Movie Review: Choose or Die (2022)

Synopsis: Kayla, a college student who is learning to be a computer coder, decides to play a vintage cassette-based game, Curs>r, in pursuit of a promised $125,000 prize. The game, however, contains an ancient curse that forces the player to choose one of two terrifying choices and face the consequences.

Who's in it? The movie stars Iola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Angela Griffin, Ryan Gage and Robert Englund.

Review: I came across this movie on Netflix Saturday afternoon and, since it looked halfway interesting, at least from the description, my wife and I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, while the premise was intriguing, the movie wasn't as good as we had hoped.

I'll start out by saying I did like how the "game" made its choices a little vague, so it wasn't as obvious what would happen when the player made a choice. For example, when Kayla (Evans) chose to make a waitress clean up broken glass, the unexpected outcome was the waitress eating the glass. I also thought the mystery about the game and how it connected to an earlier user was somewhat intriguing as well.

The main problem with this movie is there is just too much uninteresting filler. The writers made a huge mistake giving the player 24 hours between game levels because it meant most of the movie was about Kayla and her friend, Isaac (Butterfield), having way too much time to find clues and do research. Heck, they were even able to make a 6-hour drive to a warehouse without anything happening to them. This slower pace did make the majority of the movie somewhat dull, in my opinion, and the few moments of gameplay, while somewhat intense, weren't enough to compensate for that.

Also not helping was the almost nonchalant attitude Kayla had when she wasn't playing the game. She still went to work, and she still flirted with Isaac despite witnessing some fairly horrible things that she ultimately was responsible for, including nearly killing her mom. It's almost as though she thought she was just imagining it or something.

Final Opinion: As I said, the movie has a good premise and had potential because of a halfway decent mystery. I just wish the writers would have focused more on the scary parts and a lot less on the non-scary/boring parts. 

My Grade: C-