Choose or Die: Movie Review
Oh wow, hello. When was the last time I wrote a movie review, huh?
I keep thinking about Hailey Piper’s Your Mind Is A Terrible Thing though (review here). When will that be a movie? Cause I really need that film in my life.
Anyway, onwards:
The Movie
Released April 2022, Choose or Die (formerly titled CURS>R) is a British horror movie directed by Toby Meakins and starring Iola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Robert Englund, and Eddie Marsan.
After firing up a lost 1980s survival horror game, a young coder unleashes a hidden curse that tears reality apart, forcing her to make terrifying decisions and face deadly consequences.
— Choose or Die IMDb page
The film opens on a man named Hal who installs a new game called CURS>R and starts to play, immediately finding that the game has an effect on real life. This intro ends on a brutal note, then jumps to the present with college student, Kayla, who is struggling to pay for her studies and rent. Caught between a rock and a financial hard place, Kayla the CURS>R game, along with a promise of a $125,000 prize, which drives her to try and complete the game.
Of course, it’s not as simple as that and Kayla has to decide how far she is willing to go.
The Review
I was expecting a pretty cheesy movie, since this was based on 80s style text-based adventure games, but instead watched a brutal film about how far someone is willing to go when pushed against a wall.
The character Kayla seems prickly and unlikable at first then, as you learn more about her and see what she goes through in the movie, you start to root for her.
Exploring themes of capitalism, greed, and desperation, the ending will leave you breathless and satisfied (okay, that sounds weird) — though maybe a little disturbed.
There is some gore, but it’s used effectively — interspersed with quiet scenes and moments of psychological terror. This is a film I think a lot of horror fans need to see. It’s fun, it’s chilling, it’s poignant. Watch it now!
9/10
x PLM
SPOILER-LINE!
Don’t continue if you haven’t watched the movie!
One thing I noticed (no idea if it was intentional) is that many of the antagonists/barriers Kayla faces come in the form of white men.
As a woman of colour, Kayla works as a cleaner in an ominous skyscraper which is owned (as it is revealed at the end) by the guy who created the game after discovering he could use certain supernatural properties to sacrifice others and gain money and power.
Then there’s the man who is abusing her mother and Hal, the man at the beginning of the movie, who ends up Kayla’s final boss. Hal sacrificed his family’s health and comfort for his own, controlling them and forcing them to live in a household of fear. Even his own wife begs Kayla to finish him.
Kayla’s friend, Isaac, is the exception. He legitimately helps her achieve her goals — even at the cost of his own life.
I thought it was such an elegant metaphor of the struggles a woman of colour might face in a world dominated by privilege and greed.
And as Kayla completes the challenges, faces her fears, she gains the power that these men had over her, her life, her income, her mom. In the end, she finds the man who made the game and he asks her what she’ll do with that power and she replies that she will punish those who deserve it.
Of course, we as viewers want to believe that will be true as the credits roll. But who knows. Power is corrupting after all.
