“Choose or die”: another film of curses, this time with a video game as the center of the plot

In the opening scene an adult nerd and video game fan, Hal (Eddie Marsan), receives a copy of a fictional interactive computer game called “CURS>R”. This is a game with text and options from which you have to choose to pass the level. Hal is amused by the find, but soon discovers that the game knows everything that is going on around him and the answers are accompanied by real-world consequences. It is a great prologue to present what is coming, the game is serious.

A few months later, a brilliant college student, Kayla (Iola Evans), works cleaning to pay for her studies. She provides technology to her friend Isaac (Asa Butterfield), a computer expert, who in turn helps her learn to code so that she can acquire enough skills for her classes. When Kayla crosses paths with the old game, she will understand that she has to choose one of the options or die. Is there any way to escape?

Horror cinema, like any other genre, must pass three stages to work: an interesting idea, an attractive development, and a closure that lives up to its promises. Horror has a hard time closing its stories, much more so in the era of franchises, where a success can be transformed into many blockbuster films. Choose or die has an initial charm based on his gaze on the pioneers of video games, their aesthetics, their sounds, their limitations and, now, its nostalgic content.

How many winks and quotes does the script have? Many, of course. How many good scenes does the film have? Several, luckily. Most of them don't make much sense, but they have the necessary tension. And as already mentioned, the premise is good, but the plot does not manage to sustain until the end. The more time the viewer has to think, the fewer answers the film can give. To sustain itself, and as is often the case in the genre, the film draws on personal stories and horrors of the real world. Little by little he is flirting with titles like Nightmare in the Deep of the Night or The Call. A mixture that doesn't progress.

Robert Englund's voice confirms all these connections. Englund acts of himself, to seal the whole connection with the eighties. All that follows after are a series of explanations that turn off the interest of the plot. The more they want to explain to us, the less valuable history has. The last third of the plot is all downhill. The love of video games and the dream of ever achieving the perfect story linked to them keeps us interested towards the end. In the end we all lose.

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