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Apr 2, 2006 - 07:39 PM |
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Stay Alive - Rated PG-13 |
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My cousins wanted to go see Ice Age 2, and spotting the opportunity to finally catch V, I went for it. Of course, I didn't think to check the actual theater listings, so when we got there, I was far too early for it. Of course, I was also 15 minutes late for Slither, an hour late for Inside Man, and far too early for The Hills Have Eyes. What I was on time for, though, was Stay Alive. I couldn't remember what the movie was about, but had heard of it before. I paced around in front of the theater, debating on whether I should watch it or wait on Ice Age for 5 minutes. There wasn't even a poster out for it in front, just two Ice Age 2 posters instead. I had already brought the notepad to spot all of V's bullshit for my review, so I wasn't going to let my time go to waste. I spent more than five dollars on my ticket, and wasted my time anyways.
Stay Alive, in case you've hopefully forgotten, is based on the premise that a group of friends play a Survival Horror game that kills them off one by one as they were killed in the game.
The first victim looks like a cracked out Johnny Depp, and plays Stay Alive in his dark lair. He dies rather fast, because Stay Alive apparently has no sense of pacing, or direction. He dies by hanging. Then the Ghost comes along, which visits the house by making it vibrate like a rumble pack, I shit you not. Anyway, Johnny Bravo gets hooked, and his loser friends get slashed because they played the game also. Throw in a reference for "Sickest shit since Fatal Frame" and you have an opener.
Enter Hutch. A big loser who works for Adam Goldberg, not because he's a great clerk, but because he can help the horse-faced cretin beat Silent Hill 4. Apparently Adam's never heard of Gamefaqs, or that Jews run Hollywood.
Johnny Appleseed was a childhood friend of Hutch's, so when he dies, the sister gives Hutch all of Jack Sparrow's videogames. Including, dun dun dunnn, Stay Alive. At the funeral, he's also hit on by Jewel Doppleganger, Samaire Armstrong. Who knows the female victim, but isn't so grief-stricken as to not act stupid with a camera. Hutch is so blinded by grief that he doesn't pick up the scent of Whale blubber, and thinks it's a good idea to hook up with the greasy skank.
Now enter Hutch's "friends." A group of idiot poseurs that should fall off the face of the planet. We have, Phineus, the mean asshole, (who is also, according to IMDB, working on the film Itty Bitty Titty Committee), October, Phineus sibling and "hot" goth chick, and Frankie fucking Muniz, who fills the prerequisite role of giant nerd.
October and Phineus apparently own and operate a posh gaming coffee shop, which makes me want to vomit. It is through this coffee shop that their friendship hub is established. The usual thang is interrupted by Stay Alive which is found by the 40 megaton Asshole, who then says, "Beta Testing, huh? I tried Beta Testing, but it was TOO FUCKING MONOTONOUS!?"
Oh rlly. Perhaps it wasn't apparent to the film's creators that the real problem with beta testing was that you're playing an incomplete game, and that Hutch & Pals are playing this particular game, a console title, on PC laptops.
While the acting isn't usually too noticeable, the amount of fake interest expressed at the opening of the game is palatable. In order to play, they have to recite some gay prayer. lolok. Frankie Muniz throws around "Next Generation technology" to remind us that they're gamers and are hip to the lingo.
The backstory for the game is presented during a retarded Character Creation sequence, and the actors... heh, I mean players, pay it about as much attention as the audience. Roses are important in the game to keep the ghosts at bay. A reasoning which is never given during the entire movie ever. Jewy McJewerstein is the first one to bite the bullet, in part because he's apparently never played a Survival Horror in his entire life and is a giant pussy.
Enter Black Cop/White Cop, who suspect Hutch in the murder. Black cop is fat and good, White cop is skinny and a belligerent dick. Together they're terrible law enforcement.
It's at this point around that we've established that Hutch has an aversion to flame, in a classic "FIRE BAD!" moment.
Muniz then spouts off a bunch of bullshit about Perceptive Reality, which basically boils down to the idea that if you play a game a lot, you'll start to hallucinate its presence in the real world. Apparently playing for 20 minutes is enough to cause Perceptive Reality, but I guess Muniz wants us to believe everything he reads on the internet.
Now the game is haunting them in Real Life, and Phineus is killed because the game is starting to play itself. Phineus also reveals that he went to Bible Camp. I wonder, then, will I become a huge asshole? Before he was killed in-game, though, he had an unbroken mirror, which was unique because all of the mirrors in the game were broken. He's run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Goth chick is very sad. 
MEANWHILE, Hutch is easily searching through the police reports for a recent homicide as a means to investigate the death of his meal tickets.
Now, for an interjection. The movie itself is set in Louisiana. A source of tons of great Ghost Stories, and the most haunted state in America. It's just a shame that the decaying French streets, humid clime, and weeping willows are set to the heartbeat of a retarded premise. Basically, the game is based around some ghost story about this bitch who ran around in a carriage to kidnap little girls and murder them. She broke every mirror in her house because she couldn't stand to see herself get older. Eventually she was boarded up in her tower, but she threatened to return to the Phillipines, and does so in pog video game form.
Then some stuff happens. The white cop gets wacked, the po po come for Muniz and Hot Topic, and Hutch and Slut go to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac's house, which has unusually uncleaned crimescenes. There's some product placement for Alienware, and then Goth chick gives the ghost backstory and how to kill her before getting her throat slit.
Hutch apologizes to Jewel because she had such a great life, at which point she reveals that she had made big fat eskimo lies, and that the van in which they travel doubled as her home. They take her house to the place listed as the address for the game creators, which is, DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN, the real scary lady mansion.
Muniz plays the game on the Alienware while Hutch and Jewel go into the Plantation house located outside of the mansion and cemetary. Muniz guides his in-game character through the same location to direct Hutch, while Jewel gets lost in the attic. The resulting crisis has been illustrated thusly:
Jewel: GHOSTESES! LAHDY!
Hutch: LOL HOW I SHOOT SPERM!? LOL!!!!
Muniz: U n33d t3h bl00 k3y n00blol
Muniz throws roses at the ghosts in-game and they dissapurred.
It's at this point that the ghost cheats, and tries to keep Muniz from playing the game. Then Frankie Goes To Hollywood all the way into a rosebush, where the ghost lady gets him. "Game Over" for Frankie the Alienware says.
Hutch and Jewel are sad now. They take the Alienware and go to the Tower to kill the witch. They're chased by a bunch of Ringus, and are separated. Then Jewel has another Ghosteses moment, while Hutch nails the witch body. Her soul is bound to it, or whatever, and she starts looking at Hutch very scarily.
Now comes Alienware to save the day! I shit you not, the mirror aspect finally comes around full-circle for the observant viewer, and the red madame is shown her ghostly visage on the Alienware's well-polished reflective backside. Instead of killing her, though, she gets a big mouth for Honeycomb, so Hutch sets her on fire.
Now, Hutch originally was afraid of fire because his dad burned the house down and his NES controller. Very sad. Also his mom died, but that's not nearly as important to me as torched nostalgia. Apparently Hutch is still nothing more than the frightened child he used to be, because he clutches himself in the corner, and cries like a little girl.
Then he's saved by Jewel, and Muniz, who is waving around a rose bush. Ok whatever. They then walk off together, all three, and the movie closes... OR DOES IT!? I don't care.
What a mess. Every great horror film is bound by its own set of laws. For Night of the Living Dead, it was that Zombies ate flesh, were slow, and that you could kill them by damaging the brain. In Poltergeist, the ghosts could only affect the land under which they were buried. Not so for Stay Alive. Presumably the Ghost would have to be combated in the game, and the deaths would only occur in real life as they occurred in the game. Not so. I can understand the need for expediency in the game playing itself, but the ghost cheating like it did with Muniz was Hella lame. Also, Muniz got a big fat Game Over, yet he still lives. Perhaps the creators were contractually obligated to let him Stay Alive.
Not only that, but the Or Is It ending is also increadibly retarded. Since Hutch burned the witch's body, and thus her soul, it shouldn't matter if the game goes into syndication, even when the incantation (prayer) is read by all of the idiots before the closing credits. Whatever, though.
The credits themselves were long as Hell, and dedicated 5 seconds to every actor and major player in the movie before getting to the actual scroller. Not only that, but there was no end credit surprise, which I forced myself to stay in the hopes of there being one. A rumble noise like the one featured in the film would've been cute, but that would be giving the creators too much credit.
The game succesfully knocks off every lame Japanese horror movie and Survival Horror, even to the point of Resident Evil's text font, with the exception of it being even remotely scary. All of the little girl ghosts are just huge Ringu knockoffs, something already done to a much much better effect in F.E.A.R., which is a real game. Not only that, but the video game consultant credited in the movie is CLIFFYB, who is not only a giant heel, but also the co-creator of the Unreal series, a First Person Shooter.
I can't recommend this at all. It's not so bad to be enjoyable, and it's not good in any sense. Increadibly mediocre. It also makes gamers out to be a bunch of slack-jawed Hot Topic Poseurs with nothing better to do than be posh and play video games. We just play video games, thanks.
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