Is Stay Alive just a horror movie, or a larger comment on the psyche of electronic obsession in the information age? It's making me wonder, but I think it just sucked.

Stay Alive nails gamers, its primary audience, to the wall. The best scene involves our hero, Hutch, washing out plastic Solo cups to be re-used, the mark of a true man-boy. The movie's portrait of gamers as caffeine-and-Ritalin-addled, socially-inept blabbermouths with buff thumbs should hit pretty close to home for some, but I suspect those nerdlingers will be too busy griping that Stay Alive's fake-game doesn't even seem like something they'd deign to play to even notice their mockery.

As horror, Stay Alive fails at the most basic level: It just ain't scary. Logic also escapes the film -- there's no explanation why a murderous 19th century countess would chose, of all mediums, a PlayStation game to exact her long-dormant revenge, although it still makes more sense than A Boy and His Blob ever did. But to treat gamers as separate from (or devoid of) reality, to portray games as coercive, soul-deadening things, is to potentially disenfranchise a large portion of the audience, yet Stay Alive does just that. Anti-game propaganda? A rallying cry against our reliance on inhuman interaction? Nah, I'm going to stick with "It just sucked.." Grade: D

-- Reviewed by Paul Thompson