Director: Rachel Talalay
Year: 1993
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Still upset over the death of their father, a woman and her son try to piece their lives together find that the deaths of her friends and acquaintances are the result of a serial killer transformed into the computer networks forcing her to turn to a computer expert to stop him before it kills everyone.
Review:
When it tried, there are a couple of rather good things about this. One of the better features here is the fact that the storyline was quite an interesting concept, and it's really handled decently for the most part. The originality of the concept is nice to see at the time, utilizing the unfamiliar technology that would've been just introduced to most at the time while introducing the concept of the killer's reasoning for the rampage which gives this a rather topical touch and is a welcome change from the normal slashers at the time. Seeing the lengths he goes to in order to track down both her and those within her address book both out in the real world or in her house adds a great dimension to the concept of fear in this one, and manages to provide some nice action along the way.
The opening car accident gives this a great action-packed opening which featured something new, a car sliding on its roof through a graveyard from the driver's point of view, the different traps around the house where one gets their skin melted off in a super-heated room or being trapped under a rapidly-closing pool cover all work since several of the kills in here are pretty nice, while the funeral sequence where a crematorium furnace fires a coffin back out and a charred corpse goes flying into the audience of mourners is a rather effective shock moment. The final conflagration is rather decent in its over-the-top hysterics within the big machine compound and ends it rather nicely filled with some nice stalking with the race to get everything prepared to stop him provides a lot to like. These here really work nicely for this one.
This is still a far below-decent film. The biggest flaw is the fact that the film makes absolutely no sense at all since there's nothing here to tell what's going on, how the killer came into its present state of being, or how it even worked in the first place. It's all just really taken for granted and doesn't offer any explanations for anything. There's not even any hesitation whatsoever and no awe as to the killer's newfound abilities, which is what normally happens in this kind of movie to offer an attempt at an explanation, but this just ignores it and doesn't tell what happened to anything. The other big factor is the fact that nothing ever really happens at all, and most of the time resorts to techno-babble that doesn't explain anything at all. There are only a few kills in the film and they're so spread out that it's a long time to get started. It's just an all-around dull and lifeless affair trying to hope something happens, and it really leaves this one quite spread out in terms of its action. Otherwise, this was a boring slasher film with a few decent scenes to put above the dull, but it's still not that impressive.
Overview: **.5/5
A boring slasher film with a few decent scenes to put it above the dull, it's still not that impressive even though the concept is decent enough to make it watchable at best. This is more for fans of those similar types of films that came out at the time who might want to give this a shot, but more serious-minded fans are advised to seek caution.
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