That’s maybe a lot of thematic red meat to hoist upon this slight and somewhat forgettable lo-fi horror flick from first-time feature director Toby Meakins, which stars a totally likeable Iola Evans and Asa Butterfield as Zoomer computer nerds Kayla and Isaac, your typical loner misfit-types who one day stumble upon a dusty old cartridge for a game called Curser-and no, neither can I imagine why they didn’t call this movie by the much more fun title of Curser instead. (And speaking as one of those checked-out bozos, I resemble that remark.) The movie posits, in its compact way, that maybe a lot of our current-day problems can be traced straight to the checked-out and silently seething bozos who’ve been briefly handed the wheel and said you know what, no thanks. Centering on a retro video game that’s like what would have happened had Anton LaVey been the programmer behind The Oregon Trail, Choose or Die turns the arrested development of the latchkey kids into a viral plague, a Ring-esque curse birthed from the bored nostalgia of the middle-aged-we’re all dying of dysentery now, baby. The next time you see a member of Gen X complaining about being the forgotten generation sandwiched in between the much-hyped Boomers and Millennials, I recommend you make them watch Choose or Die, the new horror film and maybe-wannabe-franchise (a la Fear Street and the Escape Room movies) hitting Netflix this week-that should shut them up quickly.

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