After the mysterious, brutal death of an old friend, a group of teenagers find themselves in possession of "Stay Alive," an ultra-realistic 3-D videogame based on the spine-chilling true story of a 17th century noblewoman, known as "The Blood Countess." The gamers don't know anything about the game other than they're not supposed to have it... and they're dying to play it. Not able to resist temptation, the kids begin to play the grisly game but soon make a chilling connection -- they are each being murdered one-by-one in the same way as the characters they played in the game. As the line between the game world and the real world disappears, the teens must find a way to defeat the vicious and merciless Blood Countess, all the while trying to... stay alive.
It's unlikely that Stay Alive could ever have been a good movie in the traditional sense, but it might have been better if Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman had done more to exploit their gaming premise.
– Neva Chonin,
San Francisco Chronicle,
28 Mar 2006
rotten:
An anemic attempt to update the horror genre's imperiled-teens-meet-bloodletting-uber-fiend substratum.
– John Anderson,
Variety,
28 Mar 2006
rotten:
Videogames are no longer brainless, so why are videogame movies so slow to evolve?
– Gregory Kirschling,
Entertainment Weekly,
29 Mar 2006
rotten:
Teen fodder like this isn't known for sophistication or storytelling depth, but the filmmakers seem to take the film's video-game theme as permission to eschew even the horror genre's exceedingly lenient minimums for characterization.
– Nathan Rabin,
AV Club,
30 Mar 2006
rotten:
There's a gothic backstory to all this, which makes no sense but looks pretty cool.