Stay Alive (15)

Fearful of the opposite sex? Used to dark rooms? Chances are you're a computer games fanatic... And while you may have a lifetime of loneliness to be fearful of, bet you thought you were pretty safe from, say, homicidal maniacs. Wrong! Essentially Ring using different hardware, Stay Alive's creepies spring from the eponymous computer game. When the best friend of Hutch O'Neil (Jon Foster) dies after playing it, he and his friends decide the best tribute is to play in his honour. But something's strange... it's freakily-advanced and players start dying exactly as they did in the game.

Verdict:

With a no-name director and Frankie Muniz the biggest star of a Z-list cast, the signs were never great. Yet the obvious Ring parallels only highlight an interesting concept done with the plausibility and terror of Mario World 3. Game over? It never began.

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