Y’all. I am willing to bet my entire existence on this: if we had known in 2006 how huge gaming culture would be, no one would think Stay Alive was garbage. Sure, it over explains gaming to an audience who probably already knows how it works. And sure, some of the plot points are iffy, but Stay Alive is a bop. Here’s why.
Gaming culture as its known today was only in its infancy in the mid 00s. Sure, it had been around for 30-some years with Pong, Mario, Zelda, Street Fighter, and Sonic well known by the general public. But in 2006 we were at the beginning of the social media and YouTube era, meaning such widespread knowledge of a game based on legendary (real life) lore and scares had not happened yet. Today, we have the Five Nights at Freddy’s and Silent Hill PT properties, and to a lesser extent, Phasmophobia and Dead By Daylight. The titular game, Stay Alive, would have no doubt been among those ranks.
Stay Alive is a multi-player, action/adventure shooter where you explore an abandoned, haunted estate, searching to figure out the mystery of Elizabeth Bathory’s Gerouge Plantation and do just as the title explains: stay alive. It’s a lot easier said than done, as a group of friends finds out. The game has dire consequences for losing a life. If it happens in-game, it happens for real.
A few years ago, I was super into Game Theory, where YouTube host MatPat talks about some video games reflecting real-life occurrences, specifically Five Nights at Freddy’s and Petscop. It’s no different here; Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman who was famously accused of torturing and murdering hundreds of girls from the villages around her kingdom. It was purported that she bathed in the blood of innocent girls to keep her youth, not unlike a vampire. Stay Alive uses Bathory’s likeness and story to form realistic lore surrounding the game. It’s all the more cool that the premise of the movie — things in the game happening in real life — tend to mimic Bathory’s crimes, from torture to being locked in her castle tower for the rest of her days.
Even the scenery and monsters in-game are taken from real-life games. Reading through Stay Alive‘s IMDB Trivia page, it lists specific details taken from other games:
- The mansion that appears in the video-game at the beginning of the movie is a carbon copy of the one where the action of SEGA’s 1996 light gun shooter The House of the Dead (1996).
- The old-fashioned camera that Abigail uses in the film is a reference to the popular “Fatal Frame” (known as “Rei Zero” in it’s native Japan, and as “Project Zero” in Europe) series of horror/survival games, upon which the “Stay Alive” concept is partially based.
- The mirror clues are taken straight from the 1995 video game D (1995), including the mirror cracking upon use.
- The code to strip the zombie concubines naked that Swink uses is ‘Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A.’ Which is also the Konami Code, a.k.a. Konami Command and Contra Code. (director’s cut only)
- In the final scene, a blue and a green controller are show right after the game store employee puts the game into the system. These are off brand Sega Dreamcast controllers.
See? This movie is pretty much made for gamers, by gamers.
Not only that, but some of the game mechanics are ones we would find very familiar today. Near the climax of the film, the group travels to the manufacturing building (which happens to be the mansion in the game) and as they’re perusing around looking for clues, someone gets stuck behind a door. One person (playing in-game) drops an item that then shows up in that place in real-life for the other to use. While that certainly doesn’t actually happen, the concept of dropping items or loot for someone else to pick up is a key gaming feature. The group’s first play of the game features something we’re just getting into now: speaking directly to the game to move the story forward. The group is shown a passage from “The Prayer of Elizabeth,” and is only allowed to progress once the entire group recites it out loud.
Stay Alive is definitely a movie of its time, with dated sayings and style and interactions with others that are always a tad bit off. But that’s not to say that it isn’t a good movie. For those interested in gaming, it’s a sort of time capsule both to the past and future. It has the sense of early gamer culture, but also features things we’re only just now using. And Stay Alive ties all of this into a fun concept we’ve seen before, just amped up for a new generation.
Is Stay Alive going to win any Oscars? Probably not. But Stay Alive will do just that, stay alive in our hearts as a reminder of our early days playing with friends. Before streamers, before worldwide televised tournaments. Just a group of friends playing split-screen on the newest console (which, by the way, could also be played on PC). Stay Alive is a true gem.
What did you think of Stay Alive? Tell us about other video games you’d love to see in film in the comments!
