I wanted to but couldn't!

Expected more

Brilliant and touching

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

...this debut feature from auteur E. L. Katz packs a solid punch to the head, along with a few kicks to the groin. Couched in metaphors of class warfare and sexual politics, "Cheap Thrills" is essentially an age-old tale about the consequences of dealing with the Devil or rubbing the wrong lamp. Be careful what you wish for, etc. The tight, tense script provides all that's necessary for a powerhouse ensemble to run with, and run they do: Pat "Compliance" Healy tops a rich trifecta of genre appearances along with "Starry Eyes," Ethan "Dragnet" Embry tears it up as Healy's equally down on his luck friend, while David "Anchorman" Koechner and Sara "The Last House on the Left" Paxton wickedly enjoy bacchanalian and sybaritic excess as the aforementioned pair's demonic one-percenter antagonists. It may have been a cheap film, but it looks and feels better than ones with ten times the budget. Kudos to the production team top to bottom. Too bad the film was (apparently) poorly marketed; hopefully it will redeem itself on video. Recommended if you're into downbeat thrillers.

When money gets tight how far are you willing to go for some quick cash? A new father faced with eviction and the sudden loss of his job finds out the hard way in the intensity dark comedy Cheap Thrills (2013), directed by E.L. Katz and written by David Chirchirillo and Trent Haaga. Shot in only twelve days, Cheap Thrills delivers the punches early for its main character Craig, played with a heavy sense of stoic inner turmoil by Pat Healy. The viewer is drawn quickly into Craig's situation, laying his woes before them in the first few scenes, leaving him plenty of time to be dragged along into the true depravity the film has in store.--Continue reading at: www.mockfilmsblog.com

Cheap Thrills is an excellent film with brilliant performances, solid direction and a clever screenplay which brings a potent message about human condition, combined with such black humor that it's difficult for us to determine whether we have to laugh or cry at the display of sadism and perversion portrayed. I generally don't like "home invasion" films, in which a group of thugs tortures innocent people without a reason. Fortunately, Cheap Thrills isn't one of those movies; or it might be, but inverting the roles of heroes and villains. Instead of being invaders, the friends Craig and Vince let themselves be conducted to Colin's mansion, where the brutality of the "gambles" is incremented to inhuman levels. And as spectators/accomplices, we witness the domestic drama developed under the guise of a game with a combination of fascination and repulsion. Cheap Thrills plunges us into the characters' mental manipulation, leaving us with the question: "What would we do in their place?". I guess that every person will have to carry with the weight of his/her answer. Regarding the less controversial aspects of the film, director E.L. Katz could perfectly achieve an atmosphere of anguish and suspense without employing any tiring stylish tricks which infest many modern thrillers. And despite being quite a short film, there's enough narrative expertise to efficiently portray the main characters' nature, something which brings credibility to the most extreme scenes. The actors make an excellent work in their roles, highlighting David Koechner, who manages to bring a simultaneously affable and dangerous attitude to his character, and Sara Paxton, who doesn't need too many words to transmit the complexity and nuances of her character. In conclusion, Cheap Thrills is a brilliant thriller, and it definitely deserves an enthusiastic recommendation, mainly because of its audacity and expertise to keep us fascinated and very entertained with such a demoralizing and pessimistic story.

I loved the premise - you get it straight away, like a good short story, and settle in for the ride. The first half was amusing. The guy throwing the money around was played really well, and the two losers upped their mutual distrust into contempt at just the right pace.But no comedy for me in the rest of the film. It was tense, although I think they got the finger and the dog the wrong way round. Plus the dog story was daft - the choking on the finger didn't "go down" well.After the attempted robbery it lacked any real menace from the rich couple. The husband lost his lethal charm, the wife never seemed more than a nice girl having a wild night. They had to have an underlying weirdness, but in the end they seemed like the normal ones. Maybe that was the point, but if so I don't understand it - is being rich to be in the right? Maybe they're part of CNBS's dwindling audience.Good entertainment, but could have been crazier.