The cover of the Blu-ray for this movie proclaimed that Edward Furlong is fun to watch. You'll notice this isn't really praise for the movie itself. There's a reason for that: The movie is pretty damned stupid. Furlong does create a rather unique sort of serial killer character, but there's a reason this hasn't been done before. He's a master of ceremonies who does barely any killing himself, nor does he set up elaborate traps or make contestants kill each other for the most part (which would have made more sense thematically). He has a dumb goon do the killings on his behalf. The goon never really makes any sense in terms of his motivations nor does he tie into the themes of the movie in a discernible way.Furlong's character is presumably supposed to be a commentary on the exploitative nature of TV production. It isn't very subtle, but this is a slasher film, or at least tries to be, so I won't begrudge them that. The only other characters of any significance are the contestants, who are of course a bunch of whiny idiots who only care about being on TV and all consciously adopt personas based on previously successful reality TV stars.This sounds clever in theory, but doesn't work in principle. This is partly because the villain mainly sits at a monitor yelling stuff into the intercom, partially because the actors are mostly bad and partially because many of its points that it seems to be trying to make about reality shows get lost in ridiculous set-ups. There are some legit criticism to be made here, but the movie mostly misses the mark. It doesn't help that I wasn't sold on its resolution either because of the writing or the the acting. I'm going to go ahead an give this a three, because the movie did seem to be making some effort to be good, just not enough.

This movie was thrown together without any attention to story line.It was a sorry excuse for cinema with no surprises and no excuse to be made in the first place.The slashing and thrashing scenes were dreadfully predictable and this movie is void of any merit. It was an independent effort that should not have been made.I liked the premise of making fun of reality shows but in turn, the movie gave us less cinema and drama than most reality shows in the first place. Somehow it achieved the best promotion for reality TV I've ever seen.Mike Wagner

I found that this movie had a very original storyline. A little bit of 'Real World' mixed with 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. This was an Indie movie at best. It seemed more surreal when it came to the 'cruel' scenes of murder, as far as acting. Everyone's acting was exactly how anyone would react in the situations they were put through. Especially, when it came to the meet and greet sessions pool side. Edward Furlong plays a great villain in my book. The Asian girl kicked ass fighting for her life. Thats the way to do it. If I was put in that situation and I knew martial arts I would use it too. The action was well placed, and the music kept you thinking, "Uh oh, somethings getting ready to go down." Whats best about this movie is that the music didn't overtake the dialogue and action in this film. I recommend this movie for all Indie film buffs. Watch and Enjoy!

Dear movie-goers, How I wish somebody had warned me not to watch this movie... That's why I'm trying to do the same for you. DON'T watch it. It's sooo bad you won't believe, without even being bad enough for you to laugh at it. It's really a movie that insults any possible gray-cell you have. I watched it at a Movie Festival in Portugal, FANTASPORTO, a Festival specialized in horror-sci-fi-alternative movies, therefore you could be expecting almost anything from the selection of movies. But this one is just a plain teenage slashing movie, and just so that you won't think that my appreciation of the movie is due to my general taste in movies, I can tell you that compared to any "I know what you did last Summer", or "Halloween", or such, those movies are works of pure cinematic art compared to "Cruel World". I'm sorry if I'm not being very clear about why I didn't like it, but I wouldn't know where to start: could it be because there is not a drop of originality whatever? No plot? Because the actors suck? Because the director has no idea of the difference between a movie and a cucumber salad? Or maybe the totally misplaced soundtrack? I don't know... Edward Furlong, what happened to you?