Strangely, the silly but most tolerable “Choose or Die” horror was an acquisition rather than a Netflix home original, given how much it looks algorithmically modeled for the infamous formula-obsessed platform. It features Ace Butterfield, an inner star thanks to the success of Sex Education. It is contemporary but baked in the nostalgia of the 80’s, something that also inspires the aesthetics of the aforementioned comedy series, as well as the entire long-running hit Stranger Things. It also focuses on the damn video game, making it a close cousin of the interactive hit streamer Black Mirror Bandersnatch. This is a movie designed to spend your days in a container “if you want”.
He’ll probably do well there, as fans of the above can find almost enough here to play, although they may be a little surprised, like me, at how nasty this quick horror, made with more attention to the blood ratio, is. than any level of creativity. This is part of the cursed technology subgenre, which expanded after the success of the surprisingly spectacular remake of Gore Verbinski on Ringu, later renamed The Ring. This led to similarly crafted Asian horror remakes, such as One Missed Call, Pulse and Shutter, and then to a series of US imitators such as Feardotcom, Unfriended and Stay Alive, a 2006 failure in which a group of teenagers play deadly video game. We are in a similar but slightly more experienced territory here with the discovery of a dusty game from the 80’s called CURS> R (the original title of the film), which forces players to make real life or death decisions.
It was found by 80s-obsessed Isaac (Butterfield), forced by the idea that the $ 125,000 prize money could still lie unclaimed and further seduced by the recorded voice of Freddie Krueger himself, Robert Inglund, at the end of the hotline. His friend and object of affection, Kayla (relative newcomer Yola Evans), is less convinced, but living on the bread line makes her take risks, struggling to cope with the cleaner’s meager salary. And so it began.
What’s vaguely refreshing about this true, rather humorous setting is that Kayla is not the handle that may have been in another more clichéd version of this story, but the one who started the game herself to play. She is as technology-savvy as Isaac and the protagonist of the film. The first encounter with the game sees Kayla playing in an empty diner, forced to watch a flirtatious waitress eat a glass in front of her. This is a nourishingly nasty scene, automatically taking us into the tormented territory we are in, far from what we could have expected (there is a touch of much better Escape Room movies that exist firmly in the world of PG-13 ).
But while the blood is impressively visceral and well-conscious, the rest is a few steps back. This is an exclusively British film, shot in London with local actors (Eddie Marsan appears to hang books, while the soap opera Angela Griffin appears), whose action is strange in an unnamed American city, which makes everyone have fun at times ridiculously crappy. Ay-meh- scented accents. This is a confusing mistake, apparently made for commercial reasons, which adds a layer of amateurism to what is otherwise a solidly directed first film about the British Toby Mickins. It doesn’t take enough advantage of its reality-changing game sequences (Englund’s cameo voice reminds us of how wild Wes Craven created these nightmares a long time ago), but it’s just above the average Netflix genre.
The screenplay, by TV writer Simon Allen, acts mostly as a pedestrian frame for game scenes that fortunately arrive quite often. The specifics of the plot make almost no real sense, even at the moment, but it won’t matter much to the sleeping crowd, which will be too distracted by the nasty noise of it all. Don’t understand how a malicious curse relates to the game code? Who cares, here’s a teenager eating his hand! When choosing between consistency and cruelty, this is an easy victory.
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