Grade: B-

Verdict: An uneven but often savagely funny parody of reality TV.

Details: Starring Brooke Smith and Glenn Fitzgerald. Written and directed by Daniel Minahan. Rated R for strong violent content and profanity. One hour, 25 minutes.

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Review: “Hey, do you have any bean dip?” Dawn Legato (Brooke Smith) asks the checkout guy at a convenience store.

Eight months pregnant, she's worked up an appetite from stalking and shooting the man who, a moment before, was standing there at the counter. His corpse now lies at her feet, oozing life.

That's the way you play this game. And Dawn, murder-by-murder, is maintaining her title (and her life) as champ of a TV reality show called “The Contenders,” featuring citizens chosen by national lottery who have only one goal: Kill the other contestants before they kill you. As the announcer describes Dawn, in his hype-happy bray, “With 20 kills in only two tours, she's unstoppable!”

Conceived and shot long before “Survivor” and its copycats littered our living rooms with reality programming, the media parody “Series 7: The Contenders” throws us into a parallel universe that's only a slight exaggeration of our own. Think about it: Doesn't the slogan “Real People in Real Danger in a Fight for Their Lives” sound a lot like the promos for that CBS endure-the-Outback show?

Writer-director Daniel Minahan, shooting on digital video with a minuscule budget, presents his film as a back-to-back marathon of episodes from the “Contenders.” This very-special sweeps stunt (we assume) takes champion Dawn back to her hometown, Newberry, Conn. (“The Nutmeg State,” the announcer informs us).

Here, in addition to trying to make amends with her estranged family, she has to try to snuff her new opponents: Tony (Michael Kaycheck), an unemployed father of three; Franklin (Richard Venture), an old coot who lives in a trailer park; Connie (Marylouise Burke), an unmarried nurse; Linday (Merritt Wever), an 18-year-old girl with overprotective parents; and, complicating things, Jeff (Glenn Fitzgerald), a young man dying of cancer, who happens to be Dawn's old high school flame.

The crackling first half-hour of “Series 7” is so dead-on satirical and brutally comic, it's no big surprise when the show starts to flag in its second half. No surprise, but disappointing.

Minihan continues to score points with some of the bizarre tonal juxtapositions, like the sight of Lindsay in her bedroom showing off her weapons to the camera. “My dad got me a hand-to-hand combat knife,” she says with girlish pride. Nurse Connie, looking like a sitting duck at first, starts to show a darker side, though still the worst she can say about Dawn is, “She's unkempt.” The movie also wakes us up with a sudden act of violence, in the prosaic environment of a mall, that's so brutal it can make you laugh in horror.

But once it focuses on the soap-opera history of Dawn and Jeff, “Series 7” loses energy and starts to feel almost conventional. Luckily, even the weaker segments are carried by Smith, a dynamic actress (she was the kidnapped girl in the pit in “The Silence of the Lambs”). With more black roots than peroxide on her shaggy head, and bone-deep exhaustion in her eyes, she creates an indelible portrait of a woman borne up by cunning and a survival instinct that won't quit. She's like an angel of death who'd really rather be having a beer with the fellas.

— Steve Murray, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution