 William Brent Bell's youth-orientated horror thriller should perhaps be re-titled Stay Awake. As Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman spin their increasingly laughable yarn, hi-tech hokum about a spooky video game with the power to kill its players in the real world, it's difficult to sustain interest. If Stay Alive were indeed a horror survival game in the mould of Resident Evil, we'd hit the reset button well before the end. The central concept doesn't generate any tension, we're not frightened for an instant by the bloodthirsty villainess who stalks the virtual realm, and the characters are so witless in the face of impending doom, death is frankly the kindest option for most of them. Unintentionally hilarious dialogue ("Somebody ran over my brother in a horse-drawn carriage. I'm going to find whoever it was and I'm going to hurt them.") and performances more wooden than the creaky house sets are a momentary distraction. The good-looking cast never threatens to invest the protagonists with any personality or charm. They scream and babble on cue, and ultimately make beautiful corpses. Instead of a killer videotape, as in The Ring, Bell's film centres on a killer video game based on the chilling true story of a 17th Century noblewoman known as The Blood Countess. A yet-to-be-released copy of the game, snappily named Stay Alive, comes into the possession of a group of cocksure gamers, including Hutch (Jon Foster), Swink (Frankie Muniz) and Abigail (Samaire Armstrong), who have been brought together by the suspicious death of a pal. Curiosity gets the better of the youngsters and they decide to boot up the disc, opening the portal to another world by chanting the verse that preludes the game. As members of the group die in the same fashion as their on screen characters, it becomes clear the petrified players must find a way to defeat the Blood Countess, otherwise it will be game over for them all. Hutch and his buddies are eventually drawn to a dilapidated mansion which bears a spooky similarity to the house in the game. In order to vanquish their vicious pursuer, the terrified gamers must somehow leap back and forth between reality and pixellated fantasy, closing the portal once and for all. There are some mildly creepy digital environments but all the computer trickery can't disguise the gaping holes in the screenplay. Action set pieces, like a showdown between the players and legions of zombies, fail to quicken the pulse. The cliched denouement suggests The Blood Countess will live to slay another day. May she rest in peace. | 
Movie double-acts come in all shapes and sizes ...and with varying degrees of success.
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