Stay Alive – Exclusive Interviews with Samaire Armstrong & Jon Foster

By Staci Layne Wilson

Believe it or not, Stay Alive isn't a horror movie based on a video game. It's one of the few that's not based on such, or a remake, or a sequel.

However, a video game is the theme — and if the filmmakers have their way, there will be a game based on the movie to follow. In the film, the objective is to "stay alive" after a group of friends gets their hands on a Beta version of a supernatural game which is peopled with dead schoolgirls, rotting corpses, and "The Blood Countess" Elizabeth Bathory herself.

"My character has never played a video game," explains actress  Samaire (pronounced Sah-mee-rah) Armstrong. "She is very new to this genre and also to this group of friends. But whether she likes it or not, she has to stick with it to save her life."

Samaire follows her character's lead in real life. When I ask her if she's a gamer, she laughs and says, "Uh, not at all. I say that with all sincerity in the kindest of ways. I hear that there is a video game out there for me, but I haven't found it in the States. It's in Japan. It's a sweet, non-violent game. Because, you know, I like cute things. I don't like boy things."

She's really not a big fan of horror, either. She thinks Stay Alive will breed a lot of nightmares in susceptible viewers like herself. "It's horrific, and it's as if you're sick-feeling, and it doesn't really end.

"You have to have support when you watch it, because at the very beginning of the film this boy is walking through his own house. He walks around the corner and there's like this shadow. He kind of looks at it and doesn't think much about it. We do that all the time. But then you know, the shadow is something.

"So you know when you go home after a film, and it's like you're playing out the scenes in your head and it's like... At least that's what I do when I see a film. It's like I bring it to my real life. Because in your memory, you can't help but not be kind of creeped out in your own existence. I don't know why people like scary movies, I just don't get it."

Samaire's costar, Jon Foster, says he thinks the movie is scary, too — but he likes this sort of thing. "I've seen pretty much every horror movie out there. I'm a huge horror movie buff so I've seen most of them."

The Countess in the movie is based on Elizabeth Bathory, but neither actor had heard of her before. "She is one of the largest serial killers of our time," Samaire explains. "Especially in the time that she was around. She would kill these young girls so that she could bathe in their blood to stay young. Which sounds really creepy."

Shooting the movie in New Orleans was a treat, but being in one of the most haunted cities in the world could be sometimes disconcerting. "I believe in spirits," admits Samaire. "You know, if you have good energy around it definitely comes back. So why not bad energy?" I wondered if having to enact séance scenes for the film gave her pause at any time. "Yeah. Say you have like a hundred people on a production, heavily thinking and having consideration for Elizabeth Bathory. It's, you know, at least for your imagination, hard to avoid thinking that you've tapped into something."

It certainly looks like an interesting premise for a horror movie. "One of the reasons why I signed on to this project," says Jon, "is because Brent Bell and Matt Peterman, the writer and director of the movie, when I sat down with them to talk about it originally they were so adamant about not making a typical teen slasher movie. They wanted to make like a piece of art. Something that really lasts and something that was beautiful to watch but still at the same time had that horror feel to it.

"If anything, I'd put it in the same category as The Ring because everything is played really down... it's quiet but it's still so intense at the same time. You're at the edge of your seat the entire time."

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