Stay Alive (2006)

- written December 2006

Summary: Hutch is a video game fanatic and is heartbroken to find out a friend of his died, Loomis, after playing a video game. Ah, but this isn’t any ordinary video game. It’s a game called “Stay Alive” and once you start playing, if you die in the game, you die in real life. Hutch and some game fanatic decide to avenge Loomis’ death by investigating but again, once you die in the game, you die in real life. And this game doesn’t allow for “do-overs.”           Overall: I’m sorta having mixed feelings about the film. It’s not that bad…and has some nice ideas. But at the same time, it’s got such huge flaws that you just can’t quite take it as seriously, as maybe it deserved. The film has almost too much video game footage in it, to the point that it’s just flat out difficult to truly like the movie. You keep watching their characters run across the screen and you want to laugh at them and go “seriously, folks…I’m supposed to buy this?”           The other major problem with the film is it loses focus on what it wants to be. We see so much focus with the cops investigating the deaths and by the end of the film the murder mystery has been abandoned, the cop has vanished from the screen and the film is solely vide game footage with roses and fake looking ghosties and mis-truths about Countess Elizabeth Bathory.           And then the fact the film jumps between people dying in game and then dying without the game and some random comments about how “the countess” has now left the game and is killing in real life, without needing the game. The facts of the films’ premise change every few minutes and by the end of the film, it’s just too convoluted and conflicting to make any sense.           Skip it.           Comparison: FearDotCom meets The Ring

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