Choose One Of These Two Articles About The Same Movie — Or Die

If you know a lot about video games and game history, it can be painful to watch any movie that makes up some kind of retro technology, because they will inevitably be written and directed by people who get a ton of things wrong. So it goes yet again with Choose Or Die, the horror flick coming to Netflix ’round the ides of April.

Our protagonist, played by Iola Evans, lives in a decrepit building in a seedy part of town. She lost her job and is about to be evicted if she can’t come up with some cash. She thinks she sees a way out of her troubles when she finds CURS>R, a text-based computer game from the 80s that offered a cash prize to whoever could complete it — but nobody ever claimed the prize. “It could still be up for grabs,” she theorizes. Uh, no. Typically, if a game was that old and nobody claimed the prize of a contest in it, that prize was taken home by the boss or made into a tax writeoff…and also, it’s more likely the company no longer exists, or if it does, anyone who remembers the contest no longer works there. The plan isn’t sound, even if the game wasn’t evil with demonic reality-warping powers.

There are horror thrills to be found in the cumbersome mechanics of a text game. Say, for example, Evans’s character witnesses yet another victim of her game and types in, “SAVE HER!!” The game spits back, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to SAVE something.” Evans types “HELP HER” and gets “I don’t know how to HELP something.” She frantically tries to come up with something the text parser will accept as a word while the victim dies. I doubt this is going to be a thing, though.

Instead, the game interprets everything she types in twisted ways. While she’s at a cafe, the custodian suddenly breaks a glass. The player is given two options: “Should she break more, or clean up?” “CLEAN UP,” she types, and so the custodian gets rid of the glass — BY EATING IT! THAT’S what you meant, right, lady? HAR HAR! The quick cutaways imply many of her choices will have gory outcomes, like the unfortunate guy who’s forced to shove his face into a kitchen sink full of sharp objects.

Like most horror movies that use a video game as their plot, Choose Or Die looks equal parts scary and silly — though for video game fans, it’ll probably lean more toward the “silly” side. It premieres on Netflix April 15.