The Crush House review – reality TV has never been this truthful

I always feel a little icky when I say I’m a fan of reality TV. It’s no doubt a pop-culture titan, but it’s also a genre that comes with a lot of problematic baggage. Exploitation, humiliation, hypersexualization, reinforced gender essentialism – the list goes on and on. The controversial topics the genre is tangled up in is – put lightly – a complete nightmare, but I can’t stop watching. It’s not just the drama (although I love the drama, too), I also like watching humans just be human, you know? I connect with the authenticity on screen, seeing people’s emotions in their rawest form.

This duality of reality TV is endlessly fascinating. By watching these shows, what is my role as a spectator? What systems am I participating in when I tune in to watch? Self-described “thirst-person shooter” The Crush House sets out to comment on the complexity of this relationship, and successfully delivers. It’s a satirical comedy that pokes fun at the shallowness and manufactured nature of the TV genre and tops it all off with a cheeky wink and peace sign gesture. It’s fun, dynamic, and has something to say.

The Crush House puts you in the role of a TV producer of a 90s reality TV show who must film a cast of hotties and their drama in a bubblegum pink Malibu mansion for a ravenous audience. You need to record the cast each day – catching their intimate conversations, trivial catfights, and steamy romances on camera – while also keeping track of what viewers want to see. You have a targeted viewership to satisfy each day set by the omnipresent ‘Network’ and if you don’t deliver those numbers the show will be cancelled, and you’ll be asked to sashay away.

Each day begins with you picking up your camcorder in your dingy basement room (the fancy suits are reserved for the talent) and setting out into the mansion. When you start recording, audiences will begin to tune in, their comments popping up in text bubbles via a live chat on the right side of the screen. Each audience group demands different things, like how the Drama Queens want to see the cast’s squabbles or how Sexy Seekers are thirsty for an on-screen smooch. It can get pretty niche like how plants will satisfy Landscaping Lovers, swimming pools and sinks keep the Plumbers happy, and the Butt Guys want to see, well, butts. Icons on the screen indicate when you have a particular item or cast member in a shot, and your audience will react to that. When you satisfy multiple audiences at once, icons and comments start to pop off in a feeding frenzy of activity and your viewership will spike.

Filming the right moments is fun and frantic. One minute, I’m filming nerdy Veer and quiet Milo (who are currently enemies but I sense a flirty undertone), but suddenly I spot girl-next-door Hannah and wildcard Prisilica getting cosy in the background. I sense something is about to happen so I stop recording, race over to the pool, and line up my shot just in time to get their smooch on camera. The Sexy Seekers and Girls for Girls viewers love it, the Plumbers start chatting about pool filters, and I make sure to rotate my camera to a Dutch angle to satisfy the Film Students. The chat instantly picks up, the satisfying little icons are popping off, and my views are through the roof. Perfection. I’m unstoppable. I am the Kubrick of reality TV.

I love this twist of traditional FPS norms. Instead of rushing across a map with a sniper rifle in hand, I’m racing across a sunkissed Barbie mansion to get the perfect shot of two cute women smooching. It’s not just the case of pointing your camera in the general direction of two cast members but manoeuvring in a way to get the best shot. Audiences get bored quickly so you’re always on the move, trying to keep their attention. As days go on satisfying them gets more challenging, and with the Network constantly upping the number of audiences you need to satisfy for the day, you’ll need to be savvy in what you shoot and how you shoot it.

Hustling to maintain the viewership of an audience with the attention span of a toddler is a commentary in itself. My role as a camera operator is to essentially objectify the cast members, turning their experiences into commodity sludge to be consumed by viewers. This means it can be pretty narrative-breaking when you can please your audience without filming the cast at all. The game’s system makes it so that as long as you have a bunch of objects in a shot that resonates with your viewers, they couldn’t care less about the cast – which could be a commentary in itself but it really took me out of the frenzy of activity. It doesn’t happen a lot, but in these moments, the fantasy completely dissolves like a sparkly bath bomb.

The game’s upbeat pace quickly pushes you along however, and with plenty of distractions too. It’s incredibly self-aware, especially when it takes a tongue-in-cheek jab at reality TV. The cast chug a seemingly never-ending supply of ‘Crush Juice’, placed everywhere throughout the mansion; the show’s mascot is a creepy unblinking furby that’s always watching; and grotesque adverts will play whenever you’re not recording, which include Dogmilk (a hotdog wiener dipped in milk), a giant slow-motion ass for Butts TV, and subscription for a funeral service. Everything is drenched in a pastel filter and the mansion is complete with palm trees, neon hearts, inflatable flamingos, and 100-degree heat. It’s like you’ve been transported to a sun-kissed hellscape.

The cast only contributes to how ridiculous everything is. At the start of each season (which lasts an in-game week) you get to pick four characters from a group of twelve. These hopeful hotties include stereotypical archetypes like Alex the loveable himbo, Joyumi, the ‘sexy ice queen’, and Emile a hairy chested hunk (who gave me the most toe-curling ick after announcing “I cannot go two days without wetting my whistle”). I’m personally a huge fan of motormouth ‘Save the drama for your Mama’ Ayo, whose thirst for TV time knows no bounds and insists on getting their butt in shot as much as possible.

All the classic reality TV archetypes are present, albeit with a lot more diversity across the queer spectrum in how folks express themselves – and also in just how horny everyone is for everyone else. Relationships meanwhile can change as quickly as the audience’s opinion of them. Blue-haired nightclub promoter Coco and wanna-be crypto bro Gunther might proclaim their love for each other in the morning, but then have a heated disagreement about margaritas and hate each other by the evening. The drama starts on day one and continues to roll out every day until the Season ends. There are a bunch of different personalities and their petty drama to get attached to, but my love of the cast did waver upon learning that dialogue isn’t locked into one character, but shared amongst the cast. If you repeat days or replay the game, for instance, you’ll see the same conversations but being spoken by different characters, which takes away from each character having their own personality.

As you reach the end of your first Season, things start to take a turn and you begin to learn that there’s something darker going on underneath the pink pastel surface. A strange voice crackles through to your walkie-talkie calling you to a previously-closed elevator that takes you beneath the house. Things start to unravel from there and cracks begin to show in the perfect paradise facade, including the cast. At night when the show is off-air they’ll hang around the mansion asking you for favours, mostly to do with how they’re portrayed on screen. The majority of them want to be stars, willing to participate in the circus of the entertainment-industry institution to obtain that dream. You get to see glimpses of their real selves before the mask goes back on – it’s humanising, and a big reality check. Of course, this isn’t allowed, as stated by the Network’s two golden rules: Don’t talk to the cast, and the audience is always right. So, what happens when these rules get broken?

The Crush House has multiple endings, but they all connect to one ultimate ‘truth’ about the house and the reality TV show machine in general. I’m doing my best to dance around spoilers here, but if this Barbie-style mansion is a contorted, disturbing alternate reality constructed for consumers, what exists beyond the beaches of this tropical island prison paradise? The Crush House’s ultimate conclusion zeroes in on how reality TV offers its contestants and audience an escape from one reality to another – for better or worse.

Even though some parts might momentarily break the illusion, The Crush House maintains its shiny sheen of plastic perfection (one that hides a dark, sickly goo inside). It touches upon multiple facets of reality TV with sharp satire and wit, including the nature of the relationships we have with contestants on these shows, the industrial churn of people and their lives for our entertainment, and the truth of what’s captured on screen impacting what’s happening when the cameras are off. You’ll definitely want to tune in for this one.

A copy of The Crush House was provided for review by Devolver Digital.