Stay Alive

The kiddie horror market continues to baffle me.

Films like this get pounded by the critics as unimaginative, but them often achieve high viewer ratings on IMDb. This movie suffers low ratings in both spheres but is making money. Lots of it.

The genre demands predictability: some kids die, some survive (always including and often just a boy-girl pair), and at the end, the very end we see how the evil has survived to threaten the exiting audience.

I'll tell you why I went to see it, because I like movies where the "movie within" overlaps in some way with the containing movie. In this case, its a video game; same same. Some viewers compare this to "Jumanji," but in that case, the players enter the game, a fantasy world. In this case, the game enters the real world, more in the "Ringu" fashion.

Is it scary? Are any of these? Who cares? What I care about is whether the folding is done coolly, like in "eXistenZ." And whether the characters are as clever as the fold. A couple of these guys were fun, but typically the girls were clones.

I saw this with "I, Madman." Similar values: clever fold, boring presentation.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

The teenager Loomis Crowley (Milo Ventimiglia) is testing the underground game Stay Alive with his friends Sarah (Nicole Oppermann) and Rex (Billy Slaughter). When the game is over, the impressed Loomis finds in the middle of the night Rex and Sarah dead in their room, and his is pushed by a shadow from the staircase, breaking the banister and hanging the same way he died in the game. Loomis's sister Emma gives his games to his best friend, Hutch (Jon Foster), and he joins his friends Miller (Adam Goldberg), Phineus (Jimmi Simpson) and his sister October (Sophia Bush), Swink (Frankie Muniz) and Abigail (Samaire Armstrong) to play the unknown game together. When Miller and Phineus die the same way they died in the game, the survivors disclose that the game is based on the life of the evil Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was buried alive in the tower of her real state in the Geronge Plantation. With the police chasing them, and after the death of October, the survivors reach the house and try to find the corpse of the Countess to destroy her fiend.

"Stay Alive" is flawed, but it is very entertaining and underrated in IMDb. The story is not scary, but a pleasant adventure with good special effects, the actors and actresses have good performances and show good chemistry. The attitude of the police chasing the teenagers is the flawed and silliest part of the plot, and is simply forgotten in the rest of the story. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Stay Alive - Jogo Mortal" ("Stay Alive - Mortal Game")

Loomis Crowley beta-test video game Stay Alive with his friends Sarah and Rex. All three are killed with Loomis dying exactly the way he died in the game. Loomis' sister gives the game to his friend Hutch (Jon Foster). Hutch, his work friend Miller Banks (Adam Goldberg), brother and sister friends Phineus (Jimmi Simpson) and October (Sophia Bush), geeky Swink (Frankie Muniz) and Sarah's friend Abigail (Samaire Armstrong) play the game together. Miller is killed by the Countess Elizabeth Bathory in the game and she comes to kill him in real life. Police detectives Thibodeaux (Wendell Pierce) and King investigate. Phineus continues to play the game but leaves before getting killed. However the game plays by itself. He is killed in a freak accident like in the game. The remaining group tracks down the origins of the video game. Bathory had drained the blood of young women to bath in to maintain her youth. She was walled up alive in a tower on her plantation. Detective King plays the game and is killed. The cops are after the group and they all go on the run to battle Bathory.

This reminds me of 'The Ring' plus the orderly killing sequence of 'Final Destination'. I like the idea of a real haunted horror video game. I like most of the actors in this movie. I want to like this movie more and I wish it was executed better. First of all, the kills are not bloody enough. The violence should be more gory and bloodier. Too much of it occurs off screen. The backstory is way too complicated. The movie tries to explain too much. It's better to leave it as something creepy killing them. I had a similar problem with 'The Ring' but this movie is much more severe. This movie starts with an interesting idea but the poor execution leaves a lot to be desired.

A group of geeky kids, surprisingly not all living in their parents' basements, stumble across an underground game - "Stay Alive". But they're in for a treat: when you die in this game, you're going to die in real life, too! This is an amateur effort from both the writer and the director, whose names I don't recall. In all fairness, for a first time effort, this film was watchable and in some ways quite entertaining. It wasn't wonderful, or scary or much of anything else... but good enough that it seems to help people pass the time. Which, in the end, maybe is all we can hope for from movies.

I liked the video game theme. Unlike the Internet theme of "Fear Dot Com", this was more realistic and the game featured in the movie was the sort of game I could actually see people playing. It reminded me of "House of the Dead", which is too bad now that Uwe Boll ruined that arcade classic. The video game references to Fatal Frame ,the Konami code, and the word "w00t!" were nice touches, and I got the sense that the writer actually knew something about video games. Which is a huge plus. The Mario Brothers "1up" sweatshirt was also a nice touch.

Now, the film has a vampire element because the villain is Elizabeth Bathory, who has somehow been risen from the dead and haunts a video game. Bathory makes a great monster, though maybe not in this movie. A lot of questions remain unanswered about this... because, seriously, if I'm a vampiress from the Middle Ages, I'm not coming back in a video game.

The cast was strong as far as the teen slasher genre goes. Jon Foster played Hutch O'Neill, the fire-fearing leader of this Scooby gang. My only complaint is that he looked like a dead ringer for Jamie Kennedy, which will ultimately boost or kill his career, I think.

Samaire Armstrong was the bleach-haired Abigail, who has a very strong role and exudes some kind of sensuality I can't explain. In one scene she's almost nude, but either her, the writer or the director ruined this... and made it really cheesy. How many girls who unexpectedly get hung upside down have their shirt tucked into their bra?

Frankie Muniz is in this movie, and not nearly as annoying as you probably think. For a 50-year old man trapped in a kid's body (like Haley Joel Osment and Gary Coleman), he's decent.

Sophia Bush was October Bantum, the rebel goth girl... as far as rebel goth girls go, she's alright. You'll find yourself (if you're a young man) getting torn between her and Abigail as your favorite female lead.

Last, I want to point out the great character name of "Loomis Crowley", which I can only assume is an homage to both Aleister Crowley and Dr. Loomis from "Halloween". If not, well, you still get the point for it.

Some of the game elements are a bit cheesy (especially when the game is outside the computer) and the overall story makes little sense and is very teen-oriented. (In other words, it has no depth whatsoever.) But it wasn't bad. You might want to save this for a night when you're drunk and just want something to be amused by without actually wanting to appreciate the film itself.

For what it is, this movie rocks! I know it's silly and predictable and even just plain-out awful, but it is ENTERTAINING, and yeah, I had fun laughing at it. Also, Some of it was creepy, but in a very formulaic way. Very fun. You should see it if you want a silly horror movie that doesn't completely suck. The countess was weird-looking, and that was somewhat purposeful because she's a VIDEO-GAME CHARACTER. Malcolm in the Middle was in it -- too bad, I thought that kid was actually good. The house itself is pretty creepy, and the game, if it does or will exist, would be very fun to play. C'Mon! You can't hate it for being bad, it even makes fun of itself! It is really a good hour and a half of...something. Something okay in my book.