Stay Alive Year: 2006 Director: William Brent Bell Written by: William Brent Bell, Matthew Peterman Threat: Video Game Weapon of Choice: Garden Shears Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Color Language: English Country of Origin: USA IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
I normally loathe video game adaptations. In fact, if there is any horror sub-genre worth more derision, I couldn't name it for you. I suspect this one is at least a partial adaptation, but it seems to have successfully left the worst bits of those adaptations out and turned the rest of them sort of sideways. What I'm probably trying to say is that while this one definitely fits the video game sub-genre, it was enjoyable and engaging. Not perfect, but worth the buck fifty I spent to see it in the second run theatre.
A hard core gamer gets his hands on a pre-release game. He plays it. He dies. Horribly. Naturally, his good gamer friends do what they can for him, they play the game themselves. Wouldn't you know it, they start to die horribly as well. The plot thickens.
So the single biggest thing this flick has going for it is that they named one of the characters October. I love that name. I've always intended to name my first born daughter after that greatest month of the year. I can only hope she looks as good as Sophia Bush.
Alright, other than that, what the movie has going for it is pretty basic. It doesn't really mess around trying to have the greatest effects (their decent, but not stellar); it doesn't spend much time in character development (just enough so that we can keep them separate); and once the gore starts to fly, it pretty much gets down to business and keeps the characters falling.
As formulaic and sort of bland as that sounds, they actually ended up making a competent little horror film that is worth the time spent. I don't know that I will ever see it again. I mean, it isn't The Wicker Man or anything, but I certainly had a good time.
Posted: September 11, 2006

Rish's Reviews
Tyranist and I saw this in the theatre. But I never reviewed it (I originally wrote, "WE never reviewed it, but silly me, tyr did six months ago and I never noticed). I can't really say why, exactly, but when I mentioned to him the other night that we had never done so, he said, "Maybe we should just rent the DVD and review that." If we do, I'm sure my review will turn out better.
Stay Alive was one of those cool and hip modern PG-13 horror films with bright young faces and not a lot of bloodletting. It told the tale of a new video game--one of those exploring-the-haunted-house types--with a disturbing twist: if you get killed in the game . . . you die in real life.
The cast (except for Muniz) was either unknown or vaguely familiar (Alice Krige has a small part . . . and I'm afraid I'll have to nominate her for Scream Queen status soon).
Ignore what everybody else says. Stay Alive was quite scary, actually. And it had many clever moments. This instance was the only time I can think of where obviously CG characters remained effective by being obviously CG.
I've heard a lot of complaints about the flick, but there are only two complaints I have about it: 1) it was difficult to like most of the characters (but with each passing year, I find it more difficult to like young people as a whole), and 2) parts of the film were weakened by the PG-13 rating. I could feel the editor's scissors snipping pretty much any time a character died. All the more reason to see it now, when you can get the unavoidable Unrated DVD cut.
It was a testament to how happy I was to be back among my friend, seeing horror movies in the theatre together again, that I liked this movie as much as I did. But even so, I stand behind the good things to say about it.
Posted: March 12, 2007

Total Skulls: 21

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?