Malcolm's in a muddle in the Disposable Horror Movie of the Week—Stay Alive. Frankie Muniz joins other ill-advised young actors in a cheap shock flick about the death of a video-game tester. One by one, the dead kid's idiotic friends decide to follow his example by playing a sick and twisted game, and they suffer the consequences. Viewers who bother to waste their money on this movie will suffer a wasted couple of hours.
Adam R. Holz (Plugged In) says, "Stay Alive is a Frankensteinian mash-up drawing liberally from the story lines of The Ring, Saw and Nightmare on Elm Street with a nod to the game Resident Evil tossed in for good measure. … About the only thing even remotely 'good' that might be said of this movie is that its PG-13 rating restricts it from going as far, violence-wise, as, say, the recent R-rated shock spectacle Hostel."
Bob Rossiter (Christian Spotlight) demonstrates that he is probably not a member of the film's target audience. "Horror movies are so unrealistic to me. The Bible says that one of two things is going to happen. The righteous will be resurrected to eternal life and the wicked to eternal punishment. The idea that an evil person can come back to the land of the living to torture and kill people is bogus."
Mainstream critics are wishing they'd stayed away from Stay Alive.