The kiddie horror market continues to baffle me.
Films like this get pounded by the critics as unimaginative, but them often achieve high viewer ratings on IMDb. This movie suffers low ratings in both spheres but is making money. Lots of it.
The genre demands predictability: some kids die, some survive (always including and often just a boy-girl pair), and at the end, the very end we see how the evil has survived to threaten the exiting audience.
I'll tell you why I went to see it, because I like movies where the "movie within" overlaps in some way with the containing movie. In this case, its a video game; same same. Some viewers compare this to "Jumanji," but in that case, the players enter the game, a fantasy world. In this case, the game enters the real world, more in the "Ringu" fashion.
Is it scary? Are any of these? Who cares? What I care about is whether the folding is done coolly, like in "eXistenZ." And whether the characters are as clever as the fold. A couple of these guys were fun, but typically the girls were clones.
I saw this with "I, Madman." Similar values: clever fold, boring presentation.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
