Our intrepid heroes move stealthily in the forest, armed and ready to fight. They're imagining D&D monsters, not local paintballers. They probably should expect the paint-attack, since it's established that the paintballers routinely harass them. Of course, neither side expects that the rare grimoire the group magic-user has found is real. The LARPers flee, but not before one of the paintballers gets permanently marked by unintended magic.
Defeated, they return to Joe's place. He won a lottery years ago and purchased an old castle-like home. As they see it, they're living the dream. Joe's girlfriend, Beth, wants more material reality, and she dumps him. In order to cheer him up, they take him to a large-scale annual LARP occurring in a nearby park. Problems abound: the Gamemaster holds a grudge from a previous encounter, the paintballers want revenge, and the owner of the grimoire accidentally summons an actual demon.
This 2013 horror/comedy benefits significantly from a solid cast, which includes Peter Dinklage and Summer Glau. The actors clearly had fun making this thing, and they elevate a script which relies heavily on very few jokes being replayed with variations. There's also the matter of the effects. Although the film went over budget, it remains low-budget, and the visuals frequently look more like 1983 than 2013.
Knights of Badassdom is not Oscar material and it features more than its share of awkward movie-making moments. I nevertheless can recommend it if you're sufficiently nerdy or if you want to watch skilled actors do silly comedy and get slaughtered by a demon.
Director: Joe Lynch
Writers: Kevin Dreyfuss, Matt Wall
Ryan Kwanten as Joe Revitt
Steve Zahn as Eric
Peter Dinklage as Hung
Summer Glau as Gwen
Khanh Doan as Andie
Margarita Levieva as Beth
Brett Gipson as Gunther
Michael Gladis as King Diamond
Basil Harris as Eddie #1
D.R. Anderson as Eddie #2 / Johnny #1
Douglas Tait as Abominog
Brian Posehn as Gilberto
Kevin Connell as King Kerry
Sean Cook as Winston
Paul Puti as Lando
Joshua Malina as Travis
Michael Carpenter as Guy Elf
Joshua Aaron Van Veen as the Gamemaster
Note: the film spent considerable time in post-production, and Lynch has complained about imposed changes.