Horror

‘Stay Alive’: The Campy Fun of Disney’s Video Game Slasher Movie [You Aughta Know]

Hello, true believers, and welcome to You Aughta Know, a column dedicated to the decade that is now two full decades behind us. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back at one of the most overlooked decades of horror. Follow along as I do my best to explore the horror titles that made up the 2000s.

Let’s go back to the week of March 24th, 2006. It seems to be an entire week that my memory has lost to time. Boy Culture was one of the most viewed films, High Hopes was all the rage on the small screen and on video game consoles, the top seller was Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light. What in the hell are any of these things? I don’t know, but I do know that this was the very same week we got the oft-overlooked supernatural slasher Stay Alive.

We were one year into the life cycle of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 was right around the corner; video games had become one of the most popular and mainstream forms of entertainment. Genre videogames had begun to make their mark, with titles like Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and Resident Evil becoming contemporary classics. It was only a matter of time before cinema caught up with the trend, and thanks to William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman, we got a fully original attempt at a video game horror movie in 2006. The duo would go on to work on divisive films such as The Devil Inside and The Boy, but this was their first full fledged work in Hollywood.

Bell and Peterman had set about making a script that was influenced by the aforementioned games, aided by a lead designer at Epic Games, before being scooped up by Disney’s production company Hollywood Pictures. McG’s production company Wonderland Sound and Vision became involved with the film and it was McG who actually ended up reaching out to most of the cast to see if they would be interested in the movie.

In Stay Alive, we follow a group of friends that are hardcore gamers who come together after one of their friends dies while beta testing a mysterious new game. Hutch, along with friends October, Phineus, and Swink, plus newcomer Abigail, decide they’re going to power through the game in honor of Loomis. Once they start the titular game, loosely based on the legend surrounding Elizabeth Bathory, they quickly realize that the game is bleeding into reality and they are being hunted and stalked in tandem with the very adventure they’re playing through. It’s now up to them to defeat the Countess before they meet a very real Game Over.

When the movie hit theaters, it tanked. It was the era of “torture porn” and j-horror remakes, with the slasher remake boom just starting its ramp up. The slasher genre had waned since the post-Scream spike and audiences had moved on to the hyper violent, brutal and massively gory era that was dominating the scene. You can see traces of this in the poster and cover design for Stay Alive, which allude to something far different than what it delivers on. It’s a shame, because what the movie delivers is a ton of campy, eighties-replicating fun. 

The lore and backstory of the movie is a ton of fun, in particular. Taking place and filmed in New Orleans, it leans heavily into historic occultism but plays fast and loose with it. Fortunately for us, it works, transplanting the story of the Countess Bathory into plantation-era New Orleans, and thus rooting us in some very rustic gothic inspired sets and playgrounds. When it hit, the blend from video game to real world was jarring (we were seeing low bar PS2 graphics in the next gen of the console cycle) but now, fifteen years removed, it matters far less. 

The silly tropes, stereotypes and gaming vernacular are now outrageously fun instead of immediately outdated and they allow the film to be viewed with a kind nostalgia instead of the harsh criticism of elite gamers and snobbish film critics of the aughts. The aesthetic doesn’t end there, as Bell does his damndest to replicate the kills occurring within the game into reality and manages to do so in a number of silly yet inventive ways. And the cast is a veritable who’s who of actors we loved then and love more now; Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush and Jimmi Simpson all have supporting roles and we even get great little bits with Adam Goldberg and Milo Ventimiglia.

Stay Alive is a quirky little gem of a slasher. Not only is it the only one ever produced by Disney, but it’s also a film that really was doing its best to appeal to the gaming crowd. It just missed the mark so badly that it skews itself away from being unwatchable and manages to make itself a popcorn popping good time. It plays it close to the slasher roots but still takes cues from the movies that were popular in the era: a buzzing DualShock controller is the harbinger of death (a la The Grudge) and a number of kill scenes involve shock and awe attempts with pigs masks, chains and torture. It’s a charming blend of the decade as a whole and the Unrated Cut, although providing some completely unnecessary scenes, also adds a lot more back story and gore to really give the film an extra push into awesome. 

You have to wonder if they considered creating a real game based on the film (interviews from its release had reporters asking every actor if they would play the game if produced), but alas we never saw an actual version make its way from film to system.

Today, Stay Alive seems ripe for an update, or even a television series, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d hit play on that in a second.

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