Category: Supernatural horror with sci-fi leanings.
Directed by: Toby Meakins
Feels like: Jumanji meets The Ring meets Pixels
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I honestly didn't know what to expect when I saw this come up as an option on my streaming service, except that it was only 84 minutes. A sense of relief came over me that it wasn't no 3.5 hour epic like The Brutalist. There's nothing wrong with Hollywood epics - some of them are my favourite movies - but there's just something about the 90-minute format that is comforting. Like being under a thick blanket on a cold night while you tuck into a bag of snacks.
And horror movies - you should know by now I loves me a good horror movie.
So is Choose Or Die, a 2022 effort directed by Toby Meakins, a good horror movie? Find out after the plot recap!
The plot:
The opening scene sees Laura (Kate Fleetwood) berating her son Gabe (Pete McHale) about an unspecified, but serious incident as there are mentions of police involvement. The two eventually bemoan how the dad of the family, Hal (Eddie Marsan) is uninvolved in family affairs due to his electronic gadget obsession in his "man cave". We then see Hal shut the door and start up a text-based computer game called CURS>R on an old green phosphour CRT screen.
CURS>R is a text-based computer game - very common in the 1980s prior to the introduction of 3D graphics and controllers, where the text describes a scenario and you type to interact and progress the storyline. The text on the screen indicates that Hal has started a challenge that uncannily describes his current scenario. Thinking it's a funny coincidence, he responds by typing and seeing the results manifest before his very eyes, all the while his wife and son are still arguing. The text on screen then asks, "His tongue or her ears?" and while the man is confused by the question, the text CHOOSE OR DIE appears and is reiterated while the man feels the weight of psychological anguish.
Walking out his darkened room to the kitchen where his family were arguing before, he sees his wife holding a knife and something gooey in her other hand, crying "I don't know what happened!" while his son is mumbling as blood trickles out his mouth. The text back on the computer screen then says "A worthy player - Level 1 complete - same time again tomorror for more TERROR" while the green raster graphics show an image of the son with his tongue cut out.
This leads to the opening credits where we see Hal has progressed to Level 3 and the game asks the man to either continue or to make copies of the game. After indicating "Copy complete", the game then states "Your family is safe. For now".
The movie then moves on to three months later where a group of people clean a corporate office building, finishing their shift and we track Kayla (Iola Evans) as she cycles through numerous run-down neighbourhoods on the way to visit her close friend Isaac (Asa Butterfield), an aspiring programmer who also runs a computer repair workshop that doubles as his residence. While rifling through a pile of old computer equipment Isaac has collected, Kayla finds a box of a game called CURS>R that indicates the possibility of a $125'000 prize. Kayla calls the number on the box and is greeted by a voice message from Robert Englund (famous for his portrayal of Freddie Krueger) asking the caller to enter the 4-digit prize code and ending with the words "Reality is cursed!".
Kayla returns home to find an eviction notice on the fridge and her mum Thea (Angela Griffin) strung out on drugs on the couch, still grieving the loss of her son Ricky. After repairing a circuit board in her room, Kayla goes to work and then to a diner where she waits for Isaac. Being hassled by the waitress, Kayla decides to start looking at the game without Isaac who is too immersed in his own coding project at home to remember he should be meeting with Kayla. Using a converter to run the tape on her modern laptop, Kayla loads the game and is prompted by the game to choose coffee or cake - as if the game knows exactly where she is. Kayla looks over at the menu and sees her ONLY options are coffee or cake whereas before, the menu was full of different items - indicating that the game not only knows your environment, but can also affect your reality.
Kayla chooses coffee and the waitress is suddenly standing at her table pouring coffee into a mug, then looks back at the menu to see it has gone back to the full card it was before. Kayla closes her laptop in disbelief and is suddenly transported to a scene where her deceased younger brother Ricky screams "You have to choose, Kayla. Choose or die".
Kayla opens her laptop back up to see the waitress dropping glasses on the floor for them to shatter while staring straight ahead as the game asks Kayla if the waitress should continue dropping glasses or start cleaning up. Kayla chooses "clean up" which causes the waitress to drop to her knees on the ground and then start to chew the pieces of broken glass which Kayla is helpless to stop. The game then displays "A worthy player - Level 1 complete - Same time again tomorrow for more terror!" with raster graphics of a woman bleeding from the mouth.
Kayla wakes up suddenly to hear police talking in her apartment to Thea about the death of the waitress earlier, then walks out her room to join Thea at dining table where we see her still mourning her son to the point that prescription medication is ineffective. The pair also lament the deterioration of the neighbourhood, especially since drugs are freely available thanks to the creepy and manipulative Lance (Ryan Gage) who is also the building superintendent.
At work the next morning, the clock strikes 2:00 and Kayla gets a panicked phone call from Thea stating that rats have made it out of the walls and are starting to attack her. The room Kayla is in then goes dark except for a monitor displaying CURS>R showing Kayla is now at Level 2 of the game. Kayla is guiding Thea over the phone to avoid the massive rat that has somehow manifested inside her apartment, but Thea is such an emotional wreck that she can't undertake quick actions to help herself which culminates with her falling out of the window and on to the ground below. Thankfully, the fall was non-fatal, but the period of convalescence gives Lance another opportunity to taunt Kayla.
Back at Isaac's place, the duo attempt to reverse-engineer the game to see why it affects things in the real world, but all they get are a bunch of weird symbols as well as the opportunity to play Level 3 in which Kayla and Isaac are forced to choose between two doors. The one they choose takes them to an empty swimming pool that forces Kayla to relive the trauma of her brother's drowning. The game then presents both Isaac and Ricky dying on the floor and Kayla has to choose between the two. Kayla chooses to save Isaac, which causes Ricky to suddenly sit up and unsuccessfully attempt to kill Kayla.
Waking up and surviving Level 3 gives the duo more time to investigate the game and their discoveries takes them to an abandoned warehouse. Breaking in, they find the answering machine with Robert Englund's voice and a video tape of a developer (Joe Bolland) explaining that while he doesn't know the ancient origins of the curse or the exact meaning of the symbols, he found a way to encode the symbols using 1980s 8-bit encoding. He also discovered that the more the person cursed suffers, the more the curser benefits. We then see the developer experiment on a test subject on a CCTV screen who has been deprived of food, and the curser/cursee relationship play out where the developer inflicts a wound on himself which heals the more the person on the CCTV bites into his own arm.
The screen suddenly changes and the programmer from before appears to start Level 4 - the test being Rewind or Fast Forward. Kayla chooses Fast Forward which causes Isaac to rapidly vomit an enormous reel of tape leading to internal bleeding and his eventual death. However, Kayla passes Level 4 and is given the co-ordinates to attend the final challenge which lies at remote forest location.
Kayla walks through the forest and stumbles across a very nicely laid-out house complete with manicured gardens and a swimming pool. Walking inside, she finds three people sitting at a table - the family from the opening scene where Hal is physically OK, but Laura's face is scarred and Gabe has pieces of paper over his mouth and eye, indicating that those parts of his face have been mutilated.
Hal explains that he is a collector of antique equipment and picked up the game at a clearance site and that after two levels the suffering of his family stopped after he made copies. Furthermore, because people picked up HIS copies of the game, he got the benefit of the collective suffering of all the other people/victims (hence the lavish house and good clothes). This causes the "Final Boss Battle" to begin and a fight ensues between Hal and Kayla, but the mechanics are reversed in that the damage you inflict on someone else happens back on you - meaning we see this weird battle where people stab themselves or get hit in the head only for the other person to recoil. Kayla realises the mechanics are reversed and uses a stone monument to weigh herself in the swimming pool, leading to the husband lying on the grass while pool water comes out of his nose and mouth.
The husband's screen then shows "Game over", but Kayla's phone indicates that she is the winner.
The movie isn't over yet as we then see Kayla at her kitchen table with a custom keyboard featuring the symbols used in the CURS>R code and initiates a copy of the game with Lance over his mobile phone. Lance gets a invitation from Kayla to play, and Kayla causes Lance to stick his face into a sink full of syringes while a voice-over explains that Kayla now benefits from the suffering that she is inflicting on others - up to and including recovery from injury.
The movie ends with Kayla getting a phone call from Beck, the developer we saw before, stating that she has somehow beaten the game and asking who will suffer next.
Her answer: "Only those who deserve it".
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Not a bad waste of 90 minutes. While the concept of a cursed object that affects reality has been done numerous times before, I don't think this was a bad movie. Certainly not a stinker, especially when we compare it against the (current) yardstick of awful horror movies - Jeepers Creepers: Reborn.
Iola Evans, I thought did a great job as being the glue that holds the film together, particularly when she's in nearly every scene. She played the part of someone who knows she's in mortal danger, but also has the wherewithal to try get out of it.
And as far as production goes, I think the special effects team did pretty well! The glass chewing scene in the diner was TRULY HORRIFYING!!!
Also worthy of note is that the soundtrack for this film was done by Liam Howlett, who you may know from the British techno-punk group The Prodigy.
And Robert Englund's voice is incredibly distinct as well. Him doing the voicemail message was a touch of genius!
But I think the movie fell down in two parts:
One, the scene with Kayla and the family where the following lines are said:
"I want to be the hero like back in the 1980s".
"Aren't guys like me allowed to be the fucking hero anymore?"
"Fuck the 80s!"
This may have been an awkward attempt at self-referential humour, or a dig at those who love 80s nostalgia, but I thought this dialogue was too preachy to the point of detriment.
And second, there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason behind the challenges presented to the player/s, save for a couple of brief moments.
In the end - OK, but not great. The excellent production and acting (especially from Iola Davis) stops it from being Lousy.
STAR RATING: 3/5
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