Matreya Scarrwener

(On Cable TV, October 2021) There’s an unwieldy messiness to Shall We Play that makes it both quirky and annoying. In barely 85 minutes, the film can’t quite decide whether it’s about an occult smartphone app, a family curse, demonic possession, or maybe even something else. We get teenage boys taking unconscious nudes of the protagonist (something that should land them straight to jail, except that the film doesn’t want to interrupt the protagonist’s carnival of humiliation), a character who’s already dead, psychiatric institutionalization, a girl taking revenge on her tormentors, friends turning on each other and, well, a lot of other things. It never coheres—in fact, some of the material is merely window dressing for an incoherent premise that doesn’t quite know where to go beyond the most obvious. Bullied teenagers turning to the occult is nothing new, and for a while Shall We Play is just messy enough to keep us from seeing the real shape of the plot. Once we do, alas, there isn’t much more to say or do. I did like Matreya Scarrwener’s vulnerable performance—she makes the character likable and that goes a long way in keeping our interest. Still, that’s not quite enough: all of Shall We Play is put together oddly, and not in an intentional way: the execution is as undisciplined, the story is hazy and the end of it all leads to a big shrug rather than any kind of satisfaction. I didn’t quite hate the result, but then again, it’s a Canadian film—I like to go soft on those.