YOU DIE (2018 - Italian)

Studio:      Dark Sky Films
Director:    Daniel Lascar, Alessandro Antonaci, Stefano Mandala
Writer:      Daniel Lascar, Alessandro Antonaci, Stefano Mandala
Producer:  Simone Offredo, Francesco Scrufari
Stars:     Carola Cudemo, Simone Valentino, Erica Landolfi, Simone Moretto, Micol Damilano, Alice Piano, Rocco Marazzita, Daniele Marmi

Review Score:

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Summary:

A mysterious cellphone app capable of showing ghosts curses users to die unless they pass the app to someone else every 24 hours.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Eva remains cursed by the You Die app on her cellphone, which allows users to see ghosts, but curses them to die unless they download the app to another person’s phone every 24 hours. To save herself for another day, Eva curses her acquaintance Milo by downloading You Die onto his phone. Milo begins receiving intermittent notifications during which he can see ghosts through his phone’s camera.

After having lunch with her brother Filippo and his psychiatrist wife Claudia, Asia returns home to her roommate Viola. Asia’s friend Leo, who has a crush on Asia, comes over to watch a horror movie with the two girls.

While Leo fixes the TV, Asia and Viola go to a grocery store to get popcorn. Now seeing ghosts in reality without requiring the phone, Milo targets Asia as a random stranger. Milo asks to borrow Asia’s phone under false pretenses and uses the opportunity to download You Die.

Eva seduces a man in order to download the app onto his phone. When the man sees what she is doing, he leaves Eva in the road and drives away angry. Eva’s 24-hour countdown timer expires. Ghosts chase and kill Eva.

Back at home, Asia receives a You Die notification. Leo, Asia, and Viola see ghosts through the phone’s camera, but Leo assumes You Die is an ARG game. Asia unsuccessfully tries deleting the app, which deducts an hour from the countdown. Leo suggests taking the phone to his IT friend Marco the next day.

Asia receives several more You Die alerts. She then starts seeing ghosts in reality, although Viola does not believe her.

Asia purposefully leaves her phone behind when she goes out for the day. Asia experiences a frightening vision of Viola dying. Finding the phone in her possession, Asia returns home to angrily ask Viola why she put it in Asia’s bag. Viola tells Asia that she came back for it, which Asia does not remember.

Asia goes to see Claudia to tell her about the You Die app. Asia has a frightening experience where she sees words scarred on her arm before a ghost attacks her in Claudia’s tub. Claudia seemingly sees Asia choking herself and nothing on Asia’s arm.

Leo takes Asia to see Marco. Marco’s dark web research connects several deaths to police reports of people who claimed to be tormented by the dead. The victims also saw scars on their bodies that they indentified as “links” to the You Die app.

After examining his scar, Milo receives another You Die notification. A ghost frightens Milo into dropping his phone. When the phone’s screen cracks, the timer goes down to one minute. After the timer expires, ghosts attack and kill Milo.

Asia has a video chat with Mike Butler, who wrote a blog about surviving You Die’s curse. Mike confirms that the only way to survive is to pass the curse to someone else every 24 hours. Mike relays the rumor that the app was created by a medium so her clients could see the dead, but it became a psychological portal to another dimension. Mike explains the app’s rules, which specify that you cannot tell new victims how the curse works, and you cannot break or replace your phone. Leo still doesn’t believe the claims that the curse is real.

Asia rushes back to her brother’s house to confront Claudia. Claudia confesses that she too is a victim of the You Die curse. However, Claudia coldly instructs Asia to simply pass the curse as required, and warns she will tell Filippo that Asia is crazy if Asia tries explaining what is happening to her brother.

After another You Die alert and ghost encounter, Asia poses as a hooker to lure a john as a potential victim. Asia ends up having a change of heart and does not pass along the curse.

Despite what she promised Asia, Claudia tells Filippo that his sister is psychotic by repeating what Asia said about You Die.

Leo tracks down Asia to apologize for his earlier behavior. Asia has Leo drop her off at her brother’s house.

Filippo confronts Asia with Claudia’s claim that she needs to be institutionalized. Asia asks Filippo to take her home. Before leaving, Asia hides Claudia’s phone in Filippos’s coat pocket. Claudia has a breakdown when she later finds her phone missing.

When he drops her off, Filippo has Asia promise to commit herself to professional care the next morning. Leo meets Asia to confess his crush on her. Asia and Leo kiss.

Once she is alone, Asia records a video in which she explains the You Die app’s curse while warning that no one should pass it on. Asia says, “if it’s a virus, I will be the cure.” To avoid having to spread the curse, Asia dies by falling out a window. Filippo and Leo find Asia dead on the street.

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Review:

Rumor has it a medium might have created You Die as a means for clients to communicate with the dead. Whatever its origins were, the app became a technological terror not seen since Sadako’s viral videotape.

You Die enables users to see ghosts through a cellphone camera, which sounds enticing until the phone is no longer necessary to encounter waking world phantoms. You Die also comes with a 24-hour countdown. If the timer expires, the app makes good on its name. You can reset the curse’s clock by getting someone else to download You Die. But you have to do so every single day.

That’s the situation facing Asia, a girl-next-door previously preoccupied with wondering whether or not she should let her guy pal out of the friend zone. Now she has ghosts grabbing at her while friends and family initially pass off You Die as an alternate-reality video game, and then as a product of Asia’s paranoia. Not only does no one believe she is haunted, Asia doesn’t know how to handle killing someone else, even though it’s the only way to survive.

I can’t begin to imagine how Apple ever allowed You Die onto iTunes, much less what kind of paranormal programming would be required to produce such an app in the first place. Neither of those head-scratchers even makes the list of Top 100 lacking licks of logic in “You Die” though. Then again, the film operates on the same kind of preposterous premise that’s powered a dozen or more J-horror movies about killer computer electronics, so I suppose one should simply roll with it.

While we’re delineating regional differences, I’ll propose that if “You Die” was an English-language movie, its average acting and inane, underwritten script would float the film fast into a forgettable DTV gutter. But being Italian, “You Die” has an unusual taste that makes its foreign flavor oddly alluring.

Specifically, the movie comes coated in slight sexuality that could be commonplace for European senses, but smells strangely sleazy to American noses. It’s 50/50 if Eva, the first person introduced, is intended to be a hooker. Her black boots and fishnet stockings under denim Daisy Dukes don’t make that implication alone. But the weird way she interacts with Milo, who ends up passing the curse to Asia, as though he could be a client instead of a friend sends a certain signal. If not that, then the way Eva seduces a seemingly random man into public penetration on the hood of a car, which is her distraction strategy for acquiring his cellphone, certainly does.

Later, when Asia contemplates killing a random man of her own, she too poses as a prostitute to lure an unsuspecting john. This comes after taking her sister-in-law’s suggestion of a spontaneous bubble bath to calm down from her latest harrowing haunting.

None of this is off-putting. But casual placement of such situations amusingly plays as being from a different mindset.

That’s about the only distinct detail “You Die” has going for it as far as unique appeal goes. The low-budget look, cardboard characters, and scant story draw much more attention to themselves.

Ghosts dress in off-the-rack clothing and sport theatrical ghoul makeup like Lon Chaney ensuring the back row can see his spooky face clearly. Other than rare static interference when a cellphone camera comes too close, the phantoms stay pretty plain people simply standing still in bright lights. Next to nothing about their imagery appears visually frightening.

Even the You Die notification noise is disappointingly anemic. When you hear “The Purge” siren, you instantly know what the sound signifies. We hear the app’s audio alert countless times. “You Die” has a silver platter opportunity to make a marketable mark in our memory banks yet only comes up with a crackle.

Two separate characters, Marco and Mike, literally do nothing but burp up backstory so Act Three can shift into gear. Marco fulfills the usual IT tech nerd role, complete with clicking and clacking keyboard strokes as he works his way around the dark web collecting exposition for Asia. Mike answers curse-related questions with vague answers that don’t explain anything, not that You Die’s “rules” make sense anyway. How is the curse supposed to spread if one of its instructions is to not tell anyone about passing it to someone else every 24 hours?

“You Die” feels like half of a movie that ends abruptly because no one thought past the broad basics of clichéd horror to plot a path toward originality. It’s a watered-down recycling of “The Ring,” except with less intrigue, no twist, and an unsatisfactory resolution destined to frustrate anyone expecting more meat to an emaciated mystery. “You Die” could have been cool, but never attempts to be anything other than routine.

Review Score: 40

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