Stay Alive | |
---|---|
Directed by | William Brent Bell |
Written by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | Alejandro Martinez |
Edited by | Mark Stevens |
Music by | John Frizzell |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures Distribution |
Release date |
|
Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $20 million [1] |
Box office | $27.1 million [2] |
Stay Alive is a 2006 American horror film directed by William Brent Bell, who co-wrote it with Matthew Peterman. The film was produced by Joseph McGinty Nichol, and released on March 24, 2006, in the United States. It was the first film released by Hollywood Pictures after five years of inactivity. Stay Alive has gained a cult following despite initial critical panning.
After playing a video game titled Stay Alive, Loomis Crowley, his roommate Rex, and Rex's girlfriend Sarah are killed the same way as their characters were killed in the game.
At Loomis' funeral, his friend Hutch meets Abigail—a friend of Sarah—and receives some of Loomis' possessions, including Stay Alive. Hutch, his girlfriend October, and her brother Phineus decide to play the game as a group. Abigail and another friend, Swink, join them, while Hutch's boss, Miller, plays online from his office.
The game is set in a derelict mansion on Gerouge Plantation, but it only starts when the six players recite "The Prayer of Elizabeth," a request for "all who resist" to perish so that their blood can keep the Countess Elizabeth Bathory young. The players fight through a cemetery of evil ghost children, heading toward a mausoleum and tower. The game directs Miller to pick up a rose. October, a reader of occult literature, explains that undead spirits cannot move across wild roses. Separated from the others, Miller throws the rose to dispel the spirits of undead girls. Since he is out of roses, a woman in a red dress, the Countess, kills Miller's character. Minutes later, the Countess appears in Miller's office and kills him by stabbing him with conjoined scissor blades like the ones in the game.
Two detectives, Thibodeaux and King, question Hutch about the homicides. Hutch realizes that Loomis and Miller played Stay Alive right before they died, and that they died the same way as their game characters did. October researches Bathory and learns she would drain young women of blood, bathing in it to maintain her youth. Her weakness was mirrors because she could not stand to see herself growing old. Phineus decides to play alone, and despite quitting the game before his character can die, he is killed in real life when a horse-drawn carriage runs him over. The survivors agree to stop playing Stay Alive. However, Detective King ignores Swink's warning and plays until his character dies. King is then killed in his car.
Hutch and Abigail search Loomis' house and learn of the game developer's location: the real Gerouge Plantation. October has discovered that the real Countess Bathory was locked in the tower of her estate as punishment for her gruesome acts and vowed to return one day for revenge, which she is now able to do, as The Prayer of Elizabeth has resurrected her. The Countess can only be killed by driving three nails into her body to trap her soul. October sees the Countess in real life and tries to kill her but realizes she is a ghost. She has her throat slit by the Countess. The three survivors realize that once the game has begun, it can play by itself. Swink stays in a van and plays the game on his laptop to distract Bathory while Hutch and Abigail search Gerouge Plantation.
The Countess begins cheating, arriving in her carriage to kill Swink in real life, even though his character is alive. Swink runs, but he falls into a bush of roses. Hutch and Abigail return to the van to find Swink's character dead. They take the laptop and some wild roses, which they drop to deter undead children as they move toward the tower. They become separated, and Hutch performs the ritual on Bathory's body alone. Bathory's phantom attacks Abigail. At the top of the tower, Hutch finds the preserved body of Elizabeth Bathory and hammers three nails into it, after which the spirit disappears. Bathory's body reanimates; recalling that the Countess hates mirrors, Hutch uses the reflective laptop to repel her before setting the room ablaze. Swink, still alive due to the rose bush, bursts in with Abigail and rescues Hutch. As Bathory's body burns, the three leave the tower.
Meanwhile, the gaming store is now selling copies of Stay Alive. Intrigued, a worker puts a copy in a PlayStation 2. As the game's intro begins, the group reciting Elizabeth Bathory's prayer is heard as the game zooms to Bathory, staring out her window.
Stay Alive was released in U.S. theaters on March 24, 2006. The film opened at #3 in the U.S. box office with $10.7 million that first weekend. It ultimately grossed a total of $23.08 million in the United States. [2] The movie grossed a total of over $27.1 million worldwide. [2]
Stay Alive received negative critical reviews. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 24 out of 100 based on 17 reviews. [3] Rotten Tomatoes holds this film with a 10% rating based on 59 reviews, with an average rating of 3.20/10. The site's critics consensus states: "A by-the-numbers teen horror flick, Stay Alive fails to exploit its premise for any real scares." [4]
Writing for Newsday , John Anderson commented that "'Stay Alive' spends a lot of time inside the video game system, and what will terrify the audience very early on is the realization that there's better acting in the video game than on the big screen." [5] Meanwhile, writing for Variety , Anderson concluded: "Seldom is there anything close to real passion or panic on display here from cast members." [6]
Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D− and commented, "this dopey movie keeps flouting its own rules, so that one character who dies in the game gets to live, while poor suckers get offed for real even though we never saw their Game Overs." [7] Entertainment Weekly gave the "Unrated Director's Cut" version a C+. [8]
Despite its initial negative reception, Stay Alive has been regarded by some in the years since as a cult classic horror movie. [9] [10]
The DVD was released in the United States on September 19, 2006. It was made available in an unrated edition (100 minutes) and a "PG-13" edition (85 minutes). The 15 minutes of new unrated footage include a new character and subplot. The unrated edition features more adult material. As of December 2011, the total amount of DVD units sold is 874,827, bringing in $13,636,869 in revenue. [1]
In August 2022, Bell revealed that developments for a potential sequel film are ongoing. The filmmaker stated that creatives "are trying very hard to make another one". [10]
Dracula is a gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker, published on 26 May 1897. An epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, investigate, hunt and kill Dracula.
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman and alleged serial killer from the Báthory family, who owned land in the Kingdom of Hungary. Báthory and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and women from 1590 to 1610. Her servants were put on trial and convicted whereas Báthory was imprisoned within the Castle of Csejte (Čachtice), where she died under mysterious circumstances.
Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character from the 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker. Van Helsing is a Dutch polymath doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "MD, D.Ph., D.Litt., etc.", indicating a wealth of experience, education and expertise. He is a doctor, professor, lawyer, philosopher, scientist, and metaphysician. The character is best known through many adaptations of the story as a vampire slayer, monster hunter and the arch-nemesis of Count Dracula, and the prototypical and the archetypal parapsychologist in subsequent works of paranormal fiction. Some later works tell new stories about Van Helsing, while others, such as Dracula (2020) and I Woke Up a Vampire (2023) have characters that are his descendants.
Michael Myers is a character from the slasher film series Halloween. He first appears in 1978 in John Carpenter's Halloween as a young boy who murders his elder sister, Judith Myers. Fifteen years later, he returns home to Haddonfield, Illinois, to murder more teenagers. In the original Halloween, the adult Michael Myers, referred to as The Shape in the closing credits, was portrayed by Nick Castle for most of the film and substituted by Tony Moran in the final scene where Michael's face is revealed. The character was created by John Carpenter and has been featured in twelve films, as well as novels, video games, and comic books.
Niagara is a 1953 American film-noir thriller film directed by Henry Hathaway, produced by Charles Brackett, and written by Brackett, Richard L. Breen and Walter Reisch. The film stars Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, and Max Showalter. It was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest box-office hits that year.
The final girl is a trope in horror films. It refers to the last girl(s) or woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in many films, including Psycho, Voices of Desire, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her article "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" (1987). Clover suggested that in these films, the viewer began by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experienced a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.
Andreas Schnaas is a German director and actor working exclusively in the horror genre. Since he first appeared on the film scene in 1989, he has become a leader in Germany's ultra-violent low-budget horror film industry. He was the first in a series of maverick directors making underground movies who began a sustained revival of German horror cinema post World War II.
Timo Rose is a German filmmaker. The founder of the production company Sword of Independence Filmworks, he is best known for his work in the science fiction and underground horror genres.
Lesbian vampirism is a trope in early gothic horror and 20th century exploitation film. The archetype of a lesbian vampire used the fantasy genre to circumvent the heavy censorship of lesbian characters in the realm of social realism.
Countess Dracula is a 1971 British Hammer horror film directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Ingrid Pitt, Nigel Green and Lesley-Anne Down. It was produced by Alexander Paal.
Bathory is a 2008 historical drama written and directed by Juraj Jakubisko. Filming began in December 2005, and the film was released in July 2008. It was Jakubisko's first English-language film and an international co-production between the cinemas of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the United Kingdom.
Dr. Samuel "Sam" J. Loomis is a fictional character in the Halloween franchise. A main protagonist of the overall series, Loomis appears on-screen in eight of the thirteen Halloween films, first appearing in John Carpenter's original 1978 film. Donald Pleasence portrayed the character in five films, with Malcolm McDowell taking on the role in the 2007 reimagining and its sequel. In both portrayals, Loomis is introduced as the psychiatrist of series antagonist Michael Myers, driven to pursue and restrain his murderous former patient. He also appears in a flashback in Halloween Kills.
El Retorno del Hombre Lobo is a 1980 Spanish horror film that is the ninth in a 12-film series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. It is also known as The Craving and Night of the Werewolf.
The influence of Countess Elizabeth Báthory in popular culture has been notable from the 18th century to the present day. Since her death, various myths and legends surrounding her story have preserved her as a prominent figure in folklore, literature, music, film, games and toys.
Eternal is a 2004 film about sixteenth-century Countess Elizabeth Báthory "repeating her crimes in modern day Montreal".
Bram Stoker's Dracula's Curse is a 2006 horror film by The Asylum, written and directed by Leigh Scott. Despite featuring Bram Stoker's name in the title, the film is not directly based on any of his writings or a mockbuster to the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, but shares similarities to films such as Blade: Trinity, Dracula 2000, Underworld: Evolution and Van Helsing. The film also shares some similarities with the 1971 Hammer horror film Countess Dracula, which also features a Dracula-esque femme fatale in the lead role.
Dracula the Un-dead is a 2009 sequel to Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula. The book was written by Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt. Previously, Holt had been a direct-to-DVD horror screenwriter, and Stoker a track and field coach.
"Flicker" is the seventh episode of the fifth season of the anthology television series American Horror Story. It aired on November 18, 2015, on the cable network FX. This episode was written by Crystal Liu and directed by Michael Goi.
Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. A standalone expansion pack to the 2010 open world Western game Red Dead Redemption, it adds a non-canonical zombie horror–themed single-player campaign, two multiplayer modes, and cosmetic additions to the environments and characters. Set in an alternate timeline from the base game's story, the plot follows returning protagonist John Marston, a former outlaw who sets out to find the cause of and possible cure for a zombie plague that has infected his wife and son. Marston liberates towns overrun by the undead and assists non-playable characters with side quests along the way.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)