Wild Game (2025)
This review contains spoilers for the adult film Wild Game, so read ahead at your own interest. The movie is meant to be an action-thriller horror and may contain darker themes, so be advised before continuing. The film may not be for everyone because of the themes that it covers and depicts, but it is exceptionally well done if it is material that is safe (and legal) for you to view.
Wild Game brings together powerhouse actors within gay adult film in a take on the Richard Connell classic 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (and its various film adaptations) under the direction of award winning director from GayVN, XBIZ, Grabby, and Fleshbot and Vice President of Creative Content Development at Falcon Studios/NakedSword Ben Rush (Bred and Breakfast 1 & 2, Spain in the Ass 1 & 2, among others) and multiple time XBIZ award winner and ASGMax powerhouse Jessica Jasmin (For You, I Will, A Day on Set, among others) that brings together ASGMax (especially Disruptive Films) and NakedSword. It's an exciting, action-thriller that uses adult film-making to propel its story.
The movie opens with Derek Kage (two time GayVN and XBIZ winner, especially for his work in Overdrive), down on his luck, being recruited by Mike Monroe, executive assistant to two powerful tech billionaires, Paul Wagner and Blain O'Connor. The game is simple: first one to the gates at the end of of the park gets a million dollars, until Paul or Blain finds them first (and has their way with them). Mike explains that his bosses "love studying human behavior." Derek Kage's performance is already top notch in his disdain for the way Mike Monroe talks down to him across the pretty clearly defined class divide between them, highlighted by a brief interaction where Mike sneers that Derek must know who Paul and Blain are, and Derek says that he doesn't exactly run in these circles and saying in a line dripping with acid, "They're too busy running the government and keeping me poor."
While obviously drawing heavily on source material like The Most Dangerous Game in its basic premise, Wild Game already makes several creative decisions that both update and, in some ways, elevate the original material. Rather than being a Russian or German aristocrat, our 'hunter' is already introduced to be two American tech billionaires preying, not across national divides but class divides. In the same way that prior retellings of The Most Dangerous Game touch on cultural anxieties, Wild Game touches on and comments directly monstrous wealth inequality and creating an erotics of disposability.
While not part of the billionaire duo, Mike Monroe's character benefits from and represents the powerful institution that his bosses have created through exploitation (as demonstrated by the game that they have created here). After the first scene, we learn that Mike identifies and screens vulnerable people to be potential 'players' and delights in the power-by-proximity that he has over the people that come into their game. When Mike and Derek go at it, there's an intensity between them—Derek excels at dominant dirty talk in an aloof and cool tone that really highlights this character's reluctance to play but giving into the moment, crossed with Mike Monroe's ability to keep a knowing and wry tone that makes it pretty clear where actual power and control lies in the scene. It creates interesting and complex relationships between the characters that are explored through the first sex scene that feels absolutely extractive. In its chilling ending, the scene concludes with an icy conversation over the phone with Mike and one of his bosses that ends with a, "Have I ever let you down before?"
One element of the film that seems absolutely important is Mike's character as a class traitor. Mike is the person who interacts with those that Paul and Blain will prey on and delivers them on a silver platter for their benefit. Mike enjoys the benefits of the system that he has aligned himself with, but also lives under scrutiny from it, even from the one-sided conversation; Mike has to justify his work and existence through results in order to keep enjoying his status. The film makes clear, Mike is as disposable as the prey the billionaires themselves trap—and, in many ways, Mike is the first trap. And this continues to shade the dynamics of the first scene: Derek's pleasure comes from experiencing himself as strong, capable, and the hope that because of these traits he has a chance to turn his life around and win that million dollars, and Mike's comes from his awarded status and the knowledge that he has already done his job in ensuring his continued place among the wealthy and powerful while enjoying the fruits and benefits of his labor.
The next day we find ourselves at the start of the game. Five competitors, strangers to each other, but presumably from similar backgrounds have gathered (Derek Kage, Andrew Delta, Miles Fallon, Heath Halo, and Jayden Marcos). Paul Wagner and Blain O'Connor prowl around their five possible targets, stalking wide circles around them, getting in close and breathing in the scent off their necks, Paul briefly fingering Heath to breathe in that scent deeper—Paul and Blain are first introduced to the viewer as predators already on the hunt. Each of the players look nervous, including Andrew and Jayden who glance to each other, appearing to look for reassurance in the other. The rules of the game are explained in greater detail: race to the end without getting caught and the winner will receive a million dollars—and Paul and Blain are willing to give the players a one hour head start out of the generosity of their hearts—but if they have sex with each other they will also be disqualified.
Each of the competitors takes off running. The game has begun.
Heath Halo (GayVN winner, The Beach House) runs through the woods, down a leaf litter coated slope, making his way through the forest, when Paul Wagner (GayVN winner, Overdrive; Str8UpGayPorn award winner) appears having stalked the other. While Heath appears out of breath, Paul emerges cool and collected, pushing Heath against a tree and performing the same predatory scent play he did at the start of the game. Heath protests that it's not been a full hour yet, but Paul tells him that he couldn't wait. The two of them take on the roles of predator and prey so well, and the film is shot to highlight this, and Paul's performance is brutal and animalistic in a cold, calculated way. Heath's performance is one of relenting as he gives himself over in a moment. It's a potent scene. And it all ends as Heath is left sullied, Paul pulls out a taser and shocks Heath, which causes Heath to lose consciousness. The last shot of the scene features Mike Monroe, continuing to be useful for the billionaires he has aligned himself with, carting an unconscious Heath Halo away in a wheel barrow through the woods.
The end of this scene is the completion of the hunt, beyond the tracking and the catching, though each element of the hunt highlights the themes and the erotics of the movie that propels both the adult storytelling and the plotline of the movie itself. Paul's power is not only his raw physical strength or his ability to track down his prey, but in his ability to manipulate the game and its rules—namely, that Heath was not given a full hour to get ahead, he was only given however much time the billionaire deigned to restrain himself, or however long amused him—indeed, Paul seems to delight in Heath's bringing up that it hadn't been an hour, that it was precisely that the rules were being violated that brought Paul pleasure. The rules, just like his prey in that moment, were his to conquer and do with as he saw fit. The cards, as they were, were always stacked against Heath. Heath's resistance to the encounter only lasts until Paul tells him that the game is already lost for him, after which there is a definitive moment of release in Heath's performance of surrender that underpins Heath's pleasure for the rest of the scene. Even the end of the scene in which Heath loses consciousness puts into sharp relief the hunter-prey dynamic, the ways in which the tech billionaires have stacked the deck and wield complex strata of social power made material over the prey, and the themes and erotic viewing some as and being disposable.
By changing the nature of the most dangerous game from an international aristocrat to a domestic billionaire who controls the lives of the people they hunt in the film, capitalist structures become what the film is about—our working class protagonists being hunted are disposable not only to the tech billionaires themselves, but to the systems they represent. After all, "They're too busy running the government and keeping me poor" to notice them or their human dignity. The sex itself is extractive and exploitative in the same ways: the billionaires are there to get the resource they want from our protagonists (pleasure, amusement, new experiences, etc.), and then dispose them once that resource has been removed, gained, used, etc. For our protagonist, particularly in Heath's case, the narrative drive is the hope of possibility within American capitalist structures: if one tries hard enough, one might be able to reach those gates and change ones financial situation immeasurably. The horror of this action-thriller, is that settling of the reality that the game was set up for you to fail from the jump. But possibility of changing roles is part of the pleasure for our protagonists in their sexual moments: hope-inevitability, resistance-surrender, subject-object. To be abundantly clear, nothing in the movie suggests these are healthy erotics, or what the viewer aught to be pursuing in their own private sex lives; adult film does not depict reality and is not itself educational, but these films are art, and, as such, can be vehicles to allow us to feel and comment on things that we might not be able to as easily otherwise, especially because of the ways that adult filmmaking can be powerfully affective to our nervous systems.
For instance, if we take seriously Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's seven theses about monster studies that 1) the monster’s body is a cultural body, 2) the monster always escapes, 3) the monster is always a harbinger of category crisis, 4) the monster dwells at the gates of difference, 5) the monster polices the borders of the possible, 6) fear of the monster is really a kind of desire, 7) the monster stands at the threshold of becoming, we can better see the ways that the relationships between these monstrous predatory billionaires and their working class prey work in the scene. First, the film sets up that our billionaires love studying human behavior through these cruel games, never quite treating or depicting them as humans themselves, the billionaires are monsters, but are themselves the cultural body of the billionaire outside of the film and the forces of capitalism given face that stalk, haunt, and torment our protagonist. As human figures themselves in the midst of a game that has in it the glimmer of hope of change for our protagonists, they both show the institution of capitalist infrastructure as unstable and also that they are what police what is possible for our protagonists to attempt to change those institutions. But one thesis that really underpins this film is how fear of the monster is really a kind of desire: desire to change their circumstances becomes desire for the thing itself, the attention of the billionaire is another kind of change of circumstance that, while not the original intent of the million dollars is still access to the kind of power, however brief, the monster holds, the desire of feeling the power at work, even if it is power that one will never have access to themselves. By experiencing onself as disposable, the stark relief of feeling the other as all the more powerful by contrast, allows one to feel that power by proximity. This could be one way of understanding the scenes at work as an erotic of disposability. This allows the film to both be an adult film that explores and meditates on the themes of how capitalism structures the lives of those who live under it and are in constant relationship to capitalism, no matter what their relationship to it is, one is still in relationship with capitalism: whether one is Mike Monroe who embraces that system or one is Heath Halo who dreams of escaping that system.
However, we still have three scenes to review, and only one of our monsters has emerged from the shadows.
Miles Fallon rushed through the woods and stumbled upon a cabin tucked away in the park. He decides that his best strategy is to hide in the old house. The viewer is then shown a series of video cameras in the house panning the cabin until they lock onto Miles. We see Mike Monroe watching camera footage and using his headset to contact Blain O'Connor (XBIZ winner, Briar Basin Ranch), letting him know where the 'one you said you wanted to fuck first' was hiding. Blain changes course and enters into the clearing with the house. Miles sees him through a window and finds an old mattress and flips it up against a wall hiding behind it, not realizing that he is being filmed. When Blain enters the house, a quick word from the Billionaire's favorite accomplice lets him know where the other is hiding. Blain flips down the mattress and drags Miles on top of it.
This scene is a mirror to the one before it for several reasons, but, most directly because they are the introductions to our two monsters: Paul Wagner and Blain. Each are given a whole scene devoted to letting the viewer see what they are capable of, but also the ways in which they are different. Paul's performance is powerful but deliberative, Blain's is primal and explosive. Heath's is about surrender, Miles's is about resistance. Both performers feed off each other's energy palpably throughout the scene with increasingly mounting tension. Clever use of camera angles and positions keep Blain towering over Miles, making him feel larger than life, more energetic than reality, and Miles is every bit his compliment throughout the scene. Once again, once Blain has gotten his fill, he pulls out a taser and we see Miles fall unconscious.
Because there are parallels between the two scenes, their settings help contrast the two monsters and our protagonists as well. Heath was found in the woods and taken there, helping to establish us in the open, the expanse of the park, solidifying the setting that this story takes place in, but also shows Paul as somehow everywhere. He is inescapable, not out of breath, cool and collected. No matter where Heath was, Paul would be there. Conversely, Blain is running; he has sweat on his brow, but he finds Miles in a house, a symbol of relative safety. If Paul is the threat of inescapability or panoptic omnipresence, Blain is the threat of invasion. Equally interesting is that the threat that Blain represents is once again made possible by the manipulation of the game itself, that Mike is watching through a camera and feeding Blain information to rig the game against our protagonists, slowly feeding us across the scenes of the film the ways that the tech billionaires have manipulated our protagonists. Further, this is often done through technological means—the cameras, the corporate infrastructure of an employee (Mike), the tasers that seem to magically be able to cause one to lose consciousness without harm—solidify how and why the two monsters are powerful, how the protagonists are in the domain of these two powerful men.
Of interest, too, is how Miles's performance helps highlight two different fear responses as responses to capitalism: Heath's flight is a striving for, a yearning for, the hustle and dream of improving ones circumstances, and Paul's omnipresence reminding him that no matter where he was he would be caught; Miles's hiding, or freezing, in the house as a retreating inward and developing that inner domestic life that still leads one to be technologically observed and still encroached upon by capitalist forces "outside". If one doesn't strive and tries to find a place of stability under these systems, the agents of these systems can still take away that sense of stability at any time.
And, in both cases, as with the opening scene, we actually see how the power of the monsters, these capitalist tech billionaires is both exploitative in nature, but is also dependent on the labor of their accomplices. Mike Monroe's illusion of stability and proximity to power is precarious as it relies on his participation and delivering of results for Paul and Blain. Without Mike, there would be no screening of potential players of the game, no one feeding each of them information on the locations and hiding strategies of the protagonists, no one to handle the aftermath of their games either. The bottom builds the power of the top (pun intended). In this, the film highlights the was empire and late capitalist structures work and operate through developing the role of the accomplice in the background of each of the scenes while foregrounding the horror of how the systems of power target the most vulnerable.
Then, for a moment, we are given a reprieve. Much like Miles Fallon, Andrew Delta finds a location to hide: a rusty truck. It's clear the game has been dragging on as the sun is setting. He makes himself small under the window to avoid detection. Jayden Marcos (GayVN winner, Changes) is seen trotting up, also looking around over his shoulder, when he spots movement in the truck and comes along to the driver's side, opening it. Pulling the foreshadowing thread from the scene at the start of the game where the two exchanged a sympathetic look, the two of them exchange a tender moment in the car. Tender, almost romantic music plays in the background, and Andrew talks about the two of them reaching the gate together and splitting the reward. Jayden bumps things up a level by turning the conversation sexual, and soon the sweet moment starts to be consummated, and before long Andrew is on his back in the bed of the truck while the two go at it. During, the sun has set and the lighting changes—it's difficult to do an outdoor scene at night, especially when we're transitioning from golden hour romance to after dark things going bump in the night, so the lighting transition here was slightly awkward, but was only a momentary distraction from the performance of these two actors who seemed thoroughly swept up in each other in a way that gave a great tonal aside from the previous two scenes. Once all was said and done, the two sat on the edge of the bed of the truck and continued talking. Andrew expresses his disbelief at how wild the game is, and then Jayden says that this it's been fun. Andrew is confused and Jayden reveals that this is actually his second time, and horror falls on Andrew's face as he puts it together: "You're one of them." Jayden pulls out a taser from the bed of the truck and shocks Andrew, making him fall unconscious.
It's a successful plot twist that contributes something interesting to the story and its themes, reshaping some of the previous narrative, while still reinforcing the details that have been introduced so far. The movie tells us that contestants sleeping with each other is against the rules, at the same time that the two of them exchange glances early on, setting them up to be tragic lovers—importantly, the movie does not reverse this assumption, it twists it. It sets the viewers expectations and is able to deliver them sideways so that it meets them in a surprising way. This also creates a deviation from the formula of the two scenes prior—it would have been easy for the scene to have been watching the two of them get distracted with each other so that one or both of our monsters could have caught them, but they didn't. The movie smartly gives us a break from the formula before while not giving us a full aside, the plot still progresses forward. This also creates a sense of foreboding the whole time with the audience expecting that at any moment they will be caught to enforce that rule. You're rooting for the two of them to team up together to make it to the end, but worried they'll get caught. You feel Andrew's position.
The reveal makes Jayden an endlessly interesting character with what we know in the context of the monstrous body of the late stage capitalist technocrat. We know the billionaires are Paul and Blain—it is not a three person enterprise—so Jayden represents a few possibilities: an employee or partner who is in a similar class to Paul and Blain, an employee who is closer Mike Monroe's character, benefitting differently from the structure created by the technocrats, or even a former winner, since we know this is his second, and now that he is a millionaire instead of a 'vulnerable' person like he was in his first game, is enacting his newly found power over those who were formerly his 'peers'. Each of these possibilities add something to the dynamics at work, the commentaries the movie makes about coping under oligarchic systems, and class divisions, and class divisions within those in the enterprise and outside of it. In some ways, clarifying his position would reduce the horror and complexity of it: because what's important is not the specificity of who Jayden is or why he is an accomplice or peer to Paul and Blain, but that anyone can appear to be a peer along class divisions and betray each other. His is story of manipulative solidarity and class betrayal or pretending that we see in situ, rather than Mike Monroe's that happened prior to the start of the film.
But morning eventually breaks, and Derek Kage sees a gate. He makes a break for it, only to have both Paul and Blain appear at either side, with Jayden quickly joining, encircling Derek. Derek protests that he made it, that he won. The hunters all laugh. One mockingly says this looks more like a side gate, not a main gate, to him. And our final man realizes that he is not crossing the finish line, that, even if he could, the two of them would move the goal post forever out of reach. All four actors, Derek Kage, Paul Wagner, Blain O'Connor, and Jayden Marcos give stunning performances in the scene, each keeping with their characters: Paul's deliberative, calculating, commanding presence juxtaposed alongside Blain's explosive, primal, and demanding attitude mix well with Jayden's newly revealed personality of smug selfishness each are held up to the mirror of unrelenting snark that Derek oozes back at them. Derek is not surrendering, nor is his a futile resistance, his is a performance back at his hunters, acerbic and sharp. But it ends the same. The three men take what they want from their prey and Derek is shocked like the other three men before him.
This final scene solidifies the inevitability of the outcome. As monsters that show our cultural anxieties surrounding this era of capitalism that we live in, Derek's fate drives home that there is no way out, no way to reach the promised reward, that the goal post will just be moved to benefit those who already have the power to change the rules of the game.
In a last shot, the camera shows Derek Kage, Heath Halo, Miles Fallon, and Andrew Delta in a dark room, each with metal collars around their necks. Derek wakes up and lets out a bone chilling roar.
There was never any way out.
