Nerdly » ‘Choose or Die’ Review (Netflix)

20th Apr2022

‘Choose or Die’ Review (Netflix)

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Iola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Eddie Marsan, Angela Griffin, Robert Englund, Ryan Gage | Written by Simon Allen, Toby Meakins, Matthew James Wilkinson | Directed by Toby Meakins

Choose or Die tells the story of Kayla, a broke student who’s in a dead-end job to support her schooling and her mother, who helps her friend Isaac with his obsession with old computers and old games. And it’s an old game, Curs>r, an obscure 1980s survival computer game that offers gamers a prize of $100,000. A prize that decades later is STILL unclaimed. Something Kayla plans on correcting. However, after a series of unexpectedly terrifying moments while playing the game, she soon realizes she’s no longer playing for the money, but for her own life…

There was a brief period in the 90s where horror movies tried to convince us that the future of horror was digital – from big-budget films like The Lawnmower Man and Ghost in the Machine to more low budget fare like Albert Pyun’s Arcade and the fantastic Brainscan. Horror was coming from inside the computer, invading the real world and our nightmares. And as if the past two decades never happened, Choose or Die resurrects that story point for a British-made horror that tries to hide the fact it’s British.

[SIDE NOTE: I know that there’s a cadre of British filmmakers who make their films for the US market (mainly due to being funded with US money and made specifically for the US) but Choose or Die, formerly known as Curs>r, takes the idea to the extreme!]

Choose or Die is in fact the latest in a VERY long line of films that use video games for the basis of their terrifying tale – Nightmares, the aforementioned Arcade and Brainscan; and even the more recent Stay Alive, all took gaming to the next level, where game over LITERALLY meant game over. It’s become something of a cliche, and Choose or Die doesn’t do much to make itself stand out from the pack. Though kudos to director Toby Meakins for choosing to stage a couple of the film’s sequences in the fashion of an old green-screen (think Amstrad CPC era) video game – one that sees Kayla try to save her mother from an invading giant rat, rendered in pixels on a screen like an old-school side scroller; and a second that sees Kayla and Isaac driving to their destination in top-down Grand Theft Auto style!

But that’s the only real flourish in a film that feels like not only a throwback to video game horror of the past but also the early 2000s Grudge/Ring inspired supernatural horrors that flooded the market once American filmmakers realised there was an audience for it. Which means that everything is too stereotypical and too cliched… Plus, as a Brit I couldn’t help feel like seeing familiar British faces, including soap star Angela Griffin, just took me totally out of the movie. As did the fact that the British cast were all trying to put on American accents and act like the film has never seen the UK, never mind been filmed here, even when you can clearly see the film had (the gamers in the audience may notice PS2 games with UK packaging in Isaac’s home for example).

To be fair, Choose or Die does get interesting once Kayla finds out more about the game and how she has to finish it, but the first part of the film is a slog to get through, with the dour nature of the film and Kayla’s predicament doing nothing to make the film enjoyable. Even the horrific set-pieces that see people killing themselves against their own wills in various grisly ways doesn’t raise the stakes for the film early doors. Thankfully Choose or Die ends on a high note, with a final “Boss Battle” (as the game calls it) ending the film on a high. And, now we know more about Curs>r and what the game can do, I’d even be interested in checking out the obviously set-up sequel.