On the set, Sophia especially enjoyed the deep camaraderie and real friendships that developed among the cast of gamers. "We kind of became like the Five Musketeers and it was wonderful because we got so comfortable with each other that we could act the way regular kids do with each other, being very physical and riffing off each other's lines," she explains.
Rounding out the main group of gamers is Sophia's brother, the punky Phineus, played by Jimmi Simpson, who was last seen in "Herbie: Fully Loaded." "We knew we wanted Jimmi for Phineus before we even started casting this movie," Bell relates. "We really believe he is a big star just waiting to be discovered."
As with the rest of his cast-mates, Jimmi was already pretty deep into videogames. "My friends and I certainly indulge in an occasional bi-weekly Halo tournament so I had a good inkling of what goes on with gamers," Jimmi comments. "But Phineus is more hardcore that I could ever be. He really defines himself by his video games and I think he truly feels most alive when he's playing and everything else just falls away."
Jimmi had fun wrapping his mind around the wild shifts of reality that take place in STAY ALIVE. "I loved the idea that the game starts to play you," he says. "I think all good horror movies are about something or someone who breaks through the usual rules and in this case it turns out to be Elizabeth Bathory, this ancient, evil force who sees a cutting-edge videogame as the key to her immortality."
Before coming to the set, Jimmi even video-taped himself playing his favorite games to get a better sense of the faces, expressions and physical movements that accompany gaming. "When I went back and watched them, I saw that I made some pretty ridiculous faces but that's what people really do," he notes. "So hopefully it will look pretty real on the screen."
Once the cast was together on the set, they bonded quickly into a typical group of gamer friends. "The great thing was that everybody came to this movie with the same reason in mind: to make a really cool and different kind of horror film," says Bell. "So we all started off with the same excitement and then we spent a lot of time with each other, talking about the characters, walking through the scenes, and that added even more to the bonding experience. Ultimately, we were really lucky that the actors were all so great and became as close as they did, becoming real friends."
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