Stay Alive

Stay Alive is a horror movie about a video game where players who die in the game also die in real life. Released on March 24, 2006, Stay Alive grossed $10,726,406 opening weekend but received very low reviews from the critics.

Some interesting movies have been built on the notion of people being sucked into or disgorged from electronic devices ("Pleasantville," "Shocker"), but this isn't one of them. The writers, Matthew Peterman and William Brent Bell (Mr. Bell also directed), apparently thought that premise alone would carry the film, so they surrounded Mr. Foster with a generic bunch of buddies. — The New York Times

It's unlikely that "Stay Alive" could ever have been a good movie in the traditional sense, but it might have been better if Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman had done more to exploit their gaming premise. After all, freed from the restrictions of the "real" world, their options for terror were limited only by technology and their own imaginations. In making "Stay Alive," the latter was obviously in short supply. Oh, for the mind of a machine. — San Fransisco Chronicle