Choose Or Die Beats Stranger Things To Its Robert Englund Casting Trick
Choose or Die includes a clever Robert Englund cameo before the release of Stranger Things season 4, which will use Englund in a villainous role.
Warning: contains SPOILERS for Choose or Die.
Netflix's video-game horror Choose or Die provides a Robert Englund voice cameo, beating Stranger Things on its casting trick. Choose or Die is director Toby Meakins' feature-length debut and stars Iola Evans in her first movie role as the final-girl lead Kayla. Centered around a text-based retro '80s computer game called CURS>R, Choose or Die pays homage to the era's horror genre in many ways. Robert Englund serves as one such homage, as he was made famous for his role as the legendary dream-haunting killer spirit Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street. In Stranger Things, Englund will play the criminal psychiatric hospital inmate with a murderous past, Victor Creel.
CURS>R is a survival horror game in which players are forced to make choices that are deadly for the people around them. Helping Kayla is her love interest, the computer-programming friend Isaac who is played by one of Choose or Die's more well-known actors, Asa Butterfield. Kayla discovers CURS>R in a pile of clearance items at Isaac's apartment and calls a number on its packaging for players to win a $125,000 cash prize. The number prompts a Robert Englund voice message, congratulating the player for earning the cash prize and asking for a four-digit pin. While Kayla is unaware of his significance, Isaac excitedly reacts to Robert Englund's cameo in Choose or Die through a Freddy Krueger impression. Choose or Die plays the same voice message later when Kayla and Isaac find themselves at the location where CURS>R was programmed.
Choose or Die releases an Englund cameo before Stranger Things, thereby beating the show in that regard. However, Robert Englund's Choose or Die voice cameo significance also beats Stranger Things by utilizing his '80s legendary status more directly. While his villainous Victor Creel role connects to a Stranger Things season 4 location and will serve a more important part in the story, Stranger Things will likely be less effective with referencing his horror significance. Meanwhile, his Choose or Die role uses him as a reference with a more thematic connection that creates its own plot element. CURS>R's ancient curse in its programming invades its players' lives and kills the people around them, therefore giving it similarities to Freddy Krueger, who kills his victims by invading their dreams. Choosing to have Englund play a fictionalized version of himself strengthens the connection even further.
Englund approached Stranger Things' creators and asked them to give him a part in season 4. Casting him in the show, then, is more deliberate than it may seem. However, it would be hard to fault someone for thinking that his '80s iconography alone put him on the show, as Stranger Things' use of 1980s actors can sometimes seem more like a nostalgia tactic than anything else. That said, Englund's Choose or Die cameo is unapologetically nostalgia-bait, yet by being upfront about this, the cameo in this case becomes more effective. Because Choose or Die used its Englund cameo purposefully for nostalgia, it can get away with this.
Still, while Englund being in Stranger Things holds some '80s referential significance, his character will be more purposeful to the story than his role in Choose or Die. Therefore, Stranger Things season 4 will be utilizing him more as an actor than an icon. Being Freddy Krueger cemented Englund as a horror movie legend that Choose or Die effectively references, but to see him in a role that goes beyond the nightmare killer will be refreshing to see.