Inside Pulse Review – Stay Alive

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Credit: www.impawards.com

Director:

William Brent Bell

Cast:

Jon Foster……….Hutch MacNeil
Samaire Armstrong……….Abigail
Frankie Muniz……….Swink Sylvania
Sophia Bush……….October Bantum
Jimmi Simpson……….Phineus Bantum
Adam Goldberg……….Miller
Milo Ventimiglia……….Loomis Crowley

Hollywood Pictures presents Stay Alive. Written by William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for horror violence, disturbing images, language, brief sexual and drug content).

The video game industry is a cash cow. Children of all ages sit in their dark rooms, alone or with friends, some Cheetos and a Coke nearby. On PS2’s or X-Box’s they wrap their oily fingers around the controls and play espionage thrillers, football or engage in a little street fighting. Considering all the genres of video gaming, the one best suited for Hollywood is survival horror.

First coined in 1996 after the Playstation release of Resident Evil, survival horror is a profitable video game genre in which the player has to survive and fight numerous villains, often of the undead or supernatural variety, in tight, claustrophobic settings – a house, for instance.

While survival horror is fun to play, the game-to-big screen adaptations are not fun to watch. So far there have been two Resident Evils and Uwe Boll’s abysmal take on the Alone in the Dark series. The RE‘s may have done okay business at theaters; but they weren’t exactly cash cows at the box office. Still, those gamers would get in their cars or have their parents drop them off so they could see their favorite video game as a movie.

Some of those same gamers may have comprised the talent pool of Stay Alive. With the exception of Frankie Muniz and Adam Goldberg, the cast is heavy with unknowns. At least the filmmakers followed that rule in the “how to make a horror movie” playbook. The rest, I’m not so sure.

The story is not based on any kind of survival horror; but instead pays homage to the genre. A group of twenty-something year olds who don’t appear to have jobs – and yet one drives a Ferrari – are hooked on a game called Stay Alive. Now this is no ordinary game; it is survival horror where there are stiff penalties if your character dies in the game. The rub: you die for real.

When Hutch (Jon Foster) hears his friend Loomis died, found hung from the second floor, he is skeptical. After the funeral a family friend gives Hutch a leather case with some of Loomis’ horror games inside. Morning with friends, they decide to pay tribute to the fallen gamer by engaging in a little survival horror in his honor. Phineus (Jimmi Simpson), the comic relief for the movie, is stoked about this game with no box art, only a white cover with the words “Stay Alive” written in marker. “Sweet Sebastian Bach, I want to play,” Phineus would say, trying to hurry his friends up and get them ready. Nobody knows where the game came from; all they know is that they are not supposed to have it.

What begins as an ingenious concept, quickly turns into the same PG-13 horror Hollywood has been giving teenagers over and over again. The villainess of the story/game is The Blood Countess. Think of her as the female interpretation of Freddy Kruger. She likes to kill the youth of America. Much like MTV or American Idol. Like some players, she cheats. Even when our ragtag bunch isn’t playing the game, the game continues. If only they could perform cheat codes like the Contra Code or type the words “JUSTIN BAILEY” to get all the power-ups one would need to defeat such a creature. All they have are the weapons they give their characters at the beginning of the game and roses that guard them against impending danger.

Never mind the poorly handled PG-13 death scenes, the characters in Stay Alive are soulless human beings who don’t spend more than a minute grieving. It’s all about the game and unraveling its mysteries.

If you like obvious plot holes in your horror, well Stay Alive has many. Like wondering why two other residents of Loomis’ house died. They did not play the game, yet, somehow they were brutally murdered. Another head scratcher: the audience being gullible, believing in a budding romance between two strangers while their friends die. The mystery of where the game originated is one more contradiction. It is revealed it came from the same plantation as depicted in the game. Are we led to believe this blood countess created this game as a way to get millions of boys and girls online and then pick them off one by one? Sounds farfetched, so does the idea of watching a video and then dying seven days later.

Travis Leamons is one of the Inside Pulse Originals and currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Inside Pulse Movies. He's told that the position is his until he's dead or if "The Boss" can find somebody better. I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!