Stay Alive: Critic Reviews

Videogames are no longer brainless, so why are videogame movies so slow to evolve?

The star of Stay Alive is a cutting-edge video game, but the film still has hackneyed horror at its heart.

Never has a title been more horribly at odds with the way you're actually going to feel while watching the movie.

The hybrid of cyber antics and bayou creepiness doesn't quite jell, but it all ends bloodily, and in an efficient 85 minutes, too. I'm not complaining.

There's a fascinating and terrifying story to be told about Elizabeth Bathory, the dramatically depraved 17th century sadist known as the Blood Countess. This ain't it.

There's a gothic backstory to all this, which makes no sense but looks pretty cool.

An anemic attempt to update the horror genre's imperiled-teens-meet-bloodletting-uber-fiend substratum.

A notion of an outline of a rough draft of a killer video-game flick.

Perhaps the worst horror film to not have Uwe Boll's name in the credits.

Here's a movie that tries to be a video game but is less entertaining than a vending machine.

Debuting director William Brent Bell, who wrote the script with producer Matthew Peterman, keeps the pace brisk and the pot bubbling.

This is a cool/potentially creepy idea only if you're in high school and goofing around with your friends at the movie theater. For everyone else, this isn't just a preposterous premise for a horror movie, it's a source of unintentional hilarity.

One of those movies that thinks loud sounds and shaky cameras account for scares, and reminding of us of truly scary gaming experiences only amplifies its weaknesses.

If Stay Alive teaches us anything, it's that videogames and horror films do not mix...at least in the same movie.

Yeah, the plot sounds like utter nonsense, but it's fun.

...a little needless brutality would've almost certainly elevated the proceedings, albeit temporarily...

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- Aspirante a Terror em Silent Hill (jogo e filme) que, repleto de cliches e personagens caricaturais, revela-se apenas cansativo e previsivel.

...if the filmmakers could have dispensed with the actors and plot altogether, they might have had a better movie.

This movie has a nostalgic retro feel to it, like the old Universal horror movies that we now find very funny. But alas, where are all the drive-in theaters to show it in?

A cool idea rapidly falls apart. A completely missed opportunity.

Something of a disappointment and nowhere near as scary as The Ring, which it rips off shamelessly.