"House of Games" has a major flaw at its heart: we are told much too early it is all about con men and the type of unscrupulous people who inhabit this shady and duplicitous world. This leaves you forewarned and on alert during the rest of the film so you are never in any real doubt about what is going on at any given moment. The only unanticipated element of the entire film is that it definitely has serious aspirations to reach beyond the particular genre where it takes place and therefore it has an ending which casts an extremely intriguing light upon the central character of Margaret Ford and it leaves you wishing this aspect had been more fully explored. She is an enigma at the heart of a genre film and that in itself is most unusual.