Forget the previews; it’s just not good. I will never understand the movie industry. Must they constantly bore us with weak, cheap-budget films? Stay Alive on paper looks good, but on the big screen, it sucks. Talk about what should’ve been a straight- to -TV or DVD movie.
To give you some insight without spoiling the movie, the movie is based around a video game named after the title. In the video game, a woman named Elizabeth is the enemy. She’s the equivalent of your average Resident Evil monster. Your goal in the video game is to…stay alive. However, if you die, you will die the same death in real life as in the movie. Only problem, it’s Elizabeth that actually kills you.
While that’s a good and very entertaining concept, the actors and screenplay murdered the appeal of the movie before it unfolded. The plot is long and drawn out. The audience will actually understand what’s going on before the characters do. There are six characters that the camera follows around as they die.
Come on now Hollywood…SURPRISE once in a while. Every "scary" scene was NOT scary. I saw no one jump at any scene, except the one time Elizabeth actually surprised you. That was one of the "scary" moments in the movie. Horror movies just aren’t the same anymore.
The graphics in the movie are mediocre, consistent with a PG-13 movie. No wait…Harry Potter had better graphics. I guess that’s all they could afford with such a cheap budget. But then again, with a cheap independent computer graphics company, I’m sure they could’ve had better effects.
There are some good moments to the movie. I did enjoy a comedy moment when one of the characters said, "B–, that’s cheating; I ain’t dead yet!" The comedy spots may be limited, but they do come at the right time.
Another good moment was how one of the characters died. While I won’t spoil it by saying which character and how they died, it was pretty wicked how they had his body looking after the…death occurred. That was probably the best graphic in the movie.
Overall, good concept, bad plot, and bad acting killed this movie. It’s worth bootlegging – I mean, renting at your local Blockbuster. However, you will not see this movie in my possession until it hits the $5.50 aisle in Wal-Mart.
Stay Alive stars Frankie Muniz, Samaire Armstrong and Sophia Bush. It is rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, brief sex, brief drugs.