Joshua Patrick Dudley
Josh
playing himself; the end credits list the character as Josh and IMDb as Joshua
A live broadcast, an innocent game, and a lot of murder.
Josh, Rachel, Dan and Tarah get together for their weekly game night, with wine and a camera running. Every week they play a board game or a card game. This time Josh wants to try something different, a game he learned in junior high called Murder.
He explains the rules. One player is secretly the killer and kills people by winking at them. Everyone else sits around staring at each other and tries to catch the killer. You can accuse someone, but if you are wrong, you are out. The killer has to be careful not to get caught winking.
Josh has already written out the cards, three that say suspect and one that says killer. Everyone draws a card without showing the others and the staring starts. Someone calls out a wink, and Dan is accused of being the killer.
At that moment the broadcast cuts out. When the picture comes back, Tarah is slumped over. The others think she is playing dead and tell her to get up, but she does not move and they cannot find a pulse. A message has appeared telling them to keep playing or they will die. Nobody admits to writing it, and they start blaming each other.
Scared, they sit back down next to Tarah's body and play again. Accusations fly, someone screams, and now Dan is dead too. Another message tells them they are not done yet and to keep playing. Josh and Rachel turn on each other. Rachel wants to call the cops, and Josh tells her they will both get in trouble and be accused of murder.
Then the two of them drop the act. They say they got him, laugh about how well it went and celebrate their teamwork to the camera. The film leaves Josh and Rachel as the last two standing.
Release & Reception
- Runtime: 7 minutes (6:57 on YouTube, including end credits and behind the scenes footage)
Game Night was uploaded to the StabMovies YouTube channel on March 5, 2017, the release date IMDb gives. It had 1,995 views as of September 2026.
Deleted Scenes & Trivia
- The game is Murder, better known as wink murder. The StabMovies.com page says Joshua's mother taught it to him as a child. In the film, Josh says he learned it in junior high.
- According to the StabMovies.com page, everyone playing got the rules wrong and everyone lost.
- The end credits list the characters by the actors' first names: Rachel, Josh, Dan and Tarah.
- When the others tease him for already writing out the cards, he says he took a stab, a pun on the Stab films.
- The short is listed on IMDb as title tt10837510.
- Nothing about this one was scripted. It was thought up and shot on the spot, on a day when the actors who were supposed to be shooting a scene from Stab 7 did not turn up.
- The game they are playing is one Joshua's mother taught him as a child.
- Everybody playing it got it wrong, and everybody lost.
- Four people wrote and directed it together: Joshua Patrick Dudley, Rachel Alexandria Arnold, Daniel Bucciano and Tarah Nolan.
- It exists because a Stab 7 shoot fell through that day and the people who did turn up made something instead.
Connections
- Made on a day set aside to shoot a scene for StabMovies.com's Stab 7.
- Joshua Patrick Dudley, Rachel Alexandria Arnold and Daniel Bucciano made Swipe Left the next year the same way, unscripted, after a different shoot fell through.