Stay Alive (2006)

So I was sifting through Netflix's horror selection the other day and suddenly remembered a flash of a horror flick I'd seen in the 2000s with my biffle. All that happened was a flash of random details: roses, a road, a carriage, ...and a video game? After some quick googling I found a likely title, watched the trailer and was carried back into the past (the past, the past, the past).

I can't recall exactly what drove me to it, but I definitely saw Stay Alive in theaters back in 2006. And let me just tell you, it's literally the least memorable movie I can actually remember having seen. If it weren't for that flash of memory, I would have gone the rest of my life not knowing that I had actually seen this movie before. (Because what are the chances I'd run across the trailer for this? Come on!) I asked Alyssa, the friend in question, if she remembered seeing it and she had absolutely no recollection. Something tells me that's probably not what they were going for... oops!

Cast Highlights

• Milo Ventimiglia (yes, Peter from Heroes or Jess from Gilmore Girls or Lil' Rocky in Rocky Balboa) amps up the sexy for the first 5 minutes with his surprisingly good-looking proto-hipster beard/glasses combo as gamer/victim/weird-name-holder Loomis Crowley. (Fun fact: 4 years after seeing this movie, Alyssa met and subsequently had her photo taken with Milo at the New York Comic Con).
• Jon Foster (who's good to look at as long as you don't pay attention to his acting) as the pyrophobic protagonist Hutch.
• Frankie Muniz (aka that kid in My Dog Skip, Malcolm of Malcolm in the Middle fame, the protagonist from Big Fat Liar, and Agent Cody Banks) as the geeky gamer kid who's probably the best actor of them all: Swink (because they all have redonculous names).
• Quite possibly my favourite mediocre character actor Jimmi Simpson (I swear to god this guy is in like every movie I've seen with Alyssa completely by accident: Zodiac, this, and Rose Red all credit him) (he was also on House, My Name is Earl, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Psyche, How I Met Your Mother and is going to be in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this summer... he's seriously in everything... and I kind of love it) as Phineus.
• Adam Goldberg (who was also in Zodiac, btw) as a worse gamer than me aka boss-man aka Miller Banks (great name for a boss, right?).
• Samaire Armstrong as Abigail (the only one whose real name is weirder than her character's).
• and Sophia Bush (aka Beth from John Tucker Must Die and Brooke from One Tree Hill) as the campily-named goth-chick October.

Basic Summary:

Beta-testing gamer/sexpot Loomis Crowley gets his hands on a new game called Stay Alive. After losing the game, he dies in the same manner as his character, along with his two friends whom he let beta-test with him. Stricken with massive amounts of unbelievable survivor's guilt, Hutch feels awful for not being there to beta-test with his sexpot friend. He goes to the randomly spliced in funeral and meets blonde/perfect Abigale who takes pictures of everything on an antique camera that she obviously has no idea how to use (more on that later). Hutch goes home to his favourite internet café (above which I assume he lives) and meets up with his GGF (goth girlfriend) October and BFFP (best friend forever Phineus). They all decide to go over Hutch's to play the last game their dead friend was beta-testing along with Swink and Abi-normal and, via internet-connection, Hutch's boss. Lots of people die. They realize the game is haunted/based on the "ghost story" of the Blood Countess (Elizabeth Bathory). They also realize that the game and real life are one in the same. Also, that this Bathory chick is scared as fuck of roses? Eventually, they (the characters who matter) save the day... or do they?

Notes:

The movie opens with this very silly shot and a scream... as though a cheap scare at the beginning makes the rest of it scarier?

The dialogue in this movie was spectacularly horrible. Not only was the writing poor, but the delivery was even worse. I can't even describe how bad it is. Therefore, kindly watch the first 5 minutes on youtube (includes the above shot):

Also, this movie does this great thing where whenever they want you to feel sympathetic to any character for any reason (or whenever things get "sad") they play this horrific (scarier than the movie itself in how bad it is) piano, one note at a time. The composer's train of thought: "Hmmm... piano. That's sad. No one can't feel sad with piano. I know I can't...!" and then he wrote the music for the sad parts. I crack up whenever anything "sad" or "sentimental" happens because of that cliché attempt at music. Oi!


The treatment of women in this film is pretty problematic... their overall lack of characterization, however, is off-set by the fact that none of the characters are properly developed. YAY BAD WRITING! But the idea that the antagonist is a woman (Countess Elizabeth Bathory) who victimizes women more cruelly than men (she strings them up by their ankles, guts them, and either bathes in or consumes their blood. Exactly what she does after gutting them isn't quite explained, but she is depicted tasting Abi-normal's blood in one scene). She only kills men incidentally with a giant pair of scissors. No gutting, no blood-drinking/bathing. It's pretty simple (albeit kind of scary to the person being murdered).

Now this is probably on account of the fact that it's based on a "true" story (which is, in fact, based on a whole lot of rumours about a popularly despised woman in power [probably with good reason], so obviously people made awful things up about her) ("Let them eat cake" was just a rumour about Marie-Antoinette, but it's still culturally relevant). So overall, I'd say it's more of a symptom of the existing story on which it's based rather than an attempt to actively promoting violence against women. That doesn't mean that it is free of criticism, because it surely perpetuates those ideas (along with ideas that women are vulnerable and need to be saved).

One positive: protagonist Hutch has to be saved at the end of the movie (unfortunately not by a woman, though).

But don't think this movie doesn't have a moral! It absolutely does. The moral is: don't smoke, kids! That's right, October dies while she's "out for a smoke," wandering around the neighborhood by her lonesome with a lit cigarette. Not only does it gives you cancer, but it makes some crazy old woman's ghost slash your throat open. And put that bong down, kiddo! Phineus, who is seen taking a hit (with the bong "classily" obscured with some snazzy camera work no doubt required by the MPAA) is struck with a horse-drawn carriage and dies instantly. Wow, sure sucks to do drugs in this reality!

Other Highlights:

As mentioned above, Abi-normal has no freaking clue how to use her camera. It's a great old-school Polaroid Land Camera (can you spell "hipster?") with one of those accordion-style focuses. At the funeral she runs up to Hutch and takes a close-up of his face... with the focus adjusted to portrait (I would assume, based on how far she was from everyone else) and snaps a picture. I don't know about her, but I can already tell that shot is coming out blurry as hell. The moral of the story: if you buy a vintage camera (or any camera) learn how to use it. But in any case, you'll get the cute guy in the end after Frankie Muniz saves both of your asses.

One weird thing was that the movie characters made gaming characters that were far to similar to themselves in physical appearances. The only one that really changed anything was Frankie Muniz, who made himself blond, tall, and beefy rather than brunet, short, and wimpy. Everyone else pretty much made a replica of her- or himself in the game. Maybe I know too many WOW players, but that just didn't seem realistic to me....

I just need to expound for a moment or so on my love for the research trope in horror, which seems to me to have been extremely prevalent during the 2000s. I know it shows up in other genres, and it certainly happens in TV, in books, in films and movies before and after the 2000s, but I feel like this was used to a point of excess during the last decade. Exemplified by The Ring, but also used in such crappy horror films as The Fog, this trope invovles characters digging into books, internet sources, old newspapers, photographs, diaries: anything they can find. Think Hermione Granger or Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I love this trope. I do. It always makes me smile. Probably because it tries to make research look intense (which obviously it is, but not in the way that they try to make it look) and extremely easy (which it rarely is).

So as part of their quest for knowledge, they go back to the scene of the first murder: Loomis's house, where character development goes to die (under the guise of happening). So Abigale and Hutch get to Loomis's place and they establish that the police have already been there, but they go in the house and there's still blood wallpapering one room, which makes me wonder why the fuck they hadn't sealed it off until hazmat got there... oh, wait, the writers know nothing about crime scenes so probably shouldn't write them.

Side note: this movie was supposed to take place in New Orleans...post-Katrina, but apparently the writers didn't want to change the script to somewhere less damaged by gale force winds and excessive flooding and at the time of release was still characterized by excessive property damage, homelessness, and joblessness... which would have been insanely easy considering the fact that  NOBODY except the boss even attempts a Mississippi accent. And his is only mediocre.

Rating:

This movie got one heart because... I guess I'm too generous to give it a zero. I probably gave it a heart just for Jimmi Simpson because he's my favourite. And for having scruffy Milo in it... yummm. There's really no other reason. This movie was pretty awful. It wasn't memorable (barely even those little bursts of somethings: roses, a road, a carriage... and a video game?). It had almost no redeeming filmic qualities. I'm honestly surprised it made money at the box office (I know, right?).


Would I recommend this to anyone? Probably not. It's almost even not funny how bad it is. Did I laugh? Yes. Did it maintain my attention? For periods of time (I paused it and peed/checked facebook and tumblr and my 3 e-mail accounts/read articles on NPR fairly frequently). Would I watch it again? Fuck no. This movie was and shall forever remain irrelevant to all.

TLDR:

Awful movie: one heart. Killer video game kills. Elizabeth Bathory. Milo Ventimiglia. Shit acting. Shit casting. Shit script. Shit music. Post-Katrina New Orleans without the damage. Research trope. Anti-tobacco, anti-pot. Completely unspectacular. Don't watch.

P.S.

Sorry for the lack of graphics. It was just that unspectacular.