Stay Alive
| Stay Alive | |
|---|---|
 Stay Alive film poster | |
| Directed by | William Brent Bell |
| Written by | William Brent Bell Matthew Peterman |
| Produced by | McG |
| Starring | Jon Foster Samaire Armstrong Frankie Muniz Sophia Bush Jimmi Simpson Adam Goldberg Milo Ventimiglia |
| Distributed by | Hollywood Pictures (USA) Universal Studios (UK, Netherlands, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil) |
Release dates | 24 March, 2006 (USA), (Canada) |
Running time | 85 mins (Rated) 100 mins (Unrated Director's Cut) |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9,000,000 (estimated) |
Stay Alive is a 2006 teen horror film directed and written by William Brent Bell. This film was produced by McG, co-produced by Hollywood Pictures and released on March 24, 2006 in the US.
Plot summary
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (February 2008) |
In the opening sequence, a character in a video game is seen entering a erie plantation.He starts out in the foyer then he walks into a room with dolls; one of which is in a red dress and is pale white. Then the character walks past a broken mirror where a scary image of a dead girl appers in the mirror then the Undead attack him. He runs up the stairs, see a undead girl in the the hallway, and then he enters a room where two dead bodies, covered in blood, hangs from the ceiling. Out of the gloom lunges a woman wearing a blood red dress. She knocks him off the staircase banister, and the character is killed when he is hanged by a chandelier chain. The player of the game (Stay Alive), Loomis Crowley, asks his friend, Hutch Macneil, to come over. When Hutch turns him down, Loomis goes to bed but is later woken by a nightmare. As he returns from getting a glass of milk, he hears a strange vibrating noise, and a shadow approaches him. After finding his room mates dead, the woman in the game appears and pushes him off the banister, and Loomis is killed by a chain wrapped around his neck before he has a chance to land, strangely similar to his character's death in the game.
The following day, Hutch, whilst at work, is notified of Loomis' death. Hutch attends Loomis' funeral, at which he meets a friend of Sarah's, Abigail. Hutch is given all of Loomis' games and papers by Loomis’ younger sister, including the underground game, Stay Alive. After the funeral, Hutch drops in on October and Phineas Bantum in a coffee shop. Phin shows interest in a lighter and Stay Alive, mainly because he had never heard of it and presumed it to be barely legal. The sight of the lighter and the game disturbs Hutch, as it had been the game Loomis was playing hours before he died. Hutch will later reveal that when he was a young boy, his father set fire to their house to kill his supposed cheating wife. Fire fighters were able to save Hutch but found his mother still lying on the bed, burnt to death.
After returning to his apartment, Hutch is surprised by the sudden appearance of his friends Swink, October, Phin and Abigail, who had come over to play Stay Alive. Miller, Hutch’s employer, joins the group by playing on a computer (online) at his office. The six players recite a prayer (without which the game would not be accessible) and start the main gameplay. The game remarks that roses have a negative effect on undead enemies, allowing them to avoid the creatures they cannot defeat for a short amount of time.
After a few hours of gaming, Miller, who had been attacked by a mob of undead children, finds his way into what appears to be a torture chamber. Freaked out, he takes a break to smoke a cigarette while his controller begins to vibrate. Suddenly, the woman who killed Loomis kills Miller's character by stabbing him in the throat with shears. Miller himself dies the same way a few minutes later.
Hutch realizes Loomis and Miller died the same way they died in Stay Alive and goes to a library to do research. After finding the needed information, Hutch meets up with the other players to reveal his discoveries. Phin, the only one not shaken by Hutch's discovery, plays Stay Alive "for Miller." His friends leave him alone, angry at Phin for not taking the deaths seriously enough. Soon after, he pauses the game, noticing that the Countess shattered all mirrors but not the polished silver on the other side. Noticing that Phin has not yet arrived, Hutch begins to reveal his findings when October reveals that she found some information about the Countess. Her name was Elizabeth Báthory and she used to look after small girls, teaching them how to behave. As the girls were at her house, she would torture them for her own entertainment. When people found out about what Elizabeth had been doing, they locked her up in a tower, alive. October then reveals that the last thing Elizabeth said was that she would be back. This causes October to come up with the idea that maybe Elizabeth is back to get her revenge through the video game. Phin is shown later driving down a stretch of road, on his way to meet up with his friends, when a demon child almost causes him to crash. After getting out of his car to investigate, a horse drawn carriage tramples and kills him.
When Phin freaks out on the phone with his friends, October, Hutch, and Abigail drive out in order to find him, but instead find his lifeless body. The officers arrive on the scene, and one decides to play Stay Alive, as he is curious about the game. Hutch tries to stop him, but fails to shut the computer before the officer’s character dies.
October, the most affected because of her brother's death, researches ways of killing a witch, discovering that driving three nails into the neck, heart and forehead and burning its blood could stop her. They also discover that the Countess shatters almost all mirrors because she couldn't stand to see herself get old.
As a news report states that the officer who was playing at the scene was murdered after an attempt to gather information on Stay Alive, cops arrive at Hutch's apartment. October and a reluctant Swink run out of the apartment before the cops make it in. The group decides to go to Loomis' house to hide out and that no one can play Stay Alive for their own good, but when the computer is left alone, the game starts on its own, soon killing October’s character. Hutch and Abigail come up with the idea of going to the programmer's house. October is trapped and killed by the Countess as she enters a house that is under construction near Loomis' house while presumed to be out smoking.
Hutch, Swink and Abigail, the only remaining characters drive to the programmer's house, only to discover it is the mansion from the game. Swink decides that one person must play, while the other two find the Countess' body as a distraction and volunteers to play himself. Hutch and Abigail then split up and explore the mansion on their own. As Abigail searches on her own, she discovers a hidden room that has disturbing pictures and decapitated dolls. The game starts to become merged with the actual world, as we see Swink guiding Hutch through the mansion by unlocking doors and giving him tools. Hutch must save Abigail from the Countess and two demon girls by listening to Swink's information. Once Hutch and Abigail are safe, the game starts to play against Swink as he is locked out of Abigail's van. The Countess almost kills Swink when she chases him in her carriage through the pathway to the plantation, until Swink falls into a rose bush. The blood Countess then gets out of the carriage and approaches Swink with a pair of shears. The scene then cuts to the computer screen with Swink’s apparently dead character lying in a wild rose bush, not moving.
After discovering what is thought to show Swink's death in the game, Hutch takes three nails from a wall while Abigail cuts some roses and puts them in a bag. She also grabs a pair of shears that were found in the secret room to use as a hammer to bash the nails in the body. As they hear the carriage approaching, they run through the cemetery towards the tower. Hutch then realizes that the roses still work even though they are not in the game. While in the tunnels, Hutch and Abigail look for the entrance to the tower.
Pursued by the Countess, Abigail is locked in the torture room forcing Hutch to leave her as he tries to reach the tower. She is then approached by the Countess and chained upside down. When Hutch reaches the top of the tower, he finds the Countess' body, amazingly well-preserved. Driving the nails in and saving Abigail involuntarily, he prepares to leave until the Countess suddenly rises, causing the nails to fall out. Hutch uses his laptop to show the Countess her reflection - the Countess, who cannot shatter this surface, is distracted, and Hutch, taking the opportunity, sets fire to the room. The door is locked, and he accepts the fact that he's going to be killed by fire, until the alive Swink and Abigail kick the door open and rescue him. The Countess' body burns and the three characters successfully leave, alive.
Later, actual copies of Stay Alive are being sold at the video game store and the salesman places it in the console (a PlayStation 2) and the game's opening sequence in which Elizabeth's prayer is recited by millions of gamers. The movie then ends.
Cast
- Jon Foster: Hutch MacNeil
- Samaire Armstrong: Abigail
- Frankie Muniz: Swink Sylvania
- Jimmi Simpson: Phineus Bantum
- Wendell Pierce: Detective Thibodeaux
- Milo Ventimiglia: Loomis Crowley
- Sophia Bush: October Bantum
- Adam Goldberg: Miller Banks
- Billy Slaughter: Rex
- Nicole Oppermann: Sarah
- April Wood: Loretta
- Monica Monica: Mrs. Crowley
- Rio Hackford: Detective King
- Billy Louviere: Fidget
- Richey Nash: Young Rookie
- Maria Kalinina: Countess
- Alice Krige: The Author
Release
Box office
As of June 29, 2006, the film grossed a total of 23.08 million dollars in the United States.[1] It was considered a box office success due to its production budget of only 9 million dollars. In the opening weekend, it already grossed more than its budget with 10.7 million dollars in the United States. The movie has grossed a total of over 27.1 million dollars worldwide. [1]
Critical reaction
The watered-down theatrical version was given negative reviews by critics. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 24 out of 100, based on 17 reviews.[2]
In the Los Angeles Times, John Anderson commented that "'Stay Alive' spends a lot of time inside the video game system, and what will terrify the audience very early on is the realization that there's better acting in the video game than on the big screen."[3]
Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D- and commented, "this dopey movie keeps flouting its own rules, so that one character who dies in the game gets to live, while poor suckers get offed for real even though we never saw their Game Overs."[4] Meanwhile, Variety magazine concluded: "Seldom is there anything close to real passion or panic on display here from cast members"[5]
DVD Release
The DVD was released in the USA on Tuesday, September 19, 2006. It was made available in an unrated edition (100 minutes) and a PG-13 edition (85 minutes). The 15 minutes of new unrated footage include an entirely new character and subplot. The unrated edition also features more violence, blood and gore, profanity, and drug use.