘Series 7’

Brooke Smith: Dawn

Marylouise Burke: Connie

Glenn Fitzgerald: Jeff

Michael Kaycheck: Tony

Richard Venture: Franklin

Merritt Wever: Lindsay

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An October Films presentation of a Blow Up Pictures presentation of a Killer Films/Open City Films production, released by USA Films. Director Daniel Minahan. Producers Jason Kliot & Joana Vicente, Christine Vachon & Katie Roumel. Executive producer Charles J. Rusbasan. Screenplay Daniel Minahan. Cinematographer Randy Drummond. Editor Malcolm Jamieson. Costumes Christine Beiselin. Music Girls Against Boys. Production design Gideon Ponte. Art director Ann McKinnon. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.