The Show (2017)

At first glance "This is Your Death" poses a horrific, unimaginable concept - a new reality tv show in which people commit suicide in front of a live studio audience in exchange for a financial settlement for their loved ones left behind. However, history has given us such violence in the form of gladiators, public executions and online content depicting torture & murder to name a few. Mix this with the seemingly never ending influx of reality shows, serving up increasingly bigger, bolder concepts and shock & awe tactics, it worryingly doesn't seem entirely unbelievable for such a show to exist in our future.The characters are fairly predictable - from the cold hearted, soulless TV executive concerned most about ratings and the bottom line, to the individuals struggling in their lives and looking for a way out that the new reality show provides. Where this film differs is in its attempt to concentrate more on the heart of the people involved rather than simply go down the "gore fest" route. We follow the shows host in what begins with his dark moral compass seeing the show as a way to celebrate the value of life, before things inevitably spiral out of control leading towards its finale.The film holds up a dark mirror to us the audience - as however you come into watching it, be it intrigue or as a gore hound, you become as implicit as the reality show audience itself, giving warrant for a demand in depicting such suffering of human life.Overall it's an interesting morality play on our society's reaction to violence and darkness we see in the news/media everyday. Is this the next step in our (d)evolution?

We turn our blinders on to the ugliness of this world for there is so much ugliness. The news is a barrage of horrific tales. The internet is infinite with fact and fiction. Games and Apps claim our minds, throwing the white wool over our eyes to distract us, but the scars remain. And we are angry. We are hurt, broken, and mortified at the society that we live in today, and we want escape, an outlet to take us away. But the golden age of television is long dead and burnt to an ugly crisp, and Reality Television is king, shedding light on corners of life that maybe are better never to be known at all. But we got a taste for it now.Our attention spans have shrunken down to the size of dimes, and we may only remember yesterday. But days long ago, ugly videos have crept across the internet, showing horrific scenes of death. In the late nineties, there was a series called, Faces of Death, and even Saddam Hussein's execution was live and viral. Some of us didn't turn away. We watched instead as the lights went out and blood was shed, and maybe we even told ourselves that this was entertainment. But how hard have we fallen to become primal once again, bent on other people's misery and even their death?The sad truth is that we are numb to misery and death. It is no longer fiction. It is entertainment from shows such as Scare Tactics to Ridiculousness to Law & Order True Crime. We have a taste for it. We need it to forget our own ugliness, our own scars and lose ourselves in the lives of others, but what if those others took their lives right before us? Would we look away? Would we feel something, or would we want more, maybe even believing that their death would be justified by a kind deed or promise of a better future? But what kind of future awaits us, if we treat death as nothing but a circus act? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, a hard lesson learned for one, who has spun death around and around like a wheel of fortune, only to have it stop on another's fate, but in the face of death, he could not let go. And in that sacrifice for life did our numbness break for we are not barbarians. We are human, and we feel. And we hate to feel for there is too much ugliness to this life, but sometimes, we need a strong dose of reality to bring us back from the brink. And like with Disconnect and Trust comes The Show, another blunt movie to peel back the layers of society and make us question who we are.

The story/writing was very interesting and what hooked me into watching this film. Right from the start, the score was overbearing. All the main actors except for Giancarlo Esposito (who's performance was outstanding) gave a poor performance, especially Josh Duhamel. What's with this guys cone-head helmet hair? The directing was decent but could have been much better, especially in directing the actors to better perform as most were unconvincing. It's a shame, as this film had a lot of potential. Still, a decent watch and a 7/10 from me.

To compare this to the masterpiece that is Network is an insult, this film is shallow and just plain stupid, the characters have no realism whatsoever because the majority of them lack the empathy of real human beings at least the ones behind the show, if you want to watch a film that has no grounding in reality with a bunch of suicide scenes and a the pointless message that making money off people's deaths is wrong then yeah enjoy, seriously I don't see the point? It's not shocking and it's not controversial it's just boring.