Stay Alive

*
I failed to write about this the other day because I kept thinking to myself, "Does such a worthless movie deserve any sort of energy dedicated to it?" I have hardly felt that way about many movies. I can always find something, anything, that might be worth noting even in terrible movies. Few positives came from me at all a few nights ago when I just numbed my way through it with so little care at all. It is such an insufferably lame premise. Just awful. How could even the most talented among filmmakers get something of quality out of a "video game Elizabeth Bathory character come to life to kill gamers" plot?

Frankie Nunez had his moment in the sun during the Fox run of Malcolm in the Middle but here, the poor kid wears his cap upside down and tries to dress like Hip-Hoppers. Jon Foster, one of the most boring leads imaginable, heads the cast, while Jimmi Simpson (master of the smart-ass wit) and the smokin Sophia Bush (right before she is even better looking in The Hitcher) are brother and sister gamers. Samaire Armstrong is a gal with a camera always taking pictures who shows up at the funeral for an utterly wasted Milo Ventimiglia, who wound up lynched because that is how he died in a video game he was playing called Stay Alive. Armstrong is always snapping pictures, even during the funeral much to Jon's surprise (and why wouldn't a camera going off just after your friend was buried?). Armstrong just kind of emerges in the film and stays. Nunez is another gamer friend of Jon's. Adam Goldberg is Jon's gamer company boss (everyone and their mother is a gamer in this damn movie). During one point or another, they are all hunted, dying as they do in the game (unless the screenplay gives them an out like Samaire and Jon).

The horse buggy scene with Jimmi takes the cake. All of the murders are underwhelming or off screen so what might bring certain viewers to Stay Alive will probably check out after Goldberg bites the big one. Jimmi has that fast talking wise cracking douchey quality that makes him perfectly suitable for a good going away present from the film, but he is taken out in the lamest of possible scenarios. I guess if I were to comment on a positive it is how hot Sophia looks in ruby red lipstick and in black. Other than that, I have a hard time siphoning from my brain anything remotely worthwhile from a film that just doesn't deserve to exist. Nunez, bless his heart, tries to glean appeal from his old Malcolm persona, but this film doesn't offer him a character that could benefit from it.

To tell you the truth, I was just apathetic towards it. It was on and I forbid the finger from pressing the "next channel" button on the remote. Maybe I should have.