Stay Alive (2006)

Director: William Brent Bell

Writer: William Brent Bell, Matthew Peterman

Tagline: It's the game of life and death....

Actors: Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Jimmi Simpson, Wendell Pierce, Milo Ventimiglia, Sophia Bush, Adam Goldberg, Billy Slaughter, Nicole Oppermann, April Wood

Runtime: 1h 25m

Category: Curse, Killer, Sci-Fi, Video Game

Synopsis: When Loomis (Milo Ventimiglia) dies mysteriously after inviting his friend Hutch over to “game”, Hutch wonders if maybe Loomis would be alive if he hadn’t bailed on him that night. As he searches Loomis’s place for the game he had been talking about he hits the jackpot. He takes the game to his gamer friends and they all link up online to play “Stay Alive”. The bootleg game is creepy and as one friend dies in the game he mysteriously dies leaving his office to go home for the night. Hutch finds all of this way too weird and as his friends start to die in the game he sees the pattern. The remaining gamers try to Stay Alive in the game to beat it and not die in real life.

Review: I was actually impressed with this movie. I hate to say it but it kept my attention throughout until the end. Now, the ending was kind of bad but that was forgivable. The story was pretty strong and the acting was decent. They used TV stars, which is ballsy in my opinion, to make a big budget movie. It rarely works for horror movies. The game was rockin’! I would like to see a movie based on the game itself. Psycho plantation owner chick likes to torture young women and when they finally catch the nut job they lock her in the tower and seal her in and let her rot in there. Great concept. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made a sequel. Don’t know that it would be good but I could see it happening. The scenes were good, again, the acting was pretty decent and the plot was different.

Rating: 17 out of 25. I don’t know that I would run out and rent this but if you are looking for a movie on a Friday or Saturday night and everything you were planning on renting is out as usual, give it a shot. Overall I thought it was worth the money to rent. Had I spent $10 at the theater I would have been bummed. However, I’m not dumb enough to go see anything with Malcolm in the Freakin’ Middle at the theater. I’m just not that stupid. (17of25).