13 Sins (2014)

Elliot Brindle is a meek salesman with a pregnant fiancée, a disabled brother, an abusive father, and a mountain of debt. When an anonymous caller offers him cash for a series of escalating tasks, he does not hesitate for long. The film understands that the desperate middle class is the most pliable raw material available, and it builds its entire apparatus around that observation. This is a study of what money does to a man who has none, and the answer is not flattering. The premise carries a genuine contempt for the transactional logic that governs modern life, though it delivers that contempt through severed limbs and stolen coffee instead of speeches.

The tasks grow grimmer, and the film tracks Elliot's transformation from timid provider to something more monstrous. The makers have spoken of modeling this arc on addiction, and the parallel holds. He grows assertive, then addicted to the version of himself the game rewards. Around him, the supporting figures exist to be endangered. A brother with a cognitive disability serves as leverage. A pregnant fiancée waits at home as a symbol of what he stands to lose. Neither is granted interiority, and the film does not appear to notice.

We are left with a lean, chilly thriller that has exactly one thesis and pursues it without distraction. It is derivative of better films that made their moral points with more finesse, as the consensus goes. The cultural ledger, meanwhile, sits mostly blank. The film is angry about money and nothing else. That singleness of purpose is almost admirable. It is also why the whole enterprise feels like a cold room.