Netflix’s ‘Choose Or Die’ Is Not Worth Your Time

Netflix has a brand new original horror movie out this weekend, starring one of its prominent young actors. Choose or Die stars Asa Butterfield from Sex Education, the rather fantastic comedy series. But Butterfield has been led astray here, and Choose or Die is not worth even the 84 minutes it demands from you. I could not even be bothered to finish the movie myself, and that is not something that ever happens to me. Especially not with a movie this short.

Choose or Die is about a cursed retro video game that can manifest horrible things in the real world. It’s sort of a horror play on Jumanji but with video games and way worse. The initial five minute intro is incredibly bad and the rest of the movie plays out similarly, but with the added bonus of Butterfield being around. Still, even he can’t save it.

It’s not that Netflix never has good original horror films. I quite loved The Ritual, as one that has stuck with me. They also do horror series very well, both Hauntings, Midnight Mass, the now-cancelled Archive 81. But they have done some truly bad horror movies as well. Open House was previously one of the worst mainstream horror movies I’d ever seen, but now Choose or Die is up there as well, probably only unable to be counted because I didn’t finish it. But I didn’t need to.

Choose or Die is not reviewing well among fans or critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a dismal 23% from critics, and a somewhat shocking 34% audience score, as those usually skew quite a bit higher. On IMDB it has a 4.9/10, quite low for that site, and on par with many other bad horror movies I’ve seen reviewed there.

Netflix has a lot of great horror movies! Like truly, a ton. Both their originals and some classics. Off the top of my head, here are a whole bunch that you should be watching instead of Choose or Die, just because it’s new and plastered on your home page. Check out:

• It Follows
• Till Death
• The Ring
• Raw
• Creep
• Let Me In
• Gerald’s Game
• The Conjuring
• The Platform
• The Fear Street Trilogy
• The Babysitter
• The Ritual

Any of those will be a far better investment of time than Choose or Die. I’m not sure what exactly Netflix was going for here, but it’s yet another instance of quality control not catching something that shouldn’t have made it out with the Netflix branding. Hopefully you can avoid wasting your time like I did.

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