Very well executed

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

First off I've watched a LOT of badly made cheap 'horror' films and this is not the worst I've seen. In fact, the plot is interesting, the acting reasonable and the dialogue could be worse. However, there are a number of faults with this movie that would prompt me to dissuade anyone from watching it. My biggest issue comes in the form of characterisation. The group of would be reality show stars starts off as a mixed bag of people with seemingly good representation of various ethnic/cultural groups, but, they are horrendously stereotypical e.g. the Asian contestant is the shy, intelligent one whilst the gay character generally fits in with many other movies' portrayal of the token joke character (whom we later find is also backstabbing and generally less decent than any other male character...figures). Furthermore, the story is often lacking in structure, the so-called tasks that contestants must face are not well thought through and this generally leads to boredom throughout. Overall I'd say this film started relatively well and ended much the same as any other cheap and tacky horror movie, I wouldn't bother with this one again and to be honest wish I hadn't in the first place.

If you're going to make a movie that lambastes crappy reality TV shows, you should be sure it's not going to suck so much it'll make the audience wish they were watching a crappy reality TV show instead. That's a lesson these filmmakers obviously never learned, because they churned out a film that makes VH1's Flavor of Love look like Masterpiece Theatre.This astoundingly idiotic story goes wrong from the very beginning. It's about a group of college kids who think they're participating in a reality show for a million dollars but are really the subjects of a madman's murderous scheme, where getting voted off the show means getting helped into an early grave. But before we get to any of that, the first 10 minutes of so of the movie is spent bizarrely focused on the backstory of the madman. It turns out the insane Philip (a bloated and doughy Edward Furlong) had been a contestant on a reality show like The Bachelorette, where he was rejected. So, Cruel World starts with Philip showing back up and killing the woman who rejected him (Jaime Pressly) and the other guy she picked (Sam Page), and THEN the college kids arrive and the actual plot of Philip killing them begins.I'm not sure I've ever seen another horror movie that starts out by not only explaining exactly who the killer is and what he's doing, but also immediately kills off the characters that should be his main target. It's like watching an episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk and Spock get disintegrated by the Klingons in the first scene and the rest of the show is watching a bunch of those guys in red shirts getting picked off one by one. I'm not sure if these filmmakers thought they were being clever by doing it this way or what. The effect, though, is to rid the story of any possible, mystery, suspense, tension or intrigue.The only way to recover from that sort of colossal storytelling mistake would be to make the slayings of the college students incredibly violent and compelling and the satire of crappy reality TV shows tremendously clever and sharp. None of that happens. What the viewer gets are unbelievably feeble pastiches of reality show conventions like "alliances", "elimination challenges" and "drunken hook-ups". The satirical extent of the script is to have characters reference specific reality shows in their dialog. There's also practically no sex or nudity in this movie and the violent scenes are so pathetic it's like watching Gargamel try and kill The Smurfs.The college kids in Cruel World are so shallow and contrived, they make Spencer and Heidi from The Hills look like characters out of Tolstoy. I can't really tell if any of them can act or if they're just natural douchebags. Edward Furlong, however, is genuinely pitiful. He looks and performs like a cleaned-up homeless guy who's still under the influence of various chemical substances. Furlong doesn't need to be making a movie about reality TV shows. He needs to be on a reality TV show - the one where celebrities go to rehab. The kid from Terminator 2 turning into this kind of a shambling mess is a more amazing transformation than Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Governor of California.Cruel World is so atrocious, it's not like it was made by people who had never made a movie before. It's like these filmmakers had never seen a movie before. Or a play. Or a book. Or even a puppet show. This is the type of film where 6th grade dropouts watch it and say "I could make something better than this". So, unless these filmmakers were all 5th grade dropouts…they should really be embarrassed by this disaster.Unless you're planning to show Cruel World to a child actor as a cautionary tale (watch out or you could end up like Edward Furlong!), there's no reason for anyone to rent this DVD.

This is what needs to happen on most reality shows.. then they might actually be watchable. Eddie Furlong captured the essence of a lunatic with great passion and enthusiasm. I've seen this movie about a hundred times now, and will probably watch it 100 more; its just one of those movies that never gets old. I don't think they could have hired a more perfect cast to fulfill this original heartwarming film. This movie is full of quotes that will be remembered throughout film history. Quotes such as "You win some, you lose some." and "Im the bad boy your mother warned you about.", and who could forget "I want Jenny.". If it was possible I would rate this movie an 11 out of 10, and would nominate Cruel World for BEST MOVIE EVER MADE.

What can i say positive about this movie? Absolutely nothing. Acting was completely crap, storyline was completely crap. The only good acting probably came from Edward Furlong which was slightly believable as a psychopath, but other than that this movie was the biggest waste of 90 mins I've ever seen. It is violent, though nothing u wouldn't have already seen watching The Devils Rejects, which beats this movie by very far. SPOILER: Some of the violence in this movie was actually laughable, in a sick kinda way, when the blonde cowboy kid runs towards the fence, gets electrocuted and ends up flying right off it, looked almost comical. Agree with me you may not, but one things for sure, this movie absolutely sucked.