Netflix is set to premiere its new horror flick Choose or Die this week. Blending pop culture familiarity with narrative swerves, the film trades in 1980s nostalgia - until it doesn’t.
The streaming giant is describing it as ‘a wild horror movie that combines the techno-scares of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s cult classic Pulse with Cronenbergian body horror’. It features the first film score from legendary dance music producer Liam Howlett from The Prodigy.
The film stars Asa Butterfield, Iola Evans, Eddie Marsan and Robert Englund. Formerly titled CURS>R, it is directed by Toby Meakins.
What is Choose or Die about?
Broke college dropout Kayla - played by Iola Evans - decides to play an obscure, 1980s survival computer game in pursuit of its unclaimed $125,000 prize. But the game curses her, and she’s faced with dangerous choices and reality-warping challenges.
After a series of unexpectedly terrifying moments, she realises she’s no longer playing for the money, but for her life - so she teams up with her friend Isaac - played by Asa Butterfield. But the game locks her into an inescapable cycle of mind-bending horror - and stopping is not an option.
Is Choose or Die scary?
Netflix says the film explores the toxicity of living in the past while knowingly breaking the rules of storytelling and structure. According to the streaming service, it also subverts the tropes and rules of horror.
Director Toby Meakins and writer Simon Allen together made successful horror shorts LOT 254, which won the coveted Jury Prize at Molins Film Festival, and BREATHE, which featured a ghost that only appears when people hold their breath. The filmmakers were keen to apply what they learned from working in short form to a feature-length story.
Allen said: “Something often goes missing with the supernatural when it’s presented in a longer narrative. There’s a tendency to explain every single thing, to impose human motivation and agency.
“But I had a supernatural experience when I was 18 and it wasn’t like that at all! It was scary because it defied comprehension and any kind of easy or immediate interpretation.
“The rhythms of it were unrecognisable. It left me with a sense of terror but also wonder.
“That’s how Toby and I have always approached the supernatural in our short films.”
Meakins added: “It’s why the supernatural manifestations in the work of classic ghost story writers like M.R. James are so terrifying – they’re uncanny, they scramble your senses, they don’t organise themselves neatly for your convenience. That’s what we’ve tried to do with the horror in Choose or Die but on a much bigger scale than before.”
Choose or Die release date
The film is set to be released on Netflix on 15 April. Its run time is 1hr 25m.
