“Stay Alive”Hollywood PicturesDirected by William Brent BellWritten by Bell and Matthew PetermanStarring: Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush and Jimmi SimpsonRated PG-13/85 minutesOpened on March 24, 2006One-and-a-half out of four stars

The title “Stay Alive” has nothing to do with John Travolta, the Bee Gees or any sort of strutting down boulevards. It has more to do with the title of a survival horror video game that kills you in reality in the same way your avatar dies in the game world.

In other words, if while playing the game a ghostly woman in a blood red dress skewers you with a pair of gothic gardening shears, expect to find those same shears hurtling toward your neck at the office the next day.

But mostly, “Stay Alive” is the mantra you must keep in mind while sitting through this excruciatingly lame and deadly dull horror movie.

“Just stay alive?it’ll be over soon?just stay alive?”

If the movie had been rated R, at least we would have been treated to some juicy gore. Instead, the filmmakers approach their story not with respect to blood-lusting gamers, but with dollar signs in their eyes.

The PG-13 rating might buy “Stay Alive” a bigger audience-but for what? The kill-by-numbers story? The cardboard cast?

The line-up of alternatively pretty actors walk, talk and act nothing like gamers but more like a bad movie’s idea of geek-chic. Dorks the world over can’t all be Adam Brody.

These people are supposed to be lifelong gamers, so explain to me why they position their in-game camera at angles that have their avatars running toward the camera instead of away from it? Every gamer who knows Dante from Kratos will put the camera over their avatar’s shoulder so he or she doesn’t run smack into a slobbering demon.

Of course, sometimes the game camera is beyond our control. But that’s poor game design.

Just like “Stay Alive” is poor filmmaking.