Main cast: Iola Evans (Kayla), Asa Butterfield (Isaac), Angela Griffin (Thea), Ryan Gage (Lance), Eddie Marsan (Hal), Kate Fleetwood (Laura), Pete Machale (Gabe), and Robert Englund (“Robert Englund”)
Director: Toby Meakins
If Choose or Die had come out 10 years ago, it may still feel fresh and relevant. Now it just feels super late to the bandwagon, appearing more creatively bankrupt than it otherwise would have been because so many movies had beaten it to the punch with the tropes.
We have once again the female protagonist, Kayla, with an angst-filled life thanks to her blaming herself for her brother’s death, her mother going cray cray after said brother’s death, and her having to work in order to pay off her college tuition. If that weren’t enough, the junkie Gabe enables her mother’s drug addiction and also acts as her pimp; he makes it clear that he want Kayla rear end.
So, one day, when her simp friend Isaac shows her this retro text-based game that he picked up from a sale, CURS>R. It comes with a contest that offers a $125,000 prize. Isaac tells her that many old video game contest prizes remain unclaimed to this very day, so she decides what the heck, she can try her luck and play the game to see if she could still win the prize.
Oops, turns out that the game is… magical, let’s just say. As it starts off by making the player make some benign choices, the choices made will soon be reflected in the present day. However, the choices the player has to make become increasingly sadistic and vicious, and as the player is forced to go through several levels of the game, people around them will get hurt and even die.
Take away the novelty of the whole retro game thing, and this movie is a collection of tired old clichés. Yes, there’s another female protagonist with a sad sack life. There’s her nerd friend that has a crush on her, who is also the convenient plot device that can hack into things and find solutions and clues with just a few rounds at the keyboard. Along for the ride are the useless baggage of a mother, the dead family member angst, the evil lech making a play at the female protagonist, the trip to confront the previous survivor of the game, convenient objects that provide answers when the main character needs them…
Really, this movie is a composite of many, many generic movies with a similar “two young adults up against some sinister woo-woo accidentally unleashed by them” movies. The only thing that is different is the retro game thing replacing the Ouija board, truth or dare games, Polaroids, and any other cheaply and quickly made movies of this kind that fill up the Netflix landfill.
Then, by the end of the movie, this one turns in a bizarre swerve into the heroine being in charge of an awesome, dangerous power that she claims she will inflict only on those that deserve it. She will decide who deserves it, of course, so I suppose she’s on her way to becoming a vicious tyrant of the world if somehow a sequel would be spawned out of this forgettable, generic mess.
As I’ve said, had this one come out a decade earlier, it may still has come claim to relevance. Now, it’s just one of the many, many disposable fillers that are used to pad up the horror section in the Netflix catalog.
