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Review #74 of 365 Film: Stay Alive [PG-13] 85 minutes
WIP: $9.00
When 1st Seen: 25 March 2006
Where Viewed: United Artists Twin Peak Mall 10, Longmont, CO
Time: 8:00 p.m.
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DVD |
Well, this wouldn’t be March Spring Break 2006 time if there were not, at least, one requisite scary movie with teenagers dying all over the place currently playing in theatres. Instead of the The Ring or The Grudge, this year we have Stay Alive (not to be confused with Stayin’ Alive). Quite literally, the name of the movie is the name of the game, and the game is one that plays people to win. Mayhem begins when computer game junkie Loomis Crowley (Milo ‘Weren’t you on the “Gilmore Girls” Ventimiglia) acquires an unpublished game called Stay Alive. Now, sadly, we don’t get to know a great deal about Loomis because, well, he bites the dust in the first 120 seconds of the film or so. All that we do learn is that he is deep into computer game beta testing. The creepy and mysterious thing is that Loomis and two of his close friends are all murdered in the same way as their computer character was killed during the game. Another group of Loomis's friends get the game from Loomis's sister after the funeral. Once in posession of the game, Loomis's friends conclude they should play the game in his honor. Now, let me stop a minute and ask you a question. If your friend and two people he just had over, were all murdered just after playing an underground computer game, is the first thing you would do is boot up the game and start playing it? I mean, even if you didn’t believe in ghosts and creepy things that might come to haunt you from the game world into your real world, wouldn’t you out of respect for your recently-deceased friend just sort of lay low, attend the funeral, and try to move on? Well, if you said, “No, I’d play the game,” then this might be the best movie match for you in a decade because you will immediately empathize with this cast of characters, all of whom seem begged, borrowed, or stolen from hiatus of WB/UPN/Fox television network shows. The cast includes Hutch MacNeil (Jon ‘Ben Connor on the short-lived teen dramedy “Live as We Know It” Foster), Abigail (Samaire ‘didn’t I see you in a few episodes of “The O.C.” and “Numb3rs”?’Armstrong), Swink Sylvania (Frankie ‘Our little Malcolm is growing up, Ma’ Muniz), October Bantum (Sophia “One Tree Hill” Bush), Phineus Bantum (Jimmi ‘no relation to Jessica’ Simpson) and Miller (Adam ‘Name it he’s been in it from Saving Private Ryan and A Beautiful Mind to episodes of “Will and Grace” and “My Name is Earl”' Goldberg). How do they all of these characters connect up to each other? Well, October and Phineus are siblings and long-time friend of Hutch and Swink. Hutch had a tragic childhood which led him to run from home often to the home of the Loomis Crowley (previously mentioned as the first victim of the film). Miller is Hutch’s boss at a law firm where Hutch is clerking. So, that leaves only Abigail unaccounted for…we’ll get to more on that a little later. If that was too complicated, then I do apologize. The important thing to know is that this is a band of friends that will stick by each other no matter what. They will play the game and they will not give up. Which, I guess, is why they all decide to play Stay Alive: the game together. Which they do, and as they play they realize, of course too late, that if you die in the game, you will die the same way in real life—sorry this is not a 'ancienct relative passed away peacefully in his / her sleep last night after living a long and wonderful life’ sort of film. In the end, I felt that this group is way too smart to do half the not-so-smart stuff they do which just doesn’t jive in my mind leading me to conclude there are some plot errors in the film.
The acting was decent. The directing by William Brent Bell is decent. Yet, by decent I mean good not great. Well, usually I don’t expect 'great' from this type of a movie, so decent isn’t a terrible thing. It means sort of the same thing as a $9 on the W.I.P. scale, I suppose. All of this decency adds up to a pretty good scary movie, and I did find it very scary. The sound effects dominated the film, I thought, really increasing the dramatic tension and potential horror. Unlike its horror kin films Final Destination 3 and The Hills Have Eyes (2006), this film does not rely on excessive blood and gore or even that much violence to be scary—and for that, I applaud it. While the outward evil villainess is horrifying, it turns out that she isn’t really half as scary as the game itself turns out to be.
Since my hard and fast rule is to never give away major plot points, instead, I’ll give away what I wish were the ending of the film instead of the ending we got. Disclaimer: You may not want to read this part until after you see the movie. If you don’t plan to see the movie, go ahead and read away. Well, remember back to my mentioning of the inexplicable appearance of Abigail? Well, she has no connection to the group. There is never any stated connection anyway. So, here’s what I think would have made for a much better film ending. Near the end, in some ultra-dramatic way, Abigail should have announced that she was actually the granddaughter of a woman who was tortured and put to death by the evil villainess of the film many years ago. She should have grabbed the nails needed to kill the ghost of her grandmother’s assassin and driven them into her body as prescribed in the book which explains how to rid the world of evil ghosts and spirits; and, in this specific case, to return a ghost to its rightful body herself. But, in what would have been a twist that would have made this film more like The Skeleton Key and less like The Ring, after all is said and done, it would have been revealed that actually, it was Abigail who designed the horror game and used it and Hutch’s friend to conjure forth the ghost in the first place so that she might avenge the death of her grandmother. This would have explained where she came from, why she isn’t so good at the game (she was trying not to let the others on to her secret), why she doesn’t seem as afraid as the others throughout the whole movie, and why she lies about her past. Now that would have been awesome!
Alas, the film ends with some problems instead: (1) it is never really explained how or why this wayward, van-dwelling, funeral photographer named Abigail happens to appear in the lives of these people quite out of the blue--she suddenly shows up and starts trying to land a relationship with Hutch whom she photographs constantly in an almost creepy-stalker-like fashion at Loomis’s funeral, (2) not to give this part away, but suffice it to say that the main rule of the game appears to be broken near the end, and (3) again as previously alluded, it is nearly impossible to believe that people who could be smart enough or brave enough to attempt to catch and destroy the malevolent antagonist of the film could also walk themselves in to some of the most seriously fool-hearty situations since Marion Lee missed every creepy sign and went ahead and got into that shower at the Bates Motel. All in all, the film was scary, featured a decent cast, and was decently fulfilling. I really cannot see any reason, however [unless you have a particularly poor home sound system], not to wait and see this movie on DVD.
The acting was decent. The directing by William Brent Bell is decent. Yet, by decent I mean good not great. Well, usually I don’t expect 'great' from this type of a movie, so decent isn’t a terrible thing. It means sort of the same thing as a $9 on the W.I.P. scale, I suppose. All of this decency adds up to a pretty good scary movie, and I did find it very scary. The sound effects dominated the film, I thought, really increasing the dramatic tension and potential horror. Unlike its horror kin films Final Destination 3 and The Hills Have Eyes (2006), this film does not rely on excessive blood and gore or even that much violence to be scary—and for that, I applaud it. While the outward evil villainess is horrifying, it turns out that she isn’t really half as scary as the game itself turns out to be.
Since my hard and fast rule is to never give away major plot points, instead, I’ll give away what I wish were the ending of the film instead of the ending we got. Disclaimer: You may not want to read this part until after you see the movie. If you don’t plan to see the movie, go ahead and read away. Well, remember back to my mentioning of the inexplicable appearance of Abigail? Well, she has no connection to the group. There is never any stated connection anyway. So, here’s what I think would have made for a much better film ending. Near the end, in some ultra-dramatic way, Abigail should have announced that she was actually the granddaughter of a woman who was tortured and put to death by the evil villainess of the film many years ago. She should have grabbed the nails needed to kill the ghost of her grandmother’s assassin and driven them into her body as prescribed in the book which explains how to rid the world of evil ghosts and spirits; and, in this specific case, to return a ghost to its rightful body herself. But, in what would have been a twist that would have made this film more like The Skeleton Key and less like The Ring, after all is said and done, it would have been revealed that actually, it was Abigail who designed the horror game and used it and Hutch’s friend to conjure forth the ghost in the first place so that she might avenge the death of her grandmother. This would have explained where she came from, why she isn’t so good at the game (she was trying not to let the others on to her secret), why she doesn’t seem as afraid as the others throughout the whole movie, and why she lies about her past. Now that would have been awesome!
Alas, the film ends with some problems instead: (1) it is never really explained how or why this wayward, van-dwelling, funeral photographer named Abigail happens to appear in the lives of these people quite out of the blue--she suddenly shows up and starts trying to land a relationship with Hutch whom she photographs constantly in an almost creepy-stalker-like fashion at Loomis’s funeral, (2) not to give this part away, but suffice it to say that the main rule of the game appears to be broken near the end, and (3) again as previously alluded, it is nearly impossible to believe that people who could be smart enough or brave enough to attempt to catch and destroy the malevolent antagonist of the film could also walk themselves in to some of the most seriously fool-hearty situations since Marion Lee missed every creepy sign and went ahead and got into that shower at the Bates Motel. All in all, the film was scary, featured a decent cast, and was decently fulfilling. I really cannot see any reason, however [unless you have a particularly poor home sound system], not to wait and see this movie on DVD.
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Stay Alive [DVD](2006) DVD
Stay Alive (Unrated Director's Cut) [DVD](2006) DVD
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