As a former Game Designer, I should really hate Stay Alive. Even beyond the supernatural aspects, the game itself makes little sense. And yet, at times in my life I have owned this movie. I’ve said before I don’t believe in guilty pleasures; you should never have to feel bad for what you enjoy (within the bounds of legality). Stay Alive wants to be scary. It wants to be a modern urban legend about evil adapting to new technology. What it ends up as, is just kinda goofy.
- Directed by: William Brent Bell
- Written by: William Brent Bell. Matthew Peterman
- Starring: Jon Foster. Samaire Armstrong. Frankie Muniz
Stay Alive wants you to know it loves horror and horror survival games. It name-drops Fatal Frame, and Silent Hill 4 in the first five minutes. It also names its first victim Loomis Crowley. In a movie that took itself seriously, the number of references would be jarring; here it’s just cute.
When main character Hutch and his friends find Loomis’s copy of “Stay Alive”, they all decide to play together. For a variety of reasons, I’m going to ignore any technical impossibilities with the game. Let’s just call them “made possible with evil cursed magic” and move on. As promised by the tag line, as their characters die in the game, the players are killed in real life, forcing them to beat the game to well, you know…stay alive.
Stay Alive is one of the most by-the-numbers, early 2000s horror movies out there. It’s got tons of jump scares and a cast full of recognizable TV actors. The kills are punctuated by flashes of dramatic spooky images without leaning too hard on gore.
Why Do I Like This?
I think there is something to the concept. The evolution of folklore curses and evil to use modern tech and media isn’t anything new. Ringu covered similar territory with VHS, so why not video games? It’s an interactive storytelling medium that allows the main characters to cover twice as much ground and do things not possible in the real world.
When the game enters the third act, and the game and reality blends, it really shows things I think were at the heart of the writer’s concept. Problem-solving inside the game affects the world outside.
The characters also feel like more than bait. Like everything else with this movie, there are qualifiers here. The characters aren’t perfect and lean a little heavy on archetypes or possibly stereotypes. Frankie Muniz doesn’t get much to work with, but he goes all-in on his quirky tech geek. We also get not one, but two manic pixie dream girls. One goth version, October, and the other indie photographer Abagail.
They’re all given back stories though. This group has reasons to cling to each other, and traumas that affect their decisions. While it shouldn’t be unusual for characters to be written as people, in horror movies it often gets left out.
Why It’s Not Quite There
It plays fast and loose with its internal rules and logic. One might even say that there are no internal rules, which is kind of a problem when your movie is based on a game. Games need rules to help define the stakes. Once those go out the window, the tension is broken, and the point of the setting is rendered moot.
Using Elizabeth Bathory as a villain is fine. Setting her in a Louisiana Plantation when she’s Hungarian nobility may be a bit of an inconsistency. There are plenty of local killers who could have done the job and fit the vibe of the setting so much better.
The movie also relies on CG at times when it should have used practical effects. This one makes more sense as they want to emulate the game’s version of Bathory, but as she made the transition from game to life, her look could have upgraded too.
And the script isn’t perfect narratively; a subplot with the cops just vanishes with no real resolution. The end is kind of a bit of a cheat as well. Now, it was a thing back in those days to have a bit of a “twist” ending where the villain won after all. But in this case, it makes no sense with the internal logic of the movie, unless Bathory can be resurrected infinite times regardless of how destroyed her body is. These two things combined make the ending feel a bit uneven and maybe incomplete.
And to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the power of Alienware saving the day. I mean, I’ve never really objected to product placement, but maybe this was a little much? I’m torn, since I own an Alienware tower I love dearly.
Should You Watch It Anyway?
I’m not here to tell you what to do. If you want some light and fluffy 2000s horror themed around video games, you might really dig this. If you want serious bone chilling scares or elevated horror, this isn’t it.
Final Thoughts:
I make no excuses for my tastes. I like what I like, and while I do try to understand why, I’m not into justifying it. Sometimes cheesy movies are just junk food. Probably not a good idea to live off them, but fine as an occasional nostalgic treat. Stay Alive is that for me; a time capsule of the early 2000s in gaming. The movie doesn’t show this time or the games with any real accuracy, but it reminds me of where I was when I first watched it. So aside from all the movie’s merits and flaws, it’s special for that reason. And I think that’s cool.
P.S. About Games In General
I wrote this before the industry suffered yet another round of heartbreaking game industry layoffs. I’ve lost track of the number of times talented innovative people were cut and promising projects axed to “increase shareholder confidence”. I understand the financial realities of making games, razor thin profit margins and all that. That’s not the root cause of the bloodbaths we’re currently seeing. The layoffs we’ve been seeing.
As consumers we need to be more aware of what we are buying and who we are supporting when we make purchases. Every dollar given to companies that engage in these routine studio acquisitions and purges is approval of their destructive methods.
Stay Alive is available on Streaming
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