Murder Bury Win，nestles comfortably between the grey areas of dark humor and outlandish violence even though was shot in 14 days with a crew of ten. It was streamed in the Comedy Vanguard section of 2021 Austin Film Festival. Three friends–Chris (Mikelen Walker), Adam (Erich Lane), and Barrett (Henry Alexander Kelly)–are the creators of a board game, Murder Bury Win. They’ve turned to crowdfunding, so as to push the game out to market. Their effort unfortunately fails but not before a man (Craig Cackowski) calls them and shortly offers to meet.
...The world of Murder Bury Win - a universe where a man notices and traces his fingers across the outline of a smiley face on a cheese grater before using the kitchen utensil to shave off the fingerprints on a dead man’s hands. With over-the-top performances and plot-points pushing forward, as the film’s theme becomes clearer, the nefarious hints of the characters’ initially innocent personas comes out.
Erich Lane in particular gives an enthralling performance, as Adam, a genuine board-game-aficionado turned bloodlusting entrepreneur. His upbeat attitude and constant smile lends a chilling tone to scenes of him wielding machetes and bashing in body parts. Murder Bury Win treats gore in a way that is uniquely explicit but never gratuitous, relying on off-center shots that reveal its characters’ reactions and facial expressions leading up to violence, but never the horrific event itself.
...In all, Murder Bury Win is not only a curiously humorous representation of the niche world of indie board-game-creation, but a unique contribution to the sub-genre of films exploring what leads ordinary people to commit horrific acts of violence, errr…. in the right extenuating circumstances.
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