Choose or Die, 2022: No Rating
Subtitle: Frick the 80’s!
Netflix says: Gruesome Suspenseful Horror
Who to look for:
Iola Evans is Kayla, who works a crappy job and has a druggie mother. (Roger Ebert calls her a “troubled” mother. My description is more truthful.) Kayla always looks depressed.
Asa Butterfield, Isaac, her IT friend. He is about 20 times more lively than her, and has a crush on her. She isn’t interested.
(Iola? Asa? Who was naming kids 20 years ago?)
AND Robert Englund!! Freddie Krueger himself. But I think we only see his face once. He’s the voice in the video game.
Once Upon a Time…
Like so many Netflix movies…this started off great! This is a stylish world of…the future? A dystopia of no cars, or people, of darkness, loneliness…and technology. If you can call vintage video games “techie”.
Kayla has a mind-numbing job cleaning open floors of a corporation. They aren’t even offices, just one huge area. Which, we find out, has no actual employees. So why do they have to scrub it every night? A red herring, with no answers!
In any case, she also has a hobby of fixing old electronics to sell. Who would pay for a refurbished keyboard, or an old monitor? Well, her friend Isaac, who is writing his own video games. Does he also really like old grimy electronics, or is he just pretending to, to keep her interested? Or is it because the prop master just deposited a box of them in the corner?
She finds an interesting game thingy console that looks like an old video to me. Since I don’t know anything about vintage games, and I could hardly see this film shot in 80% darkness (thanks, Netflix!), I’ll let Roger E describe it:
“Curs>r” is an old, Infocom-style text game, one of those early PC games in which players input text to push the story along. “Pick up the chalice? Yes or no?” That kind of thing.
And it’s not just a game, but it has a cash prize. Do cash prizes for dead games live forever? News to me, but now it makes me want to find old games, even though I still don’t know what platform they use.
The first levels of the game were pretty cool – and horrifying. The game can see what is in your own room, and very bad things start to happen if you don’t answer quickly and correctly. The waitress chomping on glass? Gross!! That did give me shivers.
The giant rat chewing up a door to get to her mother? MEAT! Very effective scene.
Isaac is too cool to believe her magical adventures, but eventually they decide to go on a roadtrip to find the game designers and maybe claim the prize. And then…
Explain the Ending and SPOILERS
My first video game came with my first computer: Diablo. I could feel my hair standing on end. No directions, which made it superhard to figure out how not to die all the time.
There were lots of levels, and this movie was just too short. All of a sudden they are at the finale, which isn’t much fun. Who thinks killing major characters, is cool? No one, but new horror movie writers think this is innovative or something. V annoying that Isaac is killed in such a tortured way. Why didn’t she try harder to save him??
But the really annoying part was the Collector man. “Fuck the eighties!,” she says…out of nowhere! It was like totally hating on the 1980s and on any older person who collects, and yes, saves vintage inventions or products. And since he was old…and white…of course she had to beat him. Don’t know why his wife and kid had been mutilated – the game does what it does.
And yet… her junkie mother survives to see another day. And another needle, no doubt.
Other Audience Reviews
Google: 62% Liked.
Boss battle was cool except for the super preachy dialogue. We get it. The guy is butt hurt about how white males don't get to the hero anymore. You don't need the characters to say it several times.
From Amazon: Nope.
Roger Ebert: 1.5 stars. (Roger reviews everything, doesn’t he? 🙂 ) He says the magic didn’t have logical rules, and it felt like the events were hit and miss. [I think it was contained more than that: it happened in real time, and it always caused pain. But yeah, could have been better. I think it’s scarier if more predictable, anyway. Look at the Final Destination series! ]
CNET liked it. (CNET reviews movies? I guess so, if they include electronics.)
Isaac lives in a gaming shack, surrounded by shelves of cartridges and secondhand consoles. Yes, he was asking for a video game to curse him. (Heh!)
They thought the actors were charming. (They weren’t.)
Variety HATED it!
That’s a Wrap
I did like the first level of the waitress (though disappointed the police didn’t do anything to investigate) and the rat. Bad ending. Rating: 2 stars.
What did you think?
Set painter in studio Art Depts. Member Scriptwriters Network, script analyst.
Author, 2 hardcopy books, Barnes & Noble Calendar.
- Emma in the Night ~ Wendy Walker ~ Thriller - May 11, 2023
- Still Alice (2014) ~ Psychology Movie Review ~ Julianne Moore - January 25, 2023
- The Other Emily ~ Dean Koontz - January 23, 2023
