Stay Alive (2006) / First revisit in ages

I noticed "Choose or Die" was getting a lot of traction with those I follow on Letterboxd and Netflix was propping it up. My daughter asked me this afternoon if we might be watching a movie tonight, and I thought we might revisit "Stay Alive" in preparation for "Choose or Die". I have only watched this once, sometime on Starz about 2007. I realized why after watching it again tonight.

A video game Elizabeth Bathory released from a new game through a text read by gamers before they start it. This film follows Foster, whose father burned his house down with his mother in it (and caused a traumatic hate of fire), and his friends as they try to stay alive while their deaths in the game mirror what happens to them in real life.

Okay, the plot, I mean, what can I say? It speaks for itself. So Foster, and Samaire, who is a photographer living out of her van, try to locate Bathory's body in a tower in the back of a cemetery, while Munez uses the game to keep Bathory invested in his demise.

So Sophia Bush in this helped. I wish she was actually the main star of the film, quite frankly. I was bored by almost every one else, but Munez, I thought, was fun as the fast-talking gaming wiz. But Bush is sort of relegated to "sexy goth" who is into literature about the likes of Bathory, while Simpson stands out in the middle of the road seemingly begging to be trampled...Simpson is all over television, including Westworld, but in this film he has off-the-cuff remarks that could be deemed obnoxious, bosses everyone around, and has a habit of cutting people off mid-sentence. Honestly, Simpson is the kind of guy that would annoy the fuck out of me.

This is PG-13 horror in its purest form. There are moments that could have kicked ass if shown on screen, but video game Bathory did absolutely nothing for me. And video game zombies walking around in the real world was just laughable. But I do admit I'm not a gamer, so that might be why I'm not really as much the audience for this as others might be. And I could see this being a nostalgia favorite if you were young at the time and loved horror video games.