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Gaming movies… the best of the worst, Part 4

posted by nikki at 11:04 am.

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Today’s game movies are hybrids of a sort. They are of the less common variety of game films wherein the game world and reality meet and mix.

Movie 7: Stay Alive

Stay Alive is your typical horror movie with a gaming twist. Upon the death of a friend, the main protagonist of the movie, Hutch, is given some of his friends possessions… including a home-brew game called “Stay Alive”, which his friend had been playing mere hours before he died. Naturally, Hutch’s friends talk him into playing the game.

It’s not long before Hutch’s friends start dying off in the same way their characters died in the game, and the group goes on a road trip to find the man who created the game.

Now when I say this is a typical horror movie, I mean it. It has all the cliche elements of the more recent movies of the genre (though less blood and gore than some). A main character with a traumatic past, the stoner, the goth, the love interest, the demented villain trying to do them all in… and of course the “Hey - Scooby - Doo - let’s - split - up - and - explore - the - scary - mansion” moment. Always a classic.

Stay Alive is one of those movies that is so over-the-top and poorly acted, that it almost works better as an unintentional comedy - and to be honest, I that’s why I like it. It’s awful, it’s cliche, it’s overdone, but it’s still fun to watch, because of the joy one can take in guessing who’s going to be the next sacrificial character to have a pair of scissors stabbed through their chest.

Movie 8: Gamebox 1.0

I never would have even heard of this movie if I hadn’t been browsing the cheap rental sections at Family Video a while back. The DVD case had this awesomely creepy picture of what looks like a third party PS2 controller and the tagline “The only way out is to win”, so naturally I absolutely had to rent it. I was a little disappointed to find out that it wasn’t a horror movie as the cover art implies, but on the whole, I’m glad I rented it.

The movie centers around a game tester named Charlie who is going through a rough patch in life (the standard movie-life problems… death of his girlfriend, unfulfilled at work, depressed, isolating himself from his friends… you get the picture). It’s not long before a mysterious package arrives, containing the latest in video game technology: GameBox 1.0.

Pretty soon, Charlie is immersed in an amazingly realistic, full virtual environment. So realistic, in fact, that after a while, the game turns out to be more real than reality, and Charlie is fighting for his life. If he dies in the game, he dies for real.

The nice thing about this movie is that it’s “game” sequences don’t focus on just one game genre… Charlie jumps from one game to the next, shooting bad guys, fighting aliens, and running from zombies. The downside? The special effects aren’t all that great and it’s very obviously targeted at young teens.

The main reason this one makes the list of “the best of the worst” though is because I felt like a total geek while watching it, and that’s never a bad thing.

Tomorrow: More game movies that are actually based on games.

Nikki Blight: is still trying to find that damn princess... when she's not writing fresh code for the217.com.