Film is Pwn

First of all let’s make sure everyone’s in the right place: Stay Alive is not the sequel to Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta and directed by Sylvester Stallone.  That’s Staying Alive.  Nor does this have anything to do with the Bee Gees’ immortal classic song.  That’s Stayin’ Alive.  For that matter, this has nothing to do with that great line about “Stay alive, whatever may occur, I will find you!”  That’s a line of dialog from The Last of the Mohicans.  It’s an honest mistake, could happen to anyone.  Sadly, no Daniel Day-Lewis, disco falsetto, or Travolta shame here, just another in an endless series of Pseudo-Japanese horror/dead teenage movie, albeit in relatively easy to digest PG-13 packaging.

Since the subject of today’s movie, Stay Alive, involves role playing video games, let me say that I am not a video gamer.  I used to have roommates who were avid gamers, poor souls glued to the computer screen, addicted to it as if to the worst drug.  I tried to break them of the habit, but before long they depended on the game for everything, for social contact, for sustenance itself.  They could only go to the bathroom when the game allowed and they were no longer permitted to speak to me for I did not acknowledge the inherent goodness of the game.  It was like the invasion of the bodysnatchers, except the video game has no greater ambition other than draining one’s lifeforce.

So the point is, gamers are an obsessive, sad lot, and yet they comprise the protagonists in Stay Alive.  This in itself is a stretch because we all know that gamers lack the initiative to cook vegetables, so I would say that battling an ancient curse is a high bar for these clowns.

The basic premise behind Stay Alive is essentially the Ring with a bootleg video game substituting for the mysterious VHS tape.  A group of three losers play an underground, first person video game then die the exact same death their characters died in the game.  Good natured sap Hutch was a friend of one of the deceased and inherits the game.  Hutch and a group of other good natured saps get together for an orgy of video gamery with the same cursed video game.

The gamers, who all have adorable names like Swink, October, and Phineus, don’t suspect anything unusual about the game, dubbed “Stay Alive” — hey, that would make a really good name for a really bad movie! — when the game stubbornly refuses to begin until each player reads aloud an incantation.  The incantation has all the hallmarks of a 21st century screenwriter’s rendition of Gothic poetry.  It goes a little something like this: “Come to me, clouds.  May you rise as an evil storm born to rip them open.  Let the cover of night bear witness and destroy those who resist so they shall harm me not.  Let the blood of many cleanse me, preserving beauty eternal, I pray you.”  Catchy, no?  I wouldn’t recommend getting that tattooed on your body unless you have a high tolerance for pain.

Perhaps the writer had a better grasp of Salem Witch Trial filibuster rhetoric than modern teens, as one of the cool girls actually says at one point: “If you had any less sense, you’d be half a penny!”  Zing!  I haven’t heard a razor sharp wit of that caliber since they stopped letting Carrot Top make movies.  If the comic stylings of those disaffected, emo kids aren’t up your alley, here’s a vengeful vow from the same character (October) after her brother dies the same bizarre death he suffered in the confines of the game: “Somebody ran my brother down in a horse-drawn carriage. I’m gonna find whoever did it, and hurt them!”  If only I had a half a penny for every time I heard that old chestnut!  If I’m not mistaken, that classic quote originally appeared in Gone With the Wind, correct?

Before long, many characters die off in strange ways and our slacker heroes pull them away from the computer for five minutes to figure out what is going on.  Hutch is skeptical at first, actually stating: “So you really think that a ghost can be brought back from the dead?”  Let’s think about this, Hutch:  If you are a ghost does that not by definition mean you were brought from the dead?  Is one a ghost and theoretically must then further return from the dead?  But I digress . . .

Swink (Frankie Muniz) at the height of the crisis offers to nobly keep playing the video game of death under the guise of keeping the evil ghost occupied long enough for the others to solve the riddle of the proverbial Sphinx.  I suspected Swink just wanted to play video games so badly that he didn’t mind the consequences, but that’s probably just my cynicism about gamers rearing its ugly head again.  Improbably, Swink gets angry at the ghost for trying to kill Swink in the real world before killing him in the game, and actually accuses the ghost that has murdered most his friends of “cheating.”  I can’t think of another circumstance where an attempted murder from a supernatural entity could be interpreted as cheating.

The moral of Stay Alive?  Don’t play video games programmed by vengeful, undead spirits and under no circumstances watch any movie about people playing video games programmed by vengeful, undead spirits.  And that’s one to grow on!

–Daniel J. Roos

One year of pwnage. Ah, the memories . . .