Dark Narratives: July Issue
Killing Games - from Battle Royale to Deals with the Devil
Summer is here, and it is scorching. For some “hot” news, and an in-depth look at the “deadly games” subgenre of horror, read on!
Open Call: “Fatterpunk,” an anthology of dark stories that empower fat characters, will be accepting submissions starting September 15. Get planning your story ideas now so they’ll be ready in time! Details here: https://nicole-jarrell.squarespace.com/diet-riot-a-fatterpunk-anthology-submission-info
S.H. Cooper’s Inheriting Her Ghosts, about a woman who inherits more than she bargained for when moving to a seaside manor, is now available for pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0977PL7BB
In case you missed it, my new edition of The Darkness of Dreamland is live on Kindle an in paperback wherever you like to order books: https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Dreamland-T-L-Bodine-ebook/dp/B097S6SHPL
The concept of the "battle royale" has so thoroughly permeated our modern culture that it hardly requires an introduction. Whether you're looking at the wildly successful Hunger Games franchise or hugely popular games like Fortnite, the whole concept is easy to understand: A group of players enter, but only one survivor can leave.
But what's the deal with this trope? Where did the whole sub-genre come from, and why does it continue to hold our fascination? And is our affection for seeing teenagers kill each other deep...or twisted?
What Defines the "Killing Game" Genre?
Before we get into the history of this trope, it's important to define our terms. When I talk about "deadly games" or "killing games" as a subgenre of horror, I'm looking specifically at a collection of traits. Not every piece of media will tick off all the same boxes in the same way, but all will have some aspect of these prominent characteristics:
It must be a game. By "game" here I mean that there is an aspect of artificiality and planning. Someone orchestrated the event, and there are rules that must be followed and enforced. An audience or otherwise invested third party is frequently present. Killing games are not normal survival situations where people might compete for resources; they are contrived in a way that forces people into confrontation.
It must be deadly. The point of the killing game is death. If the participants are not fighting for their lives, the story is not part of this trope.
Participation is mandatory, and winning comes with a reward. In some circumstances, you might see people volunteer to take part in the game, but once they've committed, there's no way to back out. There is no quitting. Most commonly, the reward for survival in a killing game is some greater status than whatever you had before you joined. For this reason, these stories often take place in dystopian settings where fighting to the death for a chance at wealth/freedom is an attractive option.
In some ways, of course, the deadly game is rooted in the historical legacy of blood sport. However, there is a key difference between the participants of a "killing game" story and a Roman gladiator or professional martial artist: killing game participants usually have no special training or skills. Even in settings where some participants in the game are professionally trained, the narrative will nearly always centered a disadvantaged normie with no combat experience. That has some historical precedent too...but we'll come back to that in a moment.
Bargaining With the Devil and Heroic Trials
Although not "killing game" stories themselves, the roots of the genre do share some elements with classic mythological tropes. The Twelve Labors of Heracles, for example, have much in common with the modern killing game: To atone for a terrible crime, Heracles must complete twelve increasingly difficult and deadly tasks. In the end, he is rewarded with godhood.
Greek myth also gives us the story of Orpheus, who descends to the Underworld to reclaim the soul of his wife -- an impossible task he nevertheless manages (though not for long) due to his skill as a musician.
Arguably the oldest example of a deadly game is the Bible's own Book of Job, in which God and Satan wager over the soul of a pious man. Job's loyalty is put to the test through a series of horrifying trials -- Satan takes away his family, his wealth, servants, even his good health. But in the end, Job remains loyal and pious, and is rewarded by having his former life restored to him.
However, the trope itself traces back most cleanly to a 1924 Richard Connell short story you may have encountered in assigned reading in school: "The Most Dangerous Game."
Connell's story centers on a big-game hunter who, after an incident at sea, finds himself on an island inhabited by a fellow hunting enthusiast named Zaroff. However, Zaroff has abandoned regular hunting pursuits in favor of a greater challenge: hunting people! Given a choice between being hunted or whipped to death on the spot, the protagonist agrees to play. He's pursued through various traps and challenges, playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Zaroff before ultimately winning through his own cunning.
Killing Each Other for Fun and Profit
In 1982, Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) released The Running Man, a dystopian novel about a man who volunteers to participate in a violent game show in order to lift his family out of poverty. By the rules of the game, he's pursued by professional hitmen and paid per hour he survives and law enforcement or "hunter" he kills. The book was adapted loosely into a film in 1987, except this one conceives of the "runners" as convicts able to secure an official pardon if they can survive being pitted against professional "hunters" (and each other). King's novel is significantly bleaker than the film (which features Arnold Schwartzenegger at his height, cheesy quips and all) -- but both deserve a place in the canon.
In 1999, Japanese author Koushun Takami wrote Battle Royale, which was adapted into a film of the same name the next year. Battle Royale was a tremendous commercial and critical success, becoming well-known globally and cementing a place on the public consciousness (even though it wouldn't be properly released in the U.S. for eleven years).
Battle Royale is set in an alternate-future dystopian Japan that has fallen to fascism and economic collapse. In order to curb a growing problem with teenage delinquency, the government has implemented a deadly raffle: Once a year, one freshman class is taken to an island and forced to fight to the death. Each teen is equipped with a bag of supplies, but some get more useful items than others -- and, of course, killing other players and stealing their supplies gives players an early competitive advantage.
If all of this sounds familiar, it's because Suzanne Collins treads remarkably similar ground in her wildly successful Hunger Games book trilogy (later adapted to film). The Hunger Games is something of a lovechild between Battle Royale and The Running Man. In Collins' story, participants are chosen two at a time -- a boy and a girl -- from each of twelve districts in a nation controlled by a wealthy and despotic Capitol. The games are a pop culture sensation, televised and viewed all over the fictional country of Panem, and succeeding in the game comes down as much to currying favor the an audience as actually fighting.
Some Noteworthy Killing Game Stories
Due perhaps to the runaway success of Battle Royale in Japan, this type of story continues to be very popular there, showing up in various iterations in numerous anime and manga series. But the trope still has a hold in the west as well.
If the "prisoner" angle of The Running Man appeals to you, you may be intrigued by the 2009 film Gamer, which stars Michael C. Hall and Gerard Butler in a sci-fi world where death-row inmates are controlled like avatars in a life-or-death video game. The film itself is largely forgettable, but some of the worldbuilding and concepts are ambitious and thought-provoking. The anime Deadman Wonderland also deals with prisoners -- this time at a for-profit prison that doubles as a theme park. Prisoners are subjected to various lethal games and gladiatorial matches, with the distant hope of escaping altogether. The early episodes are the best -- the story goes a bit off the rails at the end -- but its commentary is scathing and its violence unflinching.
If you'd rather see your death games take place in an arena, the anime Killing Bites is a fun take on the idea. It's about "brutes," half-animal, half-human fighters trained to battle one another as proxies in complex political wars. The story centers on a hapless university student who ends up accidentally involved.
For films involving teenagers specifically, there is perhaps no better deadly game than Takashi Miike's film As The Gods Will, which has students competing in deadly versions of common playground games like Red-Light/Green-Light. It's a completely bonkers, hyper-violent, darkly hilarious film that somewhat defies explanation. Compare and contrast with Future Diary, a manga adapted into an anime in 2011. The show follows 12 individuals who are each gifted with a "future diary" device that can help to predict the future. They must fight one another in an elimination battle, with the winner earning godship.
The streaming platform Crackle released a thriller called Chosen in 2013. The show places a recently divorced lawyer in the heart of a deadly game when he receives mysterious instructions to kill a stranger. Worse yet, someone else out there has instructions to kill him -- and so forth. A mysterious shadow organization is behind this open-world survival showdown, and failure to comply with their whims means putting your loved ones at risk.
On a similar-but-different note is the 2014 film 13 Sins, which is itself a remake of a Thai comedy horror called 13 Beloved. This one presents us with a down-on-his-luck salesman who receives a strange phone call challenging him to kill a fly and receive $1,000. Skeptical, he does so, and receives his money. He's then informed that he'll be offered a series of 13 challenges for greater and greater rewards -- but failure will lose him all of the money. Unfortunately for him, the challenges become much more twisted than killing a fly.
If you enjoy the "mysterious challenges" aspect, I also recommend Kings Game, an anime about a high school class who are conscripted into playing a game when they start receiving challenges or orders through their cell phones. Failure to comply with the orders means instant death, but the challenges become increasingly terrible as the class dwindles in size.
The Purge is arguably the most successful and most widely known Western version of this trope outside of The Hunger Games. In the world of The Purge, peace in America is maintained for most of the year, with all crime limited to a single 12-hour period during which absolutely anything is legal. There have been several films and even a TV show built on this concept, and though The Purge does not quite fit the definition of "killing game," I think it belongs on the list because it's very much in the same spirit.
The SAW franchise is arguably also a part of this genre, especially some of the later installments where Jigsaw's demented games and challenges really ramp up. I'd argue that they are less "battle royale" and more ontological horror, however, earning a position alongside films like Cube and Circle -- stories where figuring out why you've been selected and the meaning of the game is more narratively important than survival. If that angle is your jam, you might also enjoy Escape Room, Exam, and the video game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which combines survival challenges, ontological mysteries, and a lot of math.
So What's The Deal? Why Do We Love This?
Many deadly game stories take place in dystopian worlds, perhaps as much for the necessity of the concept (you need to rationalize why state-sanctioned murder is okay) as political commentary. In cases where children especially are the targets of the "game," it's hard not to read an anti-war sentiment as well: After all, what is the military if not a venue for conscripting a nation's children to fight another nation's children to further the goal of people who will never be endangered?
Some modern iterations of the concept, like 13 Sins and King's Game, reframe the situation in a way that could be viewed in a classist lens: Here are people living their lives, conscripted against their wills into a deadly, competitive game controlled by shadowy elites. In a world with a swiftly diminishing middle class and growing wealth disparity, are we not all caught in a game between wealthy elites? This is the subtext of Chosen, and it is made explicit in the conservative-leaning film The Hunt (2020). Class and race disparity are also frequently near the surface of the text in The Purge franchise.
From the genre's onset, there's always been a measure of criticism levied against the consumerist aspect of violence as sport. The Running Man and The Hunger Games both take aim at reality television and our society's appetite for vicarious suffering.
Any social criticism inherent in the "killing game" narrative would do well to remember that such a concept is not so speculative as it may appear. Gladiatorial battles were rarely as deadly as media makes them appear (gladiators being rather expensive to train and replace), and Christians were not fed to lions in the arena with great frequency, but underground fighting and bloodsports have been popular at various times in history, often with participants dubiously consenting. Such sports -- called a Battle Royal -- often involved Black people, sometimes former slaves, fighting in what could only be called racist theater. This gets employed as a deft racial metaphor in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952). This is as good a reminder as any that what white people see as a dystopian apocalypse is, in many cases, the historical reality for some groups.
A Multiplayer Fantasy of Domination
As politically charged as these narratives are, it's perhaps surprising that the "battle royale" genre of video game has gained such tremendous popularity in the past few years. Games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Realm Royale and even Call of Duty put players into an all-out brawl against one another, with the last player standing deemed the victor. It's perhaps a touch ironic that the demographic killing each other in Battle Royale would become the most voracious consumers of Fortnite, but it does make a bit of sense: Just as many people view the zombie apocalypse as a wish fulfilment power fantasy, some enjoy the challenge and freedom of a skill-based brawl. When you think you may have a chance at winning, the battle royale does seem like fun.
But for all our sakes, let's hope we never have to put that to the test.