This Is Your Death | Film review - Reality TV satire goes over the edge

Reality TV gets it in the neck.

Mad as hell, Josh Duhamel’s traumatised game-show host wants to give America’s TV viewers a wake-up call. So with the aid of Famke Janssen’s heartless network executive, he devises a reality show that gives members of the public the opportunity to kill themselves live on television for money. Fostering empathy is his aim, but the initial idealism soon gets lost as the show’s ratings and the audience’s bloodlust rise.

Clearly inspired by 1976’s Oscar-winning Network, satirical thriller This Is Your Death (aka The Show) is both utterly implausible and thoroughly predictable. No prizes for guessing where the parallel narratives featuring Giancarlo Esposito’s struggling blue-collar family man and Sarah Wayne Callies’ pill-popping, emotionally fragile nurse are heading.

Certificate 18. Runtime 105 mins. Director Giancarlo Esposito

This Is Your Death debuts on Sky Cinema Premiere on 11 January. Available on Digital from Ace Entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5903Z5QSo

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.