Stay Alive Review

Too few video games have transferred well to the big screen, but "Stay Alive" gives the whole genre a bit of a twist as it centres on a (fictional) video game which seems to come to life and kill those playing it. Add a dash of New Orleans hocus-pocus and you'd be forgiven for thinking that director William Brent Bell has seen "The Ring" one too many times.

The action centres on a gang of teenage friends who seem to spend all their time in front of their consoles or battling each other online in various artificial worlds. So when one of them gets his hands on a new 'developmental' game, they're eager to get stuck in. But it soon becomes all too clear that if you die in this game, you die the same way in the real world too - and the race is on to find out who's behind the game before they all fall victim to their pixelated stalker.

A reasonable idea on paper, "Stay Alive" falls apart on screen. For a start Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman have decided to make sixteenth century Hungarian psycho Elizabeth Bathory the main villain - quite what her interred body is doing in New Orleans is anybody's guess. And it's unlikely that, having been dead for the best part of four centuries, she'd be too au fait with the world of computer games and programming!

The only 'names' you'll be likely to have heard of are Samaire Armstrong ("The OC") and "Malcolm In The Middle's" Frankie Muniz but if truth be told, the whole thing is so ludicrous that you'll be rooting for Bathory and her army of freaky ghost children all the way.