Stay Alive

Stay Alive (2006) is a Horror film written by William Brent Bell, who also directed, and Matthew Peterman. This film was produced by McG, co-produced by Hollywood Pictures and released on March 24, 2006, in the United States.

The movie centers on an online Survival Horror video game called Stay Alive, based on the myth of a figure called the Blood Countess, who was buried alive in the tower of her real state in the Geronge Plantation. There's a good reason why this game is still in beta, though: The people who play it have a nasty habit of dying.

A group of twenty-somethings find themselves in possession of this particular video game after the brutal death of their friend, and soon discover that they are being murdered in the same way as their characters died in the game. Now they must race against time to defeat the spirit of the countess in order to escape the game.

Stay Alive contains examples of:

 * The Aggressive Drug Dealer: What's with that Gamestop clerk? There's a scene where the cop goes to a Gamestop for information and the clerk tries to sell him a First Person Shooter as if it were heroin. It's like they just lifted a drug dealer interrogation scene from another movie and replaced all instances of "crack" with "game." He's even twitchy and neurotic, like he's been sampling his own stuff.
 * Attack of the Killer Whatever
 * The Big Easy
 * Did Not Do the Research: There's some of the video game references:
 * The game was made by one guy working alone in his basement. Games today require a lot of artists, designers and programmers to create for commercial sale.
 * The Konami Code they referenced (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) is correct, but Swink made the reference while holding a PS 2 controller, which has no B and A buttons.
 * Their Silent Hill 4 reference, which mentions a hyperblaster and killing a girl on "level 4".
 * A beta game is not illegal to play. In fact, some games, such Halo 3 and Minecraft, make their betas open to the public.
 * Disney Death:
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: The game definitely features this.
 * Fictional Video Game: The eponymous game.
 * The Game Plays You: If someone just leaves the game...
 * Gamer Chick: October.
 * Gory Discretion Shot: This movie is rated PG-13. One of the most obvious was the second victim.
 * Hey Its That Guy
 * Idiot Ball: The game starts with a chant that the players must read. This chant summons the spirit of the Blood Countess. Okay. They don't know this yet. At the end of the movie, after the Countess is sent back to wherever, not only is the killer video game released to the gaming public, but they leave the chant in. Couldn't they have at least commented that part out of the code, or, you know, not released the game?
 * Who was the "they" that released the game? There was no indication the survivors released the game.
 * How about the mother of all idiot moves? When The Chick is alone with a single rose, one of the only things that can protect her from monsters, what does she do? Pick out all the petals while playing 'he loves me, he loves me not'. Moron.
 * Ivy League for Everyone
 * Kill It With Fire:
 * The Most Dangerous Video Game meets The Game Come to Life.
 * Nintendo Hard
 * Pac Man Fever: The movie gets certain details close enough to right that it serves only to piss off the few audience members that actually know what they're talking about.
 * Shout Out: A Steamboy poster can be seen hanging in the background in a scene.
 * Shown Their Work: Despite the things they got wrong above, some of their video game references are correct, which is because they hired CliffyB as their consultant.
 * Stock Scream: Used when the goth girl is attacked.
 * Tagalong Kid: Frankie Muniz's character.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Uhhh...
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome: A video game that summons the spirit of a mass murderer to kill you if you lose? Thats kinda cool.
 * Win to Exit
 * Your Mind Makes It Real