In this horror movie, a vintage computer game forces players to make gruesome decisions.
“Choose or Die” almost sounds like a marketing slogan for Netflix’s scroll of mediocrities — but no, it’s just another horror movie on the streaming service. As horror movies go, you could choose better.
The source of the horror here is a 1980s computer game with a curse embedded in its coding. The game forces players to make gruesome binary decisions. In a prologue, the first player we see (Eddie Marsan), a collector of Reagan-era knickknacks, must choose whether he wants his son’s tongue or his wife’s ears cut off. If he doesn’t choose — well, you get the idea.
Soon the game falls into the hands of Kayla (Iola Evans), an aspiring programmer who lives in a housing complex with her drug-addicted mother (Angela Griffin), and Kayla’s friend Isaac (Asa Butterfield), who has a vast knowledge of analog hacking techniques and whose dwelling looks to have been decorated by the makers of “Seven.” Robert Englund of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is prominently billed for lending his voice to an answering machine (and the game).
The game is omniscient, so it knows what’s written on a menu next to Kayla’s laptop, and the choices it offers are largely no-win. (Would you prefer that a flesh-hungry rat charge a door or chew through it to get to your mom?) It also has the ability to manifest “Solaris”-like visions, the better to torment Kayla with the memory of her brother’s death. If any creativity went into “Choose or Die,” a by-turns creepy and hacky feature debut from Toby Meakins, it appears to have been directed solely toward nastiness.
Choose or Die
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
