Choose or Die (2022)
Directed by Toby Meakins
In pursuit of an unclaimed $125,000 prize, a broke college dropout decides to play an obscure, 1980s survival computer game. But the game curses her, and she’s faced with dangerous choices and reality-warping challenges. After a series of unexpectedly terrifying moments, she realizes she’s no longer playing for the money but for her life.
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What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Direct references to A Nightmare on Elm Street mingle with a concept reminiscent of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch , ghoulish omnipotent Saw isms, the retro fetishism of 8-Bit Christmas and the dumb gamer throwbackiness of Pixels .
Netflix’s Choose or Die draws heavy inspiration from A Nightmare on Elm Street in tone, style, visual references, and even voice-over by Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund.
It's a throwback to 1980s horror, right down to the voice cameo of A Nightmare on Elm Street 's Robert Englund.
We see this early on, as a large poster of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is plastered against a wall in full view.
It sees Eddie Marsan’s collector of 80s memorabilia (there is a poster of A Nightmare on Elm Street on the wall of his man cave, which is amusing because while the cast list does involve the embodiment of the iconic slasher Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund only has a quick but impressionable voiceover role) unpacking and firing up a forgotten CYOA (choose your adventure) game.
You can feel the Cronenbergian inspirations that flow through Meakins’ debut, in the body horror and themes on display, recalling Videodrome and ExistenZ .
Anyone remember The Lawnmower Man (1992) or Videodrome (1983)?
Un’idea che era stata già esplorata da classici come Videodrome di David Cronenberg (insuperato, cupo apologo sul potere del mezzo televisivo) o, nei decenni successivi, dai giapponesi Ring di Hideo Nakata e Kairo di Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Though the storyline might sound a little familiar (the plot feels akin to 2008’s Untraceable and 2016’s Nerve ), writer/director Toby Meakins and writers Simon Allen and Matthew James Wilkinson walk the story down a more supernatural path than other voyeuristic manipulation horrors, which results in a surprisingly original movie that manages to shock, distress and entertain.
The fact that it warps reality makes it easy to think o films like Jumanji or th aforementioned Truth or Dare , whereas the game’s prompts reminded me more of the more realistic films like the horror franchise Saw or even Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost’s techno-thriller Nerve , a tiny bit.
We've had horror movies before about video games and technology affecting reality, such as Stay Alive or Pulse .
Similar to horror films like Stay Alive , Truth or Dare , and Would You Rather , this film takes on a game gone wrong to the extreme.
Difetti che potrebbero anche essere perdonabili in presenza di un impianto narrativo solido e votato al puro intrattenimento, sulla scia di quanto visto in progetti analoghi come Stay Alive , Unfriended o Bedevil .
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Though the storyline might sound a little familiar (the plot feels akin to 2008’s Untraceable and 2016’s Nerve ), writer/director Toby Meakins and writers Simon Allen and Matthew James Wilkinson walk the story down a more supernatural path than other voyeuristic manipulation horrors, which results in a surprisingly original movie that manages to shock, distress and entertain.
Also getting the short end of the stick is Ryan Gage as a slum-building super whose villainous sleaze is so generic, he might be cannon fodder in a later “Death Wish” movie, his every utterance an invitation to be stomped by Charles Bronson.
Anyone remember The Lawnmower Man (1992) or Videodrome (1983)?
This is the kind of film that, not too long ago, would’ve been the kind of horror picture that could be released in theaters and earned quite a bit of money, like Jeff Wadlow’s Truth or Dare , which this film reminded me of at times.
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“Choose or Die” might encourage you to think back to 1983, when “WarGames” ended with a salutary observation about Pentagon nuclear war simulations—“the only winning move is not to play.”
Tom Hanks even encountered one in the 1988 family film, “Big.”