Mike
The words “video game adaptation” have a desperate kind of stink to them, and rightfully so. Most video game movies stink. But in the early 2000s, a couple of gentlemen inspired by The Matrix and a lifetime of love for both film and gaming set out to change that with a wildly ambitious idea. The original plan was to do something never before accomplished: release an original horror movie (and eventually a trilogy) alongside a horror video game. This didn’t happen. We’ll get into that later.
What did happen, though, was that they still managed to blaze their own trail in both mediums by creating a singular film where the lines between real life and video game horror were deliberately blurred. Today’s movie is one that will take you straight back to mid-2000s film and gaming culture in all the right ways. By the time you’re done watching, you’ll be firing up Breaking Benjamin on your MP3 player and rollerblading to GameStop to nab a used copy of Resident Evil 4. Snoogans.
It’s the story of a movie with a “Wild and Crazy Kidz” premise that isn’t critically held in much higher regard than most video game adaptations—but one that found new life on home video and still has a puncher’s chance of someday being resurrected. This is what happened to Stay Alive.
The Creators and the Curse
Stay Alive was written by the duo of William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman. Inspired by high-concept films like The Matrix, they wanted to create something that genuinely pushed the needle forward. Stay Alive was actually the second of two video-game-adjacent scripts they sold. The first, titled Mercury, was presumably optioned but never made because studios are gonna studio.
The pair would later go on to write 2012’s maligned exorcism found-footage film The Devil Inside before parting ways professionally for unknown reasons. Bell would eventually direct two films in The Boy franchise as well as the Orphan prequel Orphan: First Kill, while Peterman handled writing duties on the 2013 found-footage werewolf flick Wer.
It was one hell of a time to tell a story where video games and horror collided. The Xbox 360, arguably the most game-changing console of my lifetime, was thriving. It was worth making a trip to Walmart just to play the demos, even if you couldn’t afford the console. Gaming felt bigger and more fun than ever. Meanwhile, horror was in its anything-goes era. Seemingly every idea was being greenlit, leading to massive success stories and catastrophic bombs alike, each destined to receive a “too twisted for the big screen” unrated DVD cut. Whether it was an original hit like James Wan’s Saw, a wacky IP mash-up like Freddy vs. Jason, or even the first Resident Evil adaptation, the crazier the idea, the better.
So sure, why not a story about a group of twenty-somethings who play a mysterious video game, only to discover that if they die in the game, they die the same way in real life? All of this is caused by the soul of the “Blood Countess,” Elizabeth Bathory, who, according to legend, murdered hundreds of young women and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth back in the 1500s. This part is loosely based on a real historical figure, though the story itself is drenched in disputed testimony and conjecture. Still. Royally gnarly.
Filming, Effects, and PG-13 Horror
The duo’s script was eventually picked up by Disney’s Hollywood Pictures, before Terminator Salvation director, and man who absolutely made up his own name, McG joined the project with his production company Wonderland Sound and Vision.
The cast is an ensemble led by Jon Foster and Samaire Armstrong, whom you might remember as Ari Gold’s assistant Emily on Entourage or Anna from The O.C. Foster plays Hutch, a painfully generic mid-2000s leading man with almost no personality beyond his trauma and “normal, everyday guy” energy. Armstrong plays Abigail, an attractive woman who takes aggressively rude photos of grieving funeral-goers and is, for reasons never fully explained, transfixed by Hutch’s inner sadness.
Jimmi Simpson absolutely crushes it as Phineus, the spastic, token “Stu from Scream” character. He’s funny, he’s abrasive, and he’s a complete asshole to his friends. Simpson has played variations of this character his entire career, and even back in 2006, he was already excellent at it.
Adam Goldberg (Dazed and Confused) pops up as a slacker-esque, proto-Patrick Bateman before being dispatched early, while Milo Ventimiglia, affectionately named Loomis Crowley, presumably after Halloween’s Dr. Loomis and real-world occultist Aleister Crowley, bites it in a fantastic opening scene that sets the tone for the whole film.
Wendell Pierce plays the untrusting detective character, a sort of “Doakes-type,” whose aggressively awful 2000s wardrobe rivals Donnie Wahlberg’s ill-fitting attire in the Saw sequels. And finally, Sophia Bush shows up as the intoxicating gamer goth girl who could only be named… October.
But the casting that really made headlines was Frankie Muniz as the “Randy from Scream” archetype, Swink. And his hat. There were more than a few times someone took a bong hit and said, “Dude, did you hear the Malcolm in the Middle kid is in a horror movie?”, which is presumably exactly what the studio was hoping for. Unfortunately, those skeevy little stoners (maybe me, maybe you, we’re not judging) were often disappointed. Muniz mostly hangs out playing video games outside a van while wearing an absolutely idiotic poker hat. He doesn’t even get a Paris Hilton–in–House of Wax-level death scene.
The van and many of the film’s other sets were shot in New Orleans about a month before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. The director loved the location’s old-school gothic vibe, even though it wasn’t historically accurate to Elizabeth Bathory.
The film’s noticeably dark look may give Alien vs. Predator: Requiem fans PTSD, but it actually works in Stay Alive’s favor, helping blend video-game villains into real-world environments. Credit for that goes to cinematographer Alejandro Martínez, who would later work on the Scream TV series and Fallout.
The studio-mandated PG-13 rating definitely dulls the film’s bite. Ooey-gooey noises and screams mostly happen off-screen, but the jump scares are still solid, especially in the opening act. And in the mid-2000s, a killer opening was basically mandatory for horror films.
Visual effects artists Mark Dornfeld (Armageddon, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Kent Seki (Iron Man, Superman Returns) worked to create video-game boogeymen that could believably threaten our gel-haired heroes. The plot is a mess and the acting… exists, but the visuals hold up surprisingly well. You can tell Stay Alive was made by actual gamers.
The Video Game That Never Was
Speaking of which, the original plan included releasing a real video game alongside the movie. The film even ends with a Cabin Fever-style stinger showing copies of the cursed game arriving at retail stores.
In a perfect world, fiction would have reflected reality, and gamers could have actually played the deadly game themselves. During filming, the crew even had a video-game consultant on set, listed in the credits simply as “Cliffyb.” Clues were scattered throughout the movie so viewers could theoretically discover cheat codes by watching the film. Addresses, envelopes, hidden numbers, the whole thing.
Even if the game had sucked, this could have sparked a fascinating meta-trend between movies and games that might still be paying dividends today. Sadly, it never happened due to financial reasons. But the clock hasn’t entirely run out yet.
Box Office, Home Video, and Legacy
Stay Alive opened wide in theaters to nearly $11 million and went on to earn about $27 million worldwide, barely recouping its reported $20 million budget and effectively killing any hope of a trilogy. Critics weren’t exactly kind either. The film currently sits at a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which shouldn’t shock anyone. A barely-over-eighty-minute, PG-13, video-game horror movie from 2006 was never going to win over critics. Reviews slammed the film’s lack of logic (fair) and accused it of ripping off The Ring.
Still, every so often, someone appreciated it for being ridiculous and fun, which is where most horror fans ultimately land on Stay Alive.
In the end, it’s an easy-to-watch time capsule of mid-2000s weirdness. Would it work today? Probably not. But the director is still holding out hope and I’d love to be proven wrong. William Brent Bell has said on multiple occasions that the concept feels ripe for an update, especially in an era where AI is already blurring the lines between reality and digital spaces. When he made the film, he hoped it would find the same kind of nostalgic appreciation audiences eventually gave The Last Starfighter. Judging by DVD sales, he might not be wrong.
The unrated home-video release brought in around $14 million on its own and included an entirely cut subplot involving the game’s developer, more gore, and additional Elizabeth Bathory backstory.
Bell believes the movie was simply ahead of its time, and that studios in 2006 didn’t fully understand what he was trying to do. Will we ever see a revival? Or was 2006 truly “Game Over” for the franchise? Anything’s possible. But for now, that’s what happened to Stay Alive.
A couple of previous episodes of this show can be seen below. For more, check out the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel—and don’t forget to subscribe!
