Game Night (2018)

You wouldn’t expect a weekly game night held by a group of adult friends to result in much more than mild embarrassment and some spousal squabbling. But in this unusually twisty comedy, the mayhem of Max and Annie’s murder mystery night takes an authentically violent turn.

Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are an ultra-competitive couple but there’s one person Max just can’t compete with: his more handsome and more successful older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler). Always eager to upstage baby brother, Brooks insists on hosting a game night on a whole new level, requiring the participants to separate the game clues from the potentially deadly trouble Brooks has gotten himself into.

Game Night offers a refreshing combination of entangled crime plots and clever comedy as the characters haplessly navigate truly dangerous scenarios armed with nothing but their wit and determination.

Empire Magazine applauded the shrewd writing, saying “With its clever, whip-smart script and enthusiastic ensemble cast firing on all cylinders, crime comedy filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein score big with Game Night.”

Matt Seitz at RogerEbert.com called it “a comedy that takes nothing seriously except fun.”