“If you die in the video game, you die for real.”

That’s the plot of this B grade horror film with C-grade stars. Yes, Frankie Muniz, even “Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London” doesn’t elevate you to B list.

To be honest, the first hour or so of the movie was O.K. but the last 20 minutes were dreadful. When a quarter of your movie is nearly worthless, that isn’t very good.

Jon Foster plays Hutch, a law clerk whose three gamer friends die mysterious and violent deaths, with all of the leading man charisma of a sock puppet. Hutch’s friend bequeaths him all of his video games, including a prototype for a game called “Stay Alive.” Hutch and the rest of his gaming friends decide to play the game and, after repeating the words at the introduction aloud, begin to be hunted down one by one in the game by the Blood Countess. Like I said earlier, if you die in the game, you die in real life and this is how the movie progresses for the next 45 minutes.

“Stay Alive” is rated PG-13, so the gore is kept to a minimum, which depending on your tastes is either a good thing or a bad thing. I was indifferent. I typically like my horror film with a little more gore, but if the chills and thrills are genuine, I’ll go along for the ride. The best scene of the movie was when Hutch’s boss was stalked in his deserted high rise law office.
Where “Stay Alive” started to lose me was when the climax of the film started. Muniz’s geeky character Swink dies trying to protect the two remaining gamers; Hutch, and Abigail, a girl Hutch met a few days earlier at his buddy’s funeral. By the time that Hutch and Abigail enter the tower to do battle with the baddie, they are all lovey-dovey. Nothing had really led up to this romantic involvement though and it really rang false.
So did the re-emergence of Swink to save Hutch from a fire. Please don’t consider that a spoiler. This movie is so bad that anything I say just keeps you from having to see this.
How did Swink survive? We don’t know and obviously the filmmakers don’t want us to know, don’t know themselves or don’t care.

Of course, the film ends with a chance for a sequel, but let’s hope not.

I will give the film credit for the look of the video game though. It looked great. Unfortunately, there is no real video game to play, so that stinks. I will also give credit to Jimmi Simpson for his role as the wise-guy gamer Phineus. He was the best actor of the bunch and has appeared in shows like “NYPD Blue” and “24” in the past. Good work, Simpson. Try to avoid films like this in the future and maybe stick with TV if at all possible.
I think one of the biggest reasons I was dissatisfied with this movie is because I have been eagerly awaiting “Slither,” the film I will view this weekend. I expect that this will be the perfect blend of horror and comedy that I have been searching for since “Evil Dead 2” or Peter Jackson’s marvelously disgusting “Dead Alive.”

Read the review right here next week.

*1/2

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