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List Price: $19.99 | | Label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Hollywood
Salesrank: 18608
Released: September 19, 2006 |
| Our Price: $4.29 |
| Used Price: $0.48 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
IN THEATERS MARCH 24 2006 This pop culture-laden fright-fest takes the legend of Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary and relocates it in the inherently creepy locale of New Orleans. The usual cast of motley and none-too-bright teenagers is assembled and attached to quirky names--smartass Phineas (Jimmi Simpson) and his Goth-girl sister October (Sophia Bush) hunky protagonist Hutch (Jon Foster) and tech-head Swink (Frankie Muniz) to name a few--and they all have one thing in common: the love of gaming. When Hutch s best friend Loomis (Milo Ventimiglia) is a victim in a violent massacre Hutch ends up with the game he was playing just before he died. Called "Stay Alive" the game is technically illegal and Hutch and his friends can t resist booting it up. The game resurrects the Countess who centuries ago was walled up in her tower when her crimes were discovered (she is said to have brutally murdered 650 servant girls and bathed in their blood). Now she is fulfilling her vow to return to reassume her reign of terror. This time however her victims are gamers who will die in the same way in life as they do in the game. The video game itself becomes a character in the film showing off excellent 3-D cinematic effects and creating an effectively spooky atmosphere with a memorable if derivative aesthetic. The gore never escalates past PG-13 levels but the scare tactics are adept while the Countess herself with pasty skin and high-necked red dress is a movie monster worthy of canonization.System Requirements:Runtime: 85 minutes Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: PG-13 UPC: 786936709384 Manufacturer No: 05102600
Description of Stay Alive - The Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition):
Straight from the set-'em-up and knock-'em-down school of teen-horror filmmaking, Stay Alive gives literal meaning to the parental lament, "Those games will kill you someday." Not that you'll find any parents in this gimmicky thriller set in New Orleans; they're conspicuously absent when Hutch (Jon Foster) and his hardcore gamer pals discover "Stay Alive," a mysterious next-generation computer game that has a nasty way of precipitating mayhem, horror, and death. If your character dies in the game, you're doomed to die in identically grisly fashion in real life. So, just don't play the game, right? WRONG. This being a teen horror flick with a screenplay that makes no sense whatsoever, the gamer pals (including victim #2, Hutch's boss, played with game-addicted fervor by Adam Goldberg) obsessively investigate the game and its creepy Ring-like origins in the 17th century murder spree of a woman known as "The Blood Countess." Because movies like this are best viewed on a steady diet of Pop Tarts and Ritalin, Jimmi Simpson earns top honors as the gamer pal with the creepiest behavior, and Malcolm in the Middle fans will enjoy the presence of Frankie Muniz as a gamer geek whose primary fashion statement consists of grimy T-shirts and green plastic poker-visors. While not nearly as fun or clever as the Final Destination movies, Stay Alive delivers a few good deaths while blatantly stealing most of its horror highlights from Ju-On and other Japanese horror hits. It's junk from start to finish, but its target audience of mallrats and gamers (especially those with attention deficit disorder, which helps to ignore the plot holes) won't mind a bit.--Jeff Shannon
Stay Alive - The Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
ok call me crazy but.... 
2008-07-09 - I thought this movie was actually pretty good. It wasn't great overall, but it was good in a way that most horror movies these days aren't. (For example, the re-make of Black Christmas, the new Prom Night...etc) and although there are definitely some ridiculous parts, its not the kind of horror movie that makes you wanna laugh out loud from the pure stupidity of it all.
And sure, the storyline isn't exactly original, as it follows along the typical plot of ghosts or whatever, killing people from some type of media advice (such as "The Ring" where people get killed after viewing a movie, "Pulse" where ghost type thingies are created through the internet, etc...) but still.
In this movie, a group of friends who enjoy playing video games, come across a certain game that kills them in the exact way that their characters die in the game itself, and can't even stop playing the game, because if they do, the game will play by itself for them. Now that is a bit ridiculous, ill admit, but the movie is well done, and entertaining, and the game in the movie actually looks really awesome, and I think it should become an actual game (without the part where it kills you of course!)
Plus there's a great story behind the video game, and even though the ending of the movie was pretty typical, I was satisfied with it.
GAME OVER. 
2008-06-20 - Stay Alive is piece of garbage. Bad acting and even worse plotline, these bored 20 year olds play a violent video game called Stay Alive. After they play the game, the players start dying and bunch of nonsense ensues. Stay away from this b film, you'll thank me later.
NOT GOOD , NOT BAD 
2008-06-14 - This movie is not as BAD as people are saying , the story about a " killer" video game is nice and scary , the actors are the ones to be really blamed for the bad parts of the film and the dialogs are a little weak and " generic" , but i liked this movie , maybe because i'm a video game FAN who knows ......... so i gave it 3 star , it's not a oscar winning movie but it's not as bad as some reviews are saying.
Should Have Been Titled "Stay Away!"
2008-03-26 - Another moronic Gen Y PG-13 horror film that isn't scary, isn't well acted, isn't well written, and isn't interesting in the least. This movie fails on all levels. I imagine this turkey was strictly a tax write-off for the movie studio. In that sense it succeeds beautifully.
I'm not going into the plot or any of that (what plot?) as I'm sure other reviews here cover those aspects of the film. I'm just here to save you any money you may spend to purchase this waste of celluloid, as well as give you the precious 85 minutes of your life I lost watching this piece of excrement. You have been warned!
Great movie, especially for gamers 
2008-01-25 - I seem to be in the minority, but I thought this movie was awesome. Maybe it's because I play a lot of computer games and I thought the premise of a killer video game was really clever (maybe not unique, but well done.)
The plot revolves around a mysterious video game being tested by a couple of game testers. No one seems to know its origin, but it soon becomes apparent that when you play the game and your character dies, you soon meet the same fate in real life. The game is based on the real-life serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, a 16th century Hungarian countess who killed and tortured hundreds of girls. The movie takes some liberty with the facts, such as having The Countess, as she's called, move to America, where she finds the requisite spooky old manor to inhabit. The gamers finally figure out what's going on and find the real-life burial place of the Countess. One part I found cool was that while one character played the game on his laptop, he instructed the other one what to do in the actual castle. I found the blending of game and "reality" very well-done and intriguing. I won't spoil the ending, but the heroes eventually find the body of the actual Countess, and guess what- she's not dead! (surprise) There is a pretty cool final scene where they battle this vicious vixen, who I thought was one of the coolest movie monsters I've seen in a while.
Also included on this DVD is a commentary track, which I found very entertaining. A mixture of teen slasher film, video come to life, and techno-thriller.
