Stay Alive

I just watched Stay Alive with a friend today. I would call it an average to poor movie in terms of horror rating. It is singularly unoriginal in its presentation of its horror content, with liberal use of tension tracks and in-your-face goriness. I liked the concept, though, about a game that somehow becomes real. It reminds me of Phantoma from Serial Experiments Lain, and Penultimate, the computer program/virus that addicts users to the system itself. In Phantoma, the players become so involved in the game that they become unable to distinguish between the game and real world. Penultimate simply addicts users so deeply that they starve to death.

I like the way they used the vibration of the gamepads to signal that something "weird" is coming. It's reminiscent of Silent Hill, where the crackle of the broken radio tells you that monsters are arriving. Interestingly enough, I hear similar vibration sounds in my place, and I can kinda relate to how creepy the overall effect really is.

As for the overall content, I'm most impressed by their implementation of in-game items somehow affecting the real world. That's the one original idea they had, especially given the teamwork possible where the real world and game world are so intertwined.

After watching the whole show, I figured one thing: The players logged in and never logged out. Is it any surprise that the game kept running and players died simply because they weren't playing?