Bingo Hell

This one was utterly excruciating to sit through. Predictable, cheesy, poorly written, and freely utilizing offensive tropes and stereotypes throughout. Not one likable character, especially the main character. Never have I wanted to punch a bunch of old people in the face like I did watching this movie. Sorry, Grandma 🙁. I gave it a 1 because 0 wasn't an option.

Bingo Hell (2021) is a movie recently released that I watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows some down on their luck people in a small neighborhood desperate for some hope and luck. Well today is their lucky day as a new bingo hall opens offering both. There may be something a little different about this bingo hall. This movie is directed by Gigi Saul Guerrero (episodes of the Purge television series) and stars Adriana Barraza (Babel), L. Scott Caldwell (The Fugitive), Richard Brake (31), Grover Coulson (Friday Night Lights) and David Jensen (Ocean's 11). The storyline is actually pretty good in this as they do a great job establishing the characters and sense of community. The family dynamics are well developed causing you to genuinely care about what happens to the victims. The cast is perfectly selected and fit the characters well. The settings are excellent and unique and Guerrero did a wonderful job on the cinematography, lighting and camera angles. My biggest complaint was mediocre kill scenes that relies more on blood splatter than gore, but that's just a preference thing I guess. Overall this is a above average addition to the genre that's worth a viewing. I'd score this a 6.5-7/10.

Full of story holes, this effort started with an interesting premise but descended into inner city eye rolling tropes with ridiculous character actions and a preachy, convenient forced ending of "give me a break." The writer and director obviously just wanted stereotypes in one place decidedly to combat evil and greed incarnate but what transpired is a big filmed disappointment and an ending speech that really has no logical connection to the action other than to incite woke emotion. Cohesion and story were sadly lacking. Was hoping for more than what I witnessed.