Jump to content

Stay Alive

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Wolfwind (talk | contribs) at 14:01, 29 November 2007 (corrected error). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Stay Alive
Stay Alive film poster
Directed byWilliam Brent Bell
Written byWilliam Brent Bell
Matthew Peterman
Produced byMcG
StarringJon Foster
Samaire Armstrong
Frankie Muniz
Sophia Bush
Jimmi Simpson
Adam Goldberg
Milo Ventimiglia
Distributed byHollywood Pictures (USA)
Universal Studios (UK, Netherlands, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil)
Release dates
24 March, 2006 (USA),
(Canada)
Running time
85 mins (Rated) 100 mins (Unrated Director's Cut)
LanguageEnglish
Budget$9,000,000 (estimated)
For other uses, see Stay Alive (disambiguation).

Stay Alive is a 2006 horror film directed and written by William Brent Bell. This film was produced by McG, co-produced by Hollywood Pictures and released on March 24, 2006 in the United States of America.

Plot summary

In the opening sequence, a character in a video game is seen entering a mansion. Undead attack him, and out of the gloom lunges a woman wearing a blood red dress. She knocks him off the banister, and the character is killed when he is hanged by a chandelier chain. The player of the game (Stay Alive), Loomis Crowley, asks his friend, Hutch Macneil, to come over. When Hutch turns him down, Loomis goes to bed but is later woken by a nightmare. As he returns from getting a glass of milk, he hears a strange vibrating noise, and a shadow approaches him. After finding his room mates dead, the woman in the game appears and pushes him off the banister, and Loomis is killed by the chain before he has a chance to land.

The following day, Hutch, whilst at work, is notified of Loomis' death. Hutch attends Loomis' funeral, at which he meets a friend of Loomis' older sister, Abigail. Hutch is given all of Loomis' games and papers by Loomis’ younger sister, including the bootleg of the game Stay Alive. After the funeral, Hutch drops in on October and Phineas Bantum in a coffee shop. Phin shows interest in Stay Alive, mainly because he had never heard of it. The sight of the game disturbs Hutch, as it had been the game Loomis was playing hours before he died. After returning to his apartment, Hutch is surprised by the sudden appearance of his friends Swink, October, Phin and Abigail, who had come over to all play Stay Alive. Miller, Hutch’s employer, joins the group by playing on a computer at his office. The six players recite a prayer (without which the game would not be accessible) and start the main gameplay. The game remarks that roses have a negative effect on enemies. After a few hours of gaming Miller, attacked by a mob of undead children, finds his way into what appears to be a torture room. Freaked out, he takes a break to smoke a cigarette while his controller begins to vibrate. Suddenly, the woman who killed Loomis kills Miller's character by stabbing him in the throat with shears. Miller himself dies the same way a few minutes later.

Hutch realises Loomis and Miller died the same way they died in Stay Alive and leaves to tell the players about it. Phin, the only one not shaken by Hutch's discovery, plays Stay Alive "for Miller." His friends leave him alone, angry at Phin for not taking the deaths seriously enough. Soon after, he pauses the game, noticing that the Countess shattered all mirrors but one he flipped over. Phin is shown later driving down a stretch of road, on his way to meet up with his friends, when a demon child almost causes him to crash. After getting out of his car to investigate, a horse drawn carriage tramples him. When Phin fails to arrive, October, Hutch, Abigail, and Swink drive out to in order to find him, but instead find his lifeless body. The officers arrive on the scene, and one decides to play Stay Alive, as he is curious about the game. Hutch tries to stop him, but fails to shut the computer before the officer’s character dies. October, the most affected because of her brother's death, researches ways of killing a ghost, discovering that driving three nails into the head, heart and forehead and burning its blood could stop her. They also discover that the Countess shatters almost all mirrors because she couldn't stand the sight of herself aging.

As a news report states that the officer who was playing at the scene was murdered, cops arrive at Hutch's apartment. October and a reluctant Swink run out of the apartment before the cops make it in. The group decides that no one can play Stay Alive for their own good, but when the computer is left alone gameplay starts on its own, killing October’s character. October comes up with the idea of going to the programmer's house, but is trapped and killed by the Countess as she stands outside, and away from the group, to smoke. Hutch, Swink and Abigail, the only remaining characters drive to the programmer's house, only to discover it is the mansion from the game. Swink realizes that one person must play, while the other two find the Countess' body. He volunteers to play, with Hutch and Abigail splitting up and exploring the mansion on their own. As the game starts to become merged with the actual world, as we see Swink guiding Hutch through the mansion by unlocking doors and giving him tools. The Countess almost kills Swink when she chases him in her carriage, until Swink falls into a rose bush as the blood Countess gets out of the carriage. The scene then cuts to the computer screen with Swink’s dead character and “Game Over” shown on the screen.

Pursued by the Countess, Abigail is locked in the torture room forcing Hutch to leave her as he tries to reach the tower. When he does, he finds the Countess' body, amazingly well-preserved. Driving the nails in, he prepares to leave until the Countess takes the nails out. Hutch reflects the Countess with his laptop - the Countess, who cannot shatter this surface, is distracted, and Hutch, taking the opportunity, sets fire to the room. The door is locked, and he accepts the fact that he's going to be killed by fire, until Swink, covered in a rose bush, and Abigail kick the door open and rescue him. Later, actual copies of Stay Alive are being sold at the video game store and the salesman places it in the console (a PlayStation 2) and we see the game's opening sequence.

Locations

The house appears to be plantation house on Bayou Road in Saint Bernard Parish, Eastern New Orleans, Louisiana. This assumption is made based entirely on the construction of the face of the house, to include the glass in the upstairs windows. [1].

Cast

Box office

As of June 29, 2006, the film grossed a total of 23.08 million dollars in the United States[citation needed]. The watered-down theatrical version was widely panned by critics and horror fans alike[citation needed] but the Unrated Director's Cut was thought of as a far better film. It was considered a box office success due to its production budget of only 9 million dollars. Three days after the movie was released, it already grossed more than its budget with 10.7 million dollars in the United States. The movie has grossed a total of over 25.18 million dollars worldwide and has yet to be released in many markets internationally. [citation needed]

DVD Release

The DVD was released in the USA on Tuesday, September 19th 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 an entirely new character and subplot. The unrated edition also features more violence, blood and gore, sex/nudity, profanity, and drug use.

Trivia

  • This was the last film that completed its production in New Orleans, Louisiana before Hurricane Katrina hit.
  • There are several historical inaccuracies throughout the movie, perhaps most notable is that it is claimed that the Blood Countess lived in America, while Elizabeth Báthory (on whom she is based) lived and grew up in Hungary. In the film it was mentioned erroneously that Elizabeth Báthory came from Romania. In the universe of the movie, this issue is addressed to some extent through the explanation that the Blood Countess fled to the United States to escape persecution and to continue her bloody habits.
  • The Laptops used were Alienware Laptops with a chrome finish.
  • The first film from Hollywood Pictures in five years.
  • If one looks or listens closely in the movie, one can see or hear some references to real life games, such as Fatal Frame, Siren, Silent Hill, and strangely, Ratchet and Clank. In the game store, one can see the slim version of the Playstation 2 and signs advertising Unreal Championship 2, Killzone and Area 51.There was also a copy of ATV Offroad Fury 2 and one of EyeToy: Groove in the store. There is even a poster of "Jak" from the Jak and Daxter series of video games in Hutch's room, as well as a poster for Killzone in Crowley's room.
  • The book mentioned by October is "The Malleus Demonum" and she says that it's "The Witch's Hammer." This is incorrect. The actual title for the book "The Witch's Hammer" is "The Malleus Maleficarum"
  • In the background of Hutch's apartment, when the original group begins to play the game, two large posters of Katsuhiro Otomo's anime motion picture, Steamboy, can be seen on the wall behind the couch.
  • CliffyB was the movie's videogame consultant. However, several video game references in the film are either incorrect or suspect.
  • In the film Swink tells Phin, that to unclothe the zombie concubines, you input the Konami Code.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stay_Alive&oldid=174594987"