Stay Alive Movie Review – Worth the watch?

Stay Alive is a horror movie directed by William Brent Bell who is known for directing horror films such as The Boy and The Devil Inside. This film was released in 2006, involving a mystery which would be described as a teen horror since it includes gaming and has a virtual side to it. The name of the movie ‘Stay Alive’ gives the plot of the movie away, for a horror film it clearly just means you need to try and stay alive.

The movie revolves around the main five characters, Hutch, Abigail, Swink, October and Phineus. The group decide to get together and play an online horror game called ‘Stay Alive’ to help Hutch take his mind off the death of his best friend, Loomis, who dies after playing the same game. Obviously at this point, the group are not aware of what the game is and what they are getting themselves into, they just believe it’s a regular scary game which Loomis was testing out. The fact that they based it on a true story of a real-life murderer, a lady named Elizabeth Bathory (the woman in red), made it sound a lot more realistic as there was a whole story behind why everything happened and why she returned.

The fact that the film was half virtual and half reality made it quite unique and that’s what I enjoyed about it, especially when everything happening in the virtual game ended up taking place in real life. Personally, I’m not a gaming fan but the game played in this film caught my attention mainly because it was a horror game and that is my favourite genre of movies. The sound effect of the gaming controller vibration made the scenes a lot creepier, I felt it was a clever idea as I would never think of a vibration sound as a creepy sound effect until after watching this, I thought it was brilliant. It was also a way of letting the audience know that the Blood Countess is here which then made it even more suspenseful and scarier.

SPOILER ALERT! 

All the characters had different personalities, Hutch and October were by far my favourite, Hutch since he was the lead character who figured out the trail of the game and then October who already knew the history of the Elizabeth Bathory and being the gothic character who believes in ghosts which was predictable, although it took her a while to realise everything but it all fell into place and fitted her character well. However, there’s always one annoying member of the gang who doesn’t take things seriously and is careless until the worst thing happens to them or they end up dead. I would say that was Octobers brother, Phineus who I disliked the most. He was the most irritating and arrogant person from all of them, but it’s typical to have characters who don’t believe in what’s going on until it happens to them. Swink on the other hand didn’t spark my interest but he wasn’t disliked as he was intelligent and helpful one in the group which made him quite important so I understood why he made it alive till the end. I was surprised to see Abigail survive, she was also my least favourite after Phineus as during one of the end scenes, she did something silly which I didn’t expect since it was the way to her survival. In the game the rose represents a life, so Hutch had given her a rose to keep her alive when she got locked in a chamber as he went to kill the Blood Countess, yet she used that same rose to play “he loves me, he loves me not” which was ridiculous and almost killed her, why would you do that to the only thing that could save you? It just showed a lot about her character and the fact that she wasn’t a bright individual. 

The characters weren’t all the best but I guess this is what makes it all work out, although I didn’t agree to the fact that Abigail survived and October didn’t, I found Abigail quite pointless.

Overall I believe the film was worth a watch as it was more thrilling than scary, Elizabeth Bathory was more of the reason for that since her character was just scary on its own and whenever she appeared I got the chills. Compared to a lot of horror movies I thought the storyline was good and made sense. They should make a part two as the end of the movie shows the game is released in the stores so other people would have started playing, I would definitely watch it.