CHOOSE OR DIE (2022)

Studio:     Netflix
Director:    Toby Meakins
Writer:     Simon Allen
Producer:  Matthew James Wilkinson, Sebastien Raybaud, John Zois
Stars:     Iola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Angela Griffin, Ryan Gage, Joe Bolland, Kate Fleetwood, Ioanna Kimbook, Robert Englund, Eddie Marsan

Review Score:

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Summary:

A vintage computer game curses a struggling young woman who must solve the mystery behind the game’s origin before it destroys her life.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While his unloving wife Laura and disobedient son Gabe argue in another room, retro horror fan Hal plays “Curs>r,” a text adventure computer game from 1984. Inexplicably, actions described onscreen begin mimicking and then influencing reality. Threatened that he must choose or die, Hal is forced to pick between his wife’s ears or his son’s tongue. Hal chooses Gabe’s tongue, which causes Laura to uncontrollably cut it out. Hal’s family becomes both confused and horrified as he successfully completes the game’s first level.

Three months later, Kayla acquires a copy of “Curs>r” from her computer programmer friend Isaac, who has an unrequited crush on her. Kayla also struggles to care for her mother Thea, who battles depression since the accidental drowning death of Kayla’s little brother Ricky and abuses drugs bought from Lance, a sleazy dealer who routinely humiliates Kayla.

After working her regular late shift as an office cleaner, Kayla plays the game at a diner at 2am. Reality transforms around Kayla as the game’s curse causes a waitress to chew broken glass. After completing the first level, Kayla suddenly wakes in her bed. She then destroys her analog tape of the game.

Kayla tells Isaac what happened. Although he has trouble believing Kayla’s story, Isaac promises to investigate where the game came from.

While working another late shift, Kayla receives a frantic phone call from her mother. Thea hysterically screams about rats coming out of the walls. A computer monitor in the office building suddenly shows Kayla the game’s second level, which crudely depicts Kayla’s apartment as a maze. Kayla tries to remotely guide her terrified mother to safety, but Thea ultimately jumps out of a window and end up in a hospital. Kayla’s boss fires her when Kayla smashes the office computer in frustration.

Kayla returns to Isaac to tell him what happened. Isaac explains that he couldn’t find any information at all about the game online. Kayla concludes she has to continue playing every day at 2am no matter what.

Reality transforms around Kayla and Isaac when the third level boots itself on Isaac’s computer at 2am. Kayla follows a ghost of her brother Ricky to a vision of the pool where he drowned. Kayla finds Ricky and Isaac both collapsed on the floor. The game tells Kayla to choose one person to save. Kayla chooses Isaac since her brother isn’t real, but the game then forces Kayla to suffocate Ricky with her bare hands.

Isaac hacks into a phone line that was linked to a prize promised by the game in 1984 and finds an address. The address leads Kayla and Isaac to an abandoned warehouse where “Curs>r” was created.

A videotape shows the game’s frazzled creator, Beck, talking about “Curs>r” in preparation for a beta test. Although unable to identify the curse’s origin or translate its exact meaning, Beck unlocked the curse by converting its strange symbols regarding fire, water, blood, fear, and pain into 8-bit equivalents contained in a horror game. The symbols could then alter reality and be used to harm another person. Beck demonstrates that the “cursor” benefits when a cursed person suffers by compelling an unsuspecting test subject to eat his own arm, which in turn heals a self-inflicted wound on Beck’s arm. Beck is disturbingly delighted by his discovery.

The game suddenly starts Level Four. Isaac transforms into a digital entity that vomits videotape until he finally dies.

“Curs>r” tells Kayla she now has to fight the game’s final boss. The game gives Kayla coordinates that lead her to Hal’s house in a forest. Kayla finds Hal with his disfigured wife and son, who are now forced to live as Hal’s obedient hostages. Hal explains how he is a nostalgia collector who randomly found the game in an assortment of vintage items from the 1980s. After completing only two levels, the game promised to leave Hal’s family alone if he made copies, which is how the game made it to Isaac.

Hal becomes upset that he is the villain, not the hero, when he learns the game set him up as the final boss for Kayla to defeat. During their subsequent fight, Kayla and Hal discover that injuries to their bodies actually affect the other person.

Gabe retrieves a gun. Hal commands his son to shoot him in order to injure Kayla. Gabe fires several times, but Laura takes away the weapon and shoots at Kayla to hurt Hal. Hal wrestles the gun away from his angry wife. Hal tries to shoot himself in the head to kill Kayla, but he finds the gun ran out of bullets.

Hal cuts his own throat instead. However, Kayla picks up a stone statue to weigh herself down as she falls into a swimming pool to kill Hal at the same time. Hal ends up drowning through Kayla. Laura rescues Kayla from the pool. Laura and Kayla agree to not tell anyone what really happened.

As her prize for winning the game, Kayla gains access to the curse’s symbols. Kayla reprograms the game code and uses it to make Lance kill himself. Lance’s death helps heal the wounds Kayla suffered in her fight with Hal. Thea also recovers from her fall.

Beck, who now runs a prosperous corporation that controls the buildings where Kayla lives and worked, unexpectedly calls Kayla to acknowledge she beat his game. Aware that she now controls the cursed code, Beck asks her who will suffer next. Kayla responds, “Only people who deserve it.”

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Review:

Netflix produces high quality TV shows pretty regularly. From documentaries like “Tiger King” and “Making a Murderer” to premier dramas such as “Squid Game” and “Ozark,” their “small screen” stuff quite often becomes event entertainment. Even Netflix’s genre content in that format tends to be popular and successful, with “Stranger Things” and any miniseries made by Mike Flanagan being among their TV titles that could be considered “must-see” for horror fans.

Netflix’s original movies on the other hand, are a completely different story. Oh sure, they’ll purposefully produce award-bait projects a couple of times each year so they can puff up their brand with gold trophies. But their feature films, particularly the fright flicks, rarely register any higher than mediocre at best. I’m sure I’m overlooking a standout or two. But for every moderately memorable movie like, I don’t know, maybe “Bird Box” (review here), there must by 200 throwaways thrillers with forgettable formulas involving a haunted house, supernatural entity/curse, zombie outbreak, or technology run amok.

And yet, even though I’ve reached a point of resigned acceptance that the best I’m likely to get from a Netflix horror movie is, “That didn’t suck as much as I thought it would,” I’m somehow still stunned that a disappointment as dull as “Choose or Die” even gets made. Like, is Netflix’s main goal to just amass scores of homogenized filler films like they’re the Borg assimilating digital content? And how come they can’t figure out how to make their features as good as their TV shows?

“Choose or Die” isn’t one of those “bad” films that makes me angry or inspires me to go on a humorous rant. It’s one of those “bad” films whose blandness causes me to question why I’m letting its vampire bite drain even more of my time by writing a review I couldn’t care less about. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be funny. I definitely don’t want to be analytical, either. I just want this to be over with, which is a thought that also dominated my mind while watching the movie.

“Choose or Die’s” premise ticked more than enough boxes to sound right up my alley. A nostalgia nut obsessed with vintage pop culture from the 1980s, a kindred spirit for me if ever there was one, finds a mysterious text adventure computer game from 1984. Playing it unlocks a curse capable of warping reality, and puts the player in a choice-based game whose torturous consequences would make Jigsaw jealous. Eddie Marsan, one of my favorite undervalued character actors, plays the man in this prologue, adding one more boon that had me thinking, “This could turn out halfway decent” before opening credits crawled.

After those credits though, Marsan gets replaced by a mopey lead actress who wears her character’s woe like a second skin. Kayla has a tough life full of common, cursory conundrums. She’s unappreciated as a late night office cleaner. She’s also still mourning her little brother Ricky, whose accidental drowning death she blames herself for. Mom still mourns too, but she numbs her depression with drugs acquired from a scumbag who repeatedly insults Kayla with offers to pay her $20 for sex. On top of everything, Kayla and her mother can’t make ends meet, which is why there’s an eviction notice attached to the door of their rat-infested apartment.

Once you’re done feeling sorry for the protagonist’s poor person problems, you eventually get to move on to her acquiring a copy of the cursed game from her geeky guy pal Isaac. Isaac has a longstanding crush on Kayla, although its only value to her is as a tool to exploit Isaac for favors. “ Choose or Die” is superficial in structure as well as story, so it’s unsurprising that the sloppy script doesn’t even realize that planting a romantic seed and not watering it makes Kayla look like an a-hole for how carelessly she treats her supposed friend.

That’s the major issue with “Choose or Die” as a whole. The movie loads up on unnecessary characters, unnecessary scenes, and unnecessary threads, leading to a disjointed narrative that hasn’t thought through the function of its fiction.

For instance, the drug dealer who comes around a couple of times to be gross and threatening is as unremarkable as antagonists get. You completely forget about him until he shows up one last time in an epilogue of sorts to get his just desserts. He’s more of an annoying nuisance than a true villain whose evil actions are meaningful enough to fully motivate a vicious act of revenge.

Resonance remains a real issue throughout “Choose or Die.” In addition to some murky mythology behind the computerized curse, there’s an ever-present corporation called Kismet that apparently owns the buildings where Kayla both lives and works, and ultimately connects to the curse too, but it isn’t clear why this company’s logo appears on everything. Jarring style choices, such as a sudden segue where a driving montage gets depicted like a level from the video game, make little rational sense. Even including a cameo from Robert Englund playing himself in a voiceover actively works against the idea of immersion. (You mean to tell me “Freddy Krueger” voiced a video game at the peak of his popularity, and that game offered a cash prize for completing it, yet no one, not a single person, knows about the game and no evidence of its existence appears online anywhere at all?)

Here’s how I can simply sum up the exasperating experience of having “Choose or Die” waft in one ear and flee immediately out of the other. I was so bored by the movie that I paused it at the 47-minute mark to check email, Twitter, and browser bookmarks. Within moments, I kid you not, I completely forgot I wasn’t done watching the film. Something like 20 more minutes passed before I thought, “Wasn’t I in the middle of something before this? Oh right, that movie…” It would have been best if “Choose or Die” stayed forgotten, because I’m never going to remember it anyway.

Review Score: 35

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