Test Your Movie Trivia Skills With this Excellent “Hollywood Hangman” Game

Gray, rainy weekday afternoon in your neck of the woods? Then you should absolutely fire up this delightful new find: “Hollywood Hangman.” A simple but amusing (and challenging) game created by a user of the sprawling r/movies subreddit, Hollywood Hangman tests your movie knowledge by asking players to identify films from synopsis, cast and director, while only getting a small number of letters incorrect.

The game was apparently created by reddit user 2spacemilk (Mark Harless), who created a thread unveiling it to the world. Reception was immediately strong and positive, and after playing it for ourselves we can see why—it’s an excellent way to apply geeky movie trivia. Our host, the playfully cocky “Movie Snob Mark,” says he assembled the game from data on IMDB’s top 1,000 films, all of which are potential answers.

The way the game works is simple: In each round, Mark prompts the player with a film synopsis, a short cast list, and a director. It’s then up to the player to fill in the blanks of the movie title by guessing letters. Guess correct, and you rack up an ever-expanding row of popcorn buckets for each correct answer. Guess wrong enough times, and the game ends. Personally, I made it to almost 50 correct answers before bombing out on an obscure French title.

The joy of Hollywood Hangman is that its difficulty level fluctuates steadily—some films are very easy to identify, and more obscure ones are much more difficult. Because really, who’s going to have trouble identifying The Shawshank Redemption or The Godfather from a description? 1987’s Au Revoir Les Enfants, on the other hand, is another story.

Check out Hollywood Hangman here, and see if you can break our record.