CORRECTION: Happy belated birthday! This past Wednesday March 24th, we celebrated the fifteenth birthday/anniversary of William Brent Bell’s 2006 video-game horror classic, Stay Alive. By classic, I mean it was a flop by most standards; if you listen to Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, its ratings range from 24% to 10% respectively. Folks of all disciplines and backgrounds love to rag on this movie, and at some level, its understandable. Listening to interviews from the writer-director Bell, the movie’s production history was doomed by Disney, who resurrected the Hollywood Pictures division from its five-year slumber to release Stay Alive as their first slasher, but only after nerfing it and cutting it up past the point of no return. Less cursing, less blood, less story. Seriously. If you watch the unrated director’s cut, the film has 15 minutes of cut footage, most of which includes two additional characters who are critical to the success of the plot and set up the climactic ending. Thanks, Disney.
If it sounds like I’m sour about the negative reception of the film and defending it more than most folks do, it’s because I unironically love this movie. I watched Stay Alive its opening week after being hyped up by its spread in an issue of Game Informer (which I’ve tried to find a copy of, August 2005 Issue 148, to no avail). As an adolescent that was consumed by video games and horror (and metalcore but that’s besides the point), that was all I’ve ever wanted. A group of young people that find and play an underground horror game only to die the same way they die in the game?! YES PLEASE.
After walking out of the theater, I told everyone I knew to watch that movie, and those that did mostly agreed with the critics cited above. Fifteen years later, I do the same thing, and luckily I have friends who are a bit more open-minded or who like “bad movies”. After scouring the internet for any scrap of confirmation bias, it seems I’m not alone, and a common thread with diehard fans is that we’re all dying for a sequel. Furthermore, as advancements are made every day in video game technology, specifically with virtual reality gaming, the atmosphere for a Stay Alive sequel grows closer and closer to a perfect storm. I’m not banking on it, but I can tell you that if another video game horror slasher comes out, bound to Stay Alive or not, I’ll be one of the first people in line.
IF YOU DIE IN THE GAME - YOU DIE FOR REAL
My take on Stay Alive’s theatrical poster image