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Friday, August 26, 2011

Outside the Realms - Movies

Following last week’s article on a new movie with strong ties to LARPing, I decided to take a look at LARPs in movies in general. There are quiet a few out there. Here are some of those…

Darkon 
This is a documentary based on an SCA inspired LARP based out of the Baltimore, MD, region of the US and was released in 2006. It seems to be highly regarded as it won the Best Documentary Audience Award at the 2006 South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where it premiered. It also has scored a positive 89% at the Rotten Tomatoes movie review site.

Monster Camp 
Another documentary released in 2007, this one follows a branch of NERO out in Seattle, Washington. It followed the players in that LARP for about a year. I do not believe it was ever given a wide release but according to the producers it won 4 Best Documentary awards at various film festivals.






The Wild Hunt
This 2009 drama/horror was given a fairly large release, though not in our area. It was a low-budget film and from everything I have heard did not make a lot of money, though it did win some minor film awards. It is a fictional story wherein a boyfriend follows the girlfriend that jilted him and the interactions of a “mundane” as he tries to interact with her during an event.





Role Models
A purely comedic film from 2008, this was less about LARPing and more about the main characters and the problems they cause for themselves. They are forced to interact with a group of LARPers as a form of community service so the LARP aspect is more of a background than at the forefront. This movie is the biggest exposure to LARPing the general public has had to date, the movie raking in $98 million.





By the way, if anyone has seen any of these movies and wants to do a review on them, especially on how they portray LARPing, we would love to post such a review.