Stay Alive

When a group of friends play a violent video game called Stay Alive, they start dying in real life the same way their characters do in the game. Behind it all, according to the lunkheaded script by Matthew Peterman and director William Brent Bell, is the medieval Slovakian murderess Elizabeth Bathory (apparently, after her trial in 1610, she served out her sentence outside New Orleans, where the movie takes place). The premise is dopey; the plot is predictable; the characters have idiotic names like “Swink Sylvania,” “Fidget” and “Phineus Bantum”; and the dialogue seldom rises above the level of twaddle—unspeakable in every sense of the word. Cinematographer Alejandro Martinez seems to have shot the whole thing with about 50 bucks’ worth of lights (unless “murky grunge” was a conscious choice).