"Reality is cursed" in Netflix's new film about a killer text-based game.

There have been a lot of horror movies lately that use social media and modern apps to deliver their frights. Choose or Die on the other hand opts to go old school. The cursed videogame in Netflix’s new film won’t let the fact that it’s a text-based adventure from the 80s keep it from terrorizing both the protagonists and audiences.

If you like your 80s nostalgia with more than a little horror, or you're just a fan of a good adventure game, then be sure to check out Choose or Die. The horror in this text-based game goes far beyond a limited parser and discovering that a minor choice made hours earlier has left your game in an unwinnable state. So load up this new movie and discover exactly why “you cannot get ye flask.” Excited? We thought so. Here are all the details we know so far about Choose or Die.

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Choose or Die will be available to stream on Netflix beginning April 15, 2022. The distribution rights were picked up by the streamer during the 2021 Cannes virtual market. With a TV-MA rating for “language, violence, self-harm, [and] smoking”, Choose or Die is likely not for younger horror fans.

Choose or Die, originally titled CURS>R, tells the story of a cursed computer game. The game, a text-based adventure called CURS>R, plays on a “Datadeck” tape drive, like the Commodore 64’s Datasette drive. (Games on data cassettes, similar to audio cassettes, were relatively popular in 80s computer gaming.) When launched, the game displays the green letters on a black background that will fill any veteran of the 80s monochrome monitor era with nostalgia (and a bit of eye strain). While the game initially appears to be like any old-school text-based adventure in the vein of Zork or similar, CURS>R is able to change reality itself, with players able to bend and change the world around them through the choices they make in the game. CURS>R’s publishers promised a prize for the first player to beat the game, but despite the game’s age, the prize still hasn’t been collected. These types of prizes for the first player to beat a game were not unheard of, with the publisher of 1984’s Eureka! paying out £25,000 to the first player who completed that game.

CURS>R was never beaten and was mostly forgotten until Kayla, a young woman in desperate need of cash to avoid eviction, stumbles onto the game and learns of the still unclaimed cash prize. Kayla quickly sees the game for the nightmare that it is, and must find a way to protect herself and the people she loves from CURS>R. While Choose or Die’s cursed adventure game premise may invite comparisons to the interactive Black Mirror special Bandersnatch, it remains to be seen what larger points about technology and interactive storytelling Choose or Die will be making with this interesting concept.

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Netflix released a trailer for Choose or Die on March 29, 2022. The trailer explains the premise of Choose or Die, with Kayla’s financial struggles and motivation for trying to win a cash prize for beating an old game clearly established. The company she receives her eviction notice from is called Kismet, which is an interesting bit of theming. We get some hints into CURS>R’s mechanics as Hal tells us that “the more the cursed suffer the more the curser benefits.''

We see that Kayla’s attempts to turn off the game lead to the game attacking her and forcing her to continue playing, with a small child warning her that she “has to choose… choose or die.” How the game interacts with modern technology is a bit unclear as we see the game take over Kayla’s phone and announce a boss battle.

The trailer is certainly not for the squeamish, as the game’s reality-warping powers are shown when Kayla inadvertently causes a waitress at a diner to eat broken glass, much to the horror of both Kayla and the terrified waitress. There are a few fun references to 80s horror to find in the trailer, including a Nightmare on Elm Street poster.

Choose or Die stars Iola Evans as Kayla. Evans was in Carnival Row and may also be familiar to fans of The CW’s The 100. Iola Evans played Callie Cadogan in the Season 7 episode “Anaconda” which was intended to serve as a backdoor pilot for a prequel series. While that project never came to pass, Iola Evans will be in the upcoming films Phea and The Origin.

Asa Butterfield also stars in Choose or Die, playing Kayla’s friend, or at least acquaintance, Issac. At the age of 10, Butterfield starred in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a bleak tragedy set during the Holocaust. More recently, Butterfield has played Otis Milburn in the British dramedy series Sex Education.

In a fun bit of casting, Robert Englund plays a fictional version of himself in Choose or Die. If you're a fan of 80s nostalgia then be sure to look for the Nightmare on Elm Street actor in the upcoming Season 4 of Stranger Things where Englund will be playing the murderous Victor Creel.

Eddie Marsan also stars playing Hal, seemingly another victim of the cursed game. Marsan is known for his acting in series like Ray Donovan, where he played Terry, and movies like The Contractor, in which he played Virgil. Marsan also plays Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes movie franchise starring Robert Downey Jr.

Liam Howlett, of the band The Prodigy, composed the music. Choose or Die is directed by Toby Meakins and written by Simon Allen. This is far from Meakins and Allen’s first project together. The two met in college and have been collaborating ever since, working together on horror shorts including The Magic Mile, Breathe, and Floor 9.5.

Lauren Krystaf is a Resource Writer for Collider. She holds a BA in Anthropology and an MS in Library and Information Science. When not busy with her kids, cats, and fish, she enjoys gardening, reading, and of course overthinking movies and TV shows.

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