Choose or Die (2022)

An inventive but ultimately disappointing horror movie. Choose Or Die has some nice moments and the final third is better than what has come before but it is choppy in places and never really gels. A smart little voice cameo from Robert Englund and Iola Evans & Asa Butterfield are likeable enough leads but the movie just feels rushed. Could have been so much better.

Fmovies: I believe it would have been an interesting short film about retro game that takes over control and forces you to make awful choices.

However, the movie falls short with a regular length runtime and proves to be a drag devoid of any real excitement. As many before mentioned, it's just plain boring.

Leading duo does a decent job but underdeveloped script gives them little to work with.

Almost impossible to get through in one sitting.

Would have rather avoided it.

4 out of 10 from me.

Kayla Edwards (Iola Evans) is a college programming student living paycheck to paycheck as a window cleaner and caring for her drug addicted mother, Thea (Angela Griffin). On the side, Kayla restores old technology for her friend, Isaac (Asa Butterfield), who specializes in coding and old computer programming. When Kayla comes across a copy of old 80s computer game CURS>R in Isaac's collection, she decides to play the game for a chance at possibly winning unclaimed prize money related to the game. However when Kayla plays the game, CURS>R's choices have real world consequences and in order to survive Kayla will have to choose or die.

Choose or Die began life under the title Curser (spelled CURS>R) back in 2019. When it was first announced, the project was envisioned as a "short form" series for the ill-fated Quibi streaming service that folded less than a year after its launch with Ridley Scott serving as a producer through his Scott Free label. When Quibi folded so too did this incarnation of the project, but while Ridley Scott dropped out as a producer, UK company Anton relaunched the project as a traditional feature film with director Toby Meakins and writer Simon Allen still involved. The film marks Meakins' first feature debut, as well as the first feature writing credit of Allen who's better known for his TV work such as BBC's The Watch or The Musketeers. Choose or Die has an interesting premise on the surface, but underneath its initial hook this is a bare basics rehash of those post 2002 The Ring "cursed object" movies you've seen only with unintentional hilarity.

When I'd heard about the premise for this film revolving around a cursed 80s text based adventure game, I was reasonably optimistic about the premise as I'd seen the concept done before in the episodic horror game Untold Stories where a play plays a text based adventure game that suddenly turns into a dark reflection of a past wrong they committed. Unfortunately that's where the comparisons end because the movie doesn't have characters who are all that interesting and are given the bare minimum as place holders to go through most of the same beats you've seen in movies like Polaroid, Countdown, Friend Request, and every other horror movie of the past 5 years you probably forgot existed. But Choose or Die stands out a little from those movies as it goes beyond being generic and into unintentional comedy.

The first "choose or die" set piece where Kayla inadvertently causes an unsuspecting waitress to commit suicide by eating glass is somewhat unnerving, but every subsequent set piece beyond the first one amps up the ridiculousness beginning with a sequence where the game creates a giant rat that terrorizes Kayla's mother Thea in their apartment, but we don't actually see this rat as instead the sequence is shown to us with pixelated black and green graphics complete with MIDI music that makes a scene that should be horrifying gut bustlingly funny. And it only gets worse from there as poor Asa Butterfield reaches a low point in his career where he acts out a scene regurgitating unspooled Betamax tape in fast forward. But the absolute cherry on top comes from the very end of the movie where you'll be fully aware this was once intended to be a Quibi series because it sets up continuation in a way that positions it for a genre switch from horror to superhero.... I'm not joking.

Choose or Die on the surface seems like yet another rehash of t

Choose or Die fmovies. All it takes to get millennials' attention is the mere mention of retro-gaming. When that forms the core concept of a horror-thriller, it obviously piqued my interest. The inclusion of Asa Butterfield in a prominent role also raised the stakes a little. But nope, the film is as bad as its poster looks. A B-horror movie that boasts a few outlandish frames thanks to its video-game context, there's not a lot to recommend here. The plot is absurd but that'd have been okay if the film stuck to its wackiness all through, say like Bandersnatch. Here, it shuffles between the real world and the video-game world, at times undermining the consequences that take place in the former. Like, the protagonist's mom is in the hospital nearly dead with an absolute creep for a bystander, and she's more concerned about the "prize money"? Okay then! Also, instead of focusing on the scares and thrills, the film goes the expository route. 👎

Okay, not entirely, but you could do better.

In the tradition of 13 Sins, Truth or Dare, Saw and many more comes the Oregon Trail/Dallas Quest version. An old 80s computer game haunts innocent victims when it's played for scarily easy choices and it's up to Not-Elijah-Wood and his not-so-secret crush to beat the CURS>R.

It's alright, but sadly for every enormously effective scare/gore scene, there's a twice-as-bad, unintentionally hilarious FX or completely off-acting. And the bad scenes usually happen right after or during the effective scenes. Not that this seemingly 2005 release could've been saved.

But, if you have Netflix and liked Saw, 13 Sins, Truth or Dare... you could Choose a lot worse.

***

Final Thoughts: I used to LOOOVE Dallas Quest. I never got a chance to play Oregon Trail, but I heard/saw it was similar.

It's one of those movies that falls into the mediocracy area pretty quickly. The acting is ok (Eddie Marsan is the stand-out as always) but the plot is just tired, old and predictable.

It's not a movie I'd explicitly pay to watch but if it appears on your favorite streaming service(s) give it a watch while you do something else.