MOVIE REVIEW – A retro video game is the “protagonist” of a film that gives people impossible, Sawyer-style choices. While the basic concept is original and somewhat amusing, the execution is unfortunately pretty shoddy.

Netflix’s latest horror film, Choose or Die, begins with a kitchen knife-wielding mother arguing with her teenage son over his father’s 1980s obsession. The reticent father (Eddie Marsan) hides in his man cave, a room full of retro game consoles. He watches as the old computer flashes green until it displays a question: ‘Your tongue or your ear? Choose or die!” What at first appears to be a morbid role-playing game escalates into a terrifying reality: the “choice” materialises into actual mutilation, to be suffered by one’s wife or son.

Retromania – with a perverse twist

The fetishisation of the eighties – its trends and pop culture, especially films and music – is recalibrated to frightening ends in Toby Meakins’ Choose or Die. Unlike Ready Player One, for example, Simon Allen’s rather slapdash script doesn’t completely surrender at the altar of the decade. Of course, the film is littered with overt references to cult horror Nightmare on Elm Street, Gary Newman and industrial music artist Fad Gadget. Liam Howlett of The Prodigy even scored the film’s soundtrack. But Meakins and Allen wanted to use the horrors of the past exclusively in their horror film. This in itself was not a bad idea, but unfortunately, it is overshadowed by a script with kitschy story elements and predictable twists. It’s a bit like the screenwriter Allen got too carried away with the retro world of the eighties and forgot that an enjoyable horror story with believable characters and events in the film should be put together.

Jumanji, dressed in horror

The premise is actually a horror movie version of Jumanji in terms of its basic story. Three months after the opening events of the film, Kayla (Iola Evans) quits her job as a janitor, where she and the others are cleaning an empty office building. She is a recent college dropout. The cleaning job is no match for her skills as a coding genius looking for a job as a programmer while caring for her ailing mother, who is addicted to as-yet-unidentified illegal drugs. The micro-family has recently been traumatised by the drowning of Kayla’s little brother in the local swimming pool. When Kayla’s not at home, they hang out with a fellow programmer and game designer, the shy, lovelorn Isaac (Asa Butterfield).

While browsing through Isaac’s recent thrift store purchases, Kayla discovers an old game called “Curs>R”. This game promises a grand prize of $125,000 to the winner. When she calls the hotline, she’s greeted by the voice of Nightmare on Elm Street star Robert Englund, who is playing himself in a cameo role. Believing that the long-defunct play may still have some money left, Kayla fixes it up a bit and plays along, leading to a confluence of horrific events that put her and everyone around her in danger.

Let’s hope Evans will “choose” better films

Unfortunately, despite a promising basic concept, the 84-minute Choose or Die is a rather silly horror film of wooden simplicity, which actually (along with Jumanji) most resembles Saw. The film’s only strength is the performance of the leading girl, Iola Evans, who hopefully has a long career ahead of her in better films by far. Despite her young age, she plays the protagonist, tortured by horrific events, in a compelling way, and we can almost feel her stress and exhaustion.

Evans’ performance could have been a catalyst, but unfortunately, because of the shoddy script and the less talented other actors, Choose or Die is stuck in the low-end category.

One of the low points is perhaps the film’s human “protagonist” Lance (Ryan Gage), who may work in the building, may have a sexual relationship with Kayla’s mother, and is definitely her dealer and stuck at the level of a caricature-like, not very believable, sleazy sexual predator.

But neither is Kayla’s relationship with Isaac believable – partly because there is zero chemistry between them and the feeble script.

Made on an apparently low budget, Choose or Die is also of highly variable visual quality. It falls short of being a quality horror, but the retro game-related visuals (during one scene, the film transitions into a real eight-bit video game) are sufficiently witty. It’s a shame that there are so few of them.

Choose another horror movie!

The film’s basic idea is witty, with one or two visually original cinematic solutions reminiscent of the 8bit video game era. Still, apart from Iola Evans as the main character, everything else is hugely depressing in this cheap horror film. I don’t know if the makers of Choose or Die are planning a franchise, but then we need sequels of much higher quality.

-BadSector-