Stay Alive

[Lizy]

Stay Away.
This was one of the worst movies I have seen in a long while. That alone is terrible considering I’ve had to suffer through LifeTime flicks for the past few months (mother + metapause + Lifetime=petrifying).
Warning: The following review does contain spoilers. They will be highlightable much like this.


The basis of the movie is the title itself: Stay Alive. Some kid comes across a video game wherein if you die during game play, you die exactly like that in life. Seems entertaining, right? Especially considering games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. Sure, if you’re not the type to get pissed off at plot holes.

This film was so full of these things it was impossible watching it without falling face first into a goddamned pit. The game itself was a never-ending fall. Besides the fact the game had no real production team or printer and that it seemed to pop out of thin air, the original kid mystically just came by it. The purpose of the game was to sneak through this creepy old house, a giant ass graveyard- complete with crypts for every cadaver- and to a huge black tower in the middle. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Well, okay, not really. But there is a witch in the tower. Have you seen the Brother’s Grimm movie? She’s got the same phobia of aging and habit of cracking mirrors and being stowed away for ages with out wear or tear. In the game you have to kill the bitch.
The story behind the witch is she was this terrible, evil, horrendous, slave-driving, girl-torturing, child-killing woman in her time. She cracked every mirror in her house (which was colonial, so I’m assuming she was from the Southern slave-owning period) because she couldn’t stand seeing herself grow old. She also abducted thousands of little girls in a horse-drawn stagecoach and tortured them to death. Why? God knows, she’s a witch. Nobody knows their motives.
Except, wait, wasn’t the witch scare during the late 1600’s, not the 1800’s? Hmm..

The problem, as our hero’s soon find out, is the game is real. Nobody knows quite how Mr. Crowley stumbled off his upstairs banister and hung himself on a length of chain, or how the shackle magically snapped itself around his neck. This happens quite a bit in the movie though: magic shackling of things. And the sudden appearance of chains from thin air. If I weren’t so terrible disgusted by all this I would have wondered if I had accidentally stepped into a bondage porno.
The police also have no clue how his two roommates were hung from giant pork hooks and bled. But that’s okay, because instead of investigating, they pick the most likely and convenient suspect: Hutch, the Hero. Hutch, who is too distraught over his best friend’s death, his co-workers death (who’s comes next, and just as mind-boggling to the police) and his girlfriend’s death (who didn’t actually die in the game but got killed off any way...) is too stupid to have planned such intricate murders- though just stupid enough to return to the crime scene if he had, apparently.

Here’s an idea: TURN THE FUCKING GAME OFF! Pause it, ex’ out of it, remove the program from your computer, take the CD out of your drive, burn the sucker and pitch it into the sea. Oh… but those producers are way ahead of me! If you don’t play the game… it plays itself. OoooOOo.
That’s right- if the lil old’ bitty is tired of waiting for your ass to unpause the game, she’ll do you a favor (and all of us) and do it for you. Then kill you. Then you die in real life. Because that makes any goddamned fucking sense.

So the last three survivors hunt down the actual residence the game was copied after (amazing that it was approximately 20 minutes away) and find the witch. Wanna know how they kill her? Sure you do! They hammer three nails into her: one in the heart, one in the throat and one in the forehead. Then when she wakes up from her living-dead sleep they light her on fire, er “boil her blood.”
So now she’s dead. Big whoop. Everybody is saved. Well, at least the two remaining survivors. But wait! The third guy is magically alive! Does that mean all seven of the previous dead are alive now as well! Cut to: Kill Bill. Hmm... I don’t think these guys have enough training to get themselves out of a hardwood coffin and 6 feet of packed dirt.

Aside for the terrible plot holes (which are too numerouse to name even here) and story line, you actually had to sit through periods of the characters playing the game. As if flying to Germany and expecting some quality time with a boyfriend but being neglected for a shoot-em-up game isn’t bad enough, but paying 7 bucks to see a shitty multi-player game from camera 1 view or zoom mode is wretched. I’ll take the boyfriend any day- at least then I can smack him upside the head for being a dumbass. I only get the pleasure of watching the n00bs die. Even that wasn’t nearly as satisfying.

So, in short, avoid the movie. The concept was interesting but damned if they didn’t screw it up.

[Gremlin]

Heh. I've got that whole headacheinduced blurvision thing going on today. At first, I misread this as a review for Staying Alive, which would instead go something like:

A sequel to Saturday Night Fever, starring Travolta, not called Pulp Fiction or Swordfish. Avoid.

[Lizy]

*laughs* That may have been far more intertaining than this flick. At least Travolta was a looker at that age.