A dull and generic teen horror film, aimed squarely at the PG-13 crowd. This one has a dumb premise to begin with: a bunch of kids end up playing an online horror game. When their characters die in-game, they end up dying in real life. Now, with the right people behind it this could have been an arresting survival horror with an interesting slant on mankind's increasing reliance on computer technology for both business and pleasure. It isn't, and you end up thinking that playing the game featured in-film would be a more interesting experience.

The characters are bland and dull, the type you'll forget about just minutes after they stop appearing on screen. There isn't a single person you get behind and want to see make it till the end (bringing in safe, popular TV actor Frankie Muniz doesn't help, either). The antagonist in the film is Countess Elizabeth Bathory, although she's a virtual representation of the character, which means the CGI animators don't have to worry about making her look realistic (instead she looks pretty crappy, like a ghost in a bad GRUDGE rip-off). The deaths are derivative and bloodless, and any attempts at suspense are negated by the overly familiar nature of the storyline. My advice is to give this one a miss.

Loomis Crowley beta-test video game Stay Alive with his friends Sarah and Rex. All three are killed with Loomis dying exactly the way he died in the game. Loomis' sister gives the game to his friend Hutch (Jon Foster). Hutch, his work friend Miller Banks (Adam Goldberg),brother and sister friends Phineus (Jimmi Simpson) and October (Sophia Bush),geeky Swink (Frankie Muniz) and Sarah's friend Abigail (Samaire Armstrong) play the game together. Miller is killed by the Countess Elizabeth Bathory in the game and she comes to kill him in real life. Police detectives Thibodeaux (Wendell Pierce) and King investigate. Phineus continues to play the game but leaves before getting killed. However the game plays by itself. He is killed in a freak accident like in the game. The remaining group tracks down the origins of the video game. Bathory had drained the blood of young women to bath in to maintain her youth. She was walled up alive in a tower on her plantation. Detective King plays the game and is killed. The cops are after the group and they all go on the run to battle Bathory.

This reminds me of 'The Ring' plus the orderly killing sequence of 'Final Destination'. I like the idea of a real haunted horror video game. I like most of the actors in this movie. I want to like this movie more and I wish it was executed better. First of all, the kills are not bloody enough. The violence should be more gory and bloodier. Too much of it occurs off screen. The backstory is way too complicated. The movie tries to explain too much. It's better to leave it as something creepy killing them. I had a similar problem with 'The Ring' but this movie is much more severe. This movie starts with an interesting idea but the poor execution leaves a lot to be desired.

The teenager Loomis Crowley (Milo Ventimiglia) is testing the underground game Stay Alive with his friends Sarah (Nicole Oppermann) and Rex (Billy Slaughter). When the game is over, the impressed Loomis finds in the middle of the night Rex and Sarah dead in their room, and his is pushed by a shadow from the staircase, breaking the banister and hanging the same way he died in the game. Loomis's sister Emma gives his games to his best friend, Hutch (Jon Foster),and he joins his friends Miller (Adam Goldberg),Phineus (Jimmi Simpson) and his sister October (Sophia Bush),Swink (Frankie Muniz) and Abigail (Samaire Armstrong) to play the unknown game together. When Miller and Phineus die the same way they died in the game, the survivors disclose that the game is based on the life of the evil Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was buried alive in the tower of her real state in the Geronge Plantation. With the police chasing them, and after the death of October, the survivors reach the house and try to find the corpse of the Countess to destroy her fiend.

"Stay Alive" is flawed, but it is very entertaining and underrated in IMDb. The story is not scary, but a pleasant adventure with good special effects, the actors and actresses have good performances and show good chemistry. The attitude of the police chasing the teenagers is the flawed and silliest part of the plot, and is simply forgotten in the rest of the story. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Stay Alive - Jogo Mortal" ("Stay Alive - Mortal Game")