Winners Only. 

Bingo Hell is a random movie I saw while browsing the Amazon Prime horror section. I wondered how Amazon Studios and Blumhouse were going to make a horror movie about bingo. Even more interesting, I saw the protagonist Lupita was played by Adriana Barraza who I have only seen in Amores Perros.  What followed was an hour and twenty-five minutes of entertaining and inclusive storytelling that is fun but doesn't clearly answer an important question: What the hell is going on here?

When we think of bingo we typically think of the trope of the senior citizens who are eager to sit down and play.  This movie deliverers on that to the degree that most of the characters are senior citizens, not Cocoon old but still AARP members.  The characters are interesting, funny, brave and most importantly a family. They live in the town of Oak Springs which has primarily Black and Brown people with a sprinkling of Caucasian.  They all live together and are all friends but race does not really get mentioned, everyone is interacting and loving each other which was refreshing to see.  There is a funny part when a new mysterious business man "Mr. Big" brings a new Bingo to Oak Springs and the Black and Brown people refer to him as White.  The White friend of the group points out that they don't know if he's White or not because they have not met him.  In unison, they all look at him and proclaim that he is White.  They turn out to be right and Mr. Big often looks like the Joker from  The Killing Joke  with his toothy evil grin.  After a series of events, it comes down to Lupita and Caleb, the only kid in the film to take Mr. Big down.  The scenes with Mr. Big are a little gory and there's a lot of people with various liquids being sprayed on their face or being spit out. 

 As the viewer, we come to understand the gist of the movie, this evil bingo dealer is somehow exploiting the people's need for money and greed and then ends up killing them.  What we don't know is why or what he is.  A demon?  An alternate universe Joker? An evil genie? He uses a magic stamp that burns people's skin and makes them lose focus so they can gamble but once they win, their death is related to what they spend their money on.  Oh yeah, and the money melts into green slime and disintegrates.  Lucky for the townspeople, Mr. Big can feel pain and can be shot and beat up, which he eventually is.  Once he is down and his machinery broken, the people come out of their trance and we never get any answers as to what in the heck happened.  I would recommend this movie to someone who is looking to be entertained and is not going to overanalyze a movie about money slime.  It is also a good viewing to see the types of characters we don't really see in mainstream movies.  It also touches on the themes of gentrification, poverty and exploitation of senior citizens.  Further, there is a scene where traditional Mexican banda music is played non diegetically which I have never seen in an American film.