On more than one occasion, the Netflix movie choose or die uses the idea of a cursed object capable of attracting evil on a large scale as a central point of interest. In addition, it shows it as something that happens to the periphery, in the style of the great urban legends. Much of Simon Allen’s script delves into the question of evil from the inexplicable.
No one quite understands why the game at the heart of the plot is a gateway to the supernatural. Nor is there much interest in explaining it. For much of the footage, the mystery has the weight of a blank spot that doesn’t quite fit anywhere. And in fact, it weighs down the story towards a slightly confused perception of good and evil that is not fully clarified.
At the other extreme, choose or die analyze evil from the possibility of how the inexplicable reacts to technology. An ingenious resource that the argument does not fully explore, or does so irregularly and incompletely. A twist that movies like Ring by Gore Verbinski and The Host by Rob Savage deftly delve. choose or die lacks the audacity to pose the evil from a place newer than the threat. And it turns its main premise — an urban myth transformed into a real threat — into an excuse for a frenetic staging.
The point of view of this Netflix movie could have worked even with a shallow treatment. He did it despite its low plot quality in Unfriended by Levan Gabriadze, in which the technological becomes a credible supernatural threat. But in choose or die it’s not entirely clear what layer the director wants to show about the lurking danger.
Is it a curse destined to be repeated? A fatal and fearsome coincidence that becomes a monstrous event? The film is not interested in going deeper on the subject and one of its lowest points is, precisely, its inability to answer its own questions. choose or die it goes from one side to another, in the midst of the perception that the inexplicable is part of a lurking whole.
It is from a hazy omniscience. The game, which is capable of killing through a kind of creepy question-and-answer sequence, does not obey any parameters. So from its very first scene it makes it clear that creepiness is also a dark center that holds incomplete plot lines. In choose or die it is not clear why the most violent and brutal scenes occur. Neither is the reason that causes this cursed artifact to abide by seemingly random rules and at the most unpredictable times. Nor is it in the interest of the film to tell a more elaborate context.
The fear, the game, an amazing landscape without any substance
From its first scenes, the film makes it clear that its intention is to set the stage for an unfinished mystery. In the kind of prologue about the rules that support his premise, he makes it clear that the video game at the center of the argument is a sentence. Also, a kind of obsolete mechanism to narrate evil from technology that does not have a real impact, visual or narrative. In reality, a good part of the sequence is based on a concept of almost casual terror.
From its first appearance, the game that articulates the story is an enigma that may or may not be solved. choose or die He is not very interested in telling what happens or how the past, the origin of his artifact, is linked to the plot. As an unsuspecting player begins to try to figure out what’s going on, gore erupts around them.
But there is no true narration that sustains what happens. Does the game mechanism create the conditions for horror? Is there a way to stop him? Is it based on the supernatural or something else? The script proceeds awkwardly and ends up leaving most of the questions unanswered. More worrying still: the film does not pay special attention to its internal tension. It seems that the game can change and modify its own parameters for the benefit of the story. And do it every time the movie requires it.
Purposeless and Pointless – Choose or Die, a poor choice of resources
choose or die nor does it make too much effort because the visual section is linked appropriately with a plot that depends – or should – on its visual resources. yes in come playby Jacob Chase, the monstrous that manifests itself technologically is intelligently recreated, choose or die opts for the obvious. A flaw that turns the disturbing into a combination of ineffective clichés. By the time the second installment arrives — and the mysterious game shows all its possibilities — the need for an explanation becomes more evident.
Much more, when the entire script depends on understanding how to defeat its dark mechanism. When Kayla (Iola Evans) decides to play for a prize that could save her from poverty, the game goes from being a cursed object to something more. But that transition into darkness — or danger — is incomprehensible. Much more when it is barely balanced in an increasingly confusing narrative that also ends up being predictable.
For your last scene, choose or die it showed more ambition than skill in its execution. Also, a huge clumsiness in telling a story that could have been more than a mixture of gore with the supernatural. Without purpose and without meaning either, the film ends up being a collection of commonplaces as generic as they are harmless. Perhaps the worst thing that can be said about a horror movie.