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Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 50TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghTV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghHorror buffs looking for a novel twist on genre formulas should look elsewhere, but this body-count potboiler about a sinister video game and the poor dopes who make the mistake of playing it is the movie equivalent of junk food: It's not good, but it's predictable and even satisfying, in a low-expectations way.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttA passable horror-thriller for the young crowd, assuming a movie can lure them away from PlayStations.
- The star of Stay Alive is a cutting-edge video game, but the film still has hackneyed horror at its heart. And worse, it's not even the stylishly, wittily executed hackneyed horror of the "Scream" movies.
- 40Los Angeles TimesJohn AndersonLos Angeles TimesJohn AndersonStay Alive spends a lot of time inside the video game system, and what will terrify the audience very early on is the realization that there's better acting in the video game than on the big screen.
- 38New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanThere's a fascinating and terrifying story to be told about Elizabeth Bathory, the dramatically depraved 17th century sadist known as the Blood Countess.....This ain't it.
- 38Boston GlobeBoston GlobeAlways the way in horror flicks: These first scenes, when the characters are being tenderly established and the concept is still young, are the best.
- 30L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyStay Alive is death porn without the porn: Director William Brent Bell's pre-gore cutaways should enrage even those horror buffs for whom suspense is irrelevant, to say nothing of the fact that the movie's only real scare tactic is playing what sounds like a reverbed electric razor on the soundtrack.
- 25San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco ChronicleWorks better as unintentional comedy than horror.
- 12New York PostNew York PostStay Alive is D.O.A, a notion of an outline of a rough draft of a killer video-game flick.