Game: a tense British confinement thriller set to a backdrop of 1990s raves

Stephen King said he had a realisation while working on Cujo (1981), a book about a mother and child trapped in a car by a rabid dog, that after his more expansive, widescreen fictions about huge haunted hotels and entire towns taken over by vampires he was compelled to write “a low-budget novel”. Game, which has many elements in common with King’s novel and Lewis Teague’s 1983 film adaptation, is similarly free to make virtues of concision, brevity and a relatively confined setting.   

For a story rooted in a particular time and place – England in 1993 – John Minton’s debut feature avoids nostalgia except for gentle scorn towards outmoded tech: a mobile phone that needs its antenna extended, impossible for someone with a trapped and a broken arm. Given that Game is a first feature from Invada Records, an outfit run by Portishead co-founder Geoff Barrow – who also co-wrote and produced the film – it’s surprising that it doesn’t make more of the 90s rave soundscape. Marc Bessant’s feckless David has come from a rave, but isn’t much of an enthusiast for the scene – he steals drugs but only uses them as painkillers when injured. 

Sleaford Mods’ vocalist Jason Williamson plays an ex-military poacher who is actively hostile to a culture of “shit clothes, shit cars and shit music”. When he finds David trapped in a car after an accident, having wound up a window to kill an attacking dog, he writes him off as “a cunt”. Flashbacks suggest he’s not far off the mark – David has made a desultory attempt at robbing his parents while they are on holiday. And the poacher, first seen in a menacing black ski mask, feels entitled to enjoy watching a man die slowly because David has killed his dog.

The set-up recalls other films in which trapped protagonists are found by human or animal predators – Lady in a Cage (1964), Landmine Goes Click (2015) – and the use of a single, confined space for most of the film fits in with a run of recent suspense items about hapless characters stuck in coffins, lifts or toilets. As the title suggests, the film is content to play this game conventionally, up to a point. David doesn’t manage to unlock his seat belt until an hour into an 80-minute film, but then the last reel rings the changes on the confinement movie. The view expands almost to cosmic proportions as both characters hallucinate – David pours his stash into the poacher’s scrumpy – and the woods become a psychedelic cathedral abutting a no less surreal cosy garden centre.

► Game is in UK cinemas 21 November.