No real losers with this week’s five films. We’ll open with “Send Help” and “Do Not Enter” from this year. We’ll pop back for a couple of 2023 films that we missed with “Malibu Horror Story” and “Baby Blue.” Lately, we’ll look at the sorta-classic “Lawnmower Man” from 1992 and see how it holds up.
All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #56, for May 2026, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com
Mainstream Films:
2026 Send Help
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Written by: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift
Stars: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, and Dennis Haysbert
Run Time: 113 min
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
When an employee and the company president are stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash, the boss has to rely on his underling to survive. But things get more complicated and interesting as time goes on. It’s really a good mix of drama, thrills, dark comedy, and horror. It was really good, and there was more to it than we expected.
Spoilery Synopsis
Linda goes to the office and sits in her stereotypical cubicle. Her boss, Donovan, takes her detailed report and takes credit for the whole thing. Linda’s not very popular in the office, maybe a little weird.
Linda thinks she’s next in line for VP when Bradley takes over for his father soon. As she explains things to her pet parrot, we see she has lots of survivor skill books on her shelf; and she’s a big fan of the TV show, “Survivor.”
The next day, Bradley and Donovan get promoted, and Linda gets her lunch on Bradley, who decides to fire her. Donovan gets the job Linda was expecting. She goes in to talk to Bradley about it, and he explains how she’s not ready for a VP yet; he needs more of a “People Person,” or someone who golfs. He’s not super-mean about it, and invites her to a meeting in another country that’s coming up. Linda meets Zuri, Preston’s fiancee. She goes out to the car to cry.
The group boards the private jet and talks about golf, while Linda continues working on her reports. They watch Linda’s audition for “Survivor” and laugh about that. Suddenly, the plane lurches, and everyone straps in.
Then it does a lot more than lurch as the whole plane comes apart. There’s a brutal struggle to see who’s going to be thrown out the hole, and then the plane crashes in the ocean.
Linda wakes up on the beach of a small island. She then finds Bradley passed out there as well. While he’s still unconscious, she uses her “Survivor” skills to make shelter and catch water. Bradley wakes up a day and a half later.
Linda makes fire, collects food and water, and sets up a camp, but he’s not appreciative. He’s her boss after all. She gets fed up with his crap and leaves him by himself, with no food or water. By the next day, he’s screaming for her help.
Linda eventually comes back, and now she wants to hunt a boar. That doesn’t go as well as she expected, but she does kill the boar. It’s a bloody mess. They have pig for dinner.
Linda spots a boat and runs to wave at it, but then stops. “Not yet.” Yes, she likes it here. Bradley whines about being here for two weeks, but Linda’s not whining, “It’s not that bad.”
Bradley still thinks he’s the boss, and he can do all the things she can. He can’t. He’s soon down to eating bugs. Linda’s got all kinds of food, and she doesn’t hide the fact. He ends up apologizing for everything. The power dynamic has clearly shifted. They make a sorta-ceasefire.
She leads him way up onto the mountain, but he can barely walk. She shows him a part of the island that’s totally covered in vines and that he should never go over there.
That night, they get drunk, and Linda talks about how her husband died. There’s a huge storm, and they end up hiding in a cave. Their camp is washed away, so they rebuild a new one together.
Bradley makes dinner for them, and Linda falls over; he drugged her with poison berries. He’s secretly built a raft and stolen some of her supplies. The raft quickly falls apart in the waves. Somehow, Linda rescues Bradley, while puking on him repeatedly.
Linda sets down some new rules. She drugs him right back with a poisonous octopus. Then she pulls out a knife and makes him a eunuch. No, not really, but she could have.
A boat pulls up, Zuri, Bradley’s fiancee, is on board. She’s continued searching even after everyone else has stopped. It’s just her and a boat captain, so Linda shows them a “short cut” over the mountain. Zuri falls, but we don’t see exactly what happens to the two newcomers. Linda returns to their camp alone.
That night, Zuri washes up on shore, still alive, and Linda freaks out. Zuri’s not real, just a nightmare. In the morning, Bradley finds Zuri buried on the beach, her huge diamond ring still showing.
When confronted, Linda says she slipped; it was an accident. He’s not buying that and chases her into the jungle with the stolen knife. They fight, and it’s not a play fight; there’s lots of biting and hair-pulling. He pokes her in the eye, and she swallows the engagement ring.
Bradley runs to the part of the island where Linda told him to never go. Turns out, there’s a huge house over there. Linda’s there, and she explains how she already got rid of all the knives except for hers. She’s watching him on the security cameras. She admits how she’s been coming to the house for quite some time. We get a flashback to what happened with Zuri - the boat captain was about to haul her up, but Linda gave him a shove.
Bradley begs for his life when she comes in with a shotgun. “I’ve changed!” he begs. He promises to live here on the island with her forever. He’s lying, of course, and they fight some more. Linda plays golf with Bradley’s head.
We cut to Linda, now being interviewed about her ordeal in the plane crash a year ago. They’re making a movie about her ordeal, and she’s famous now.
Brian’s Commentary
A CEO of a major corporation’s airplane crashes in the ocean within sight of an island, and there wasn’t any effort to search? They couldn’t have been that far off course.
For a long time, it looked like they would be rescued, Bradley would recognize Linda’s competence, and give her the promotion. That’s not the way it went at all. It eventually went “full Misery.”
Kevin’s Commentary
This reminded me a bit of “Castaway” meets “Misery.” Trivia also mentions similarities to “Triangle of Sadness,” which I have not seen.
It was well done as it builds, and we get to see how far Linda would go.
There was much more to it than I expected, and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It was great.
2026 Do Not Enter
Director: Marc Klasfeld
Writers: Dikega Hadnot, Spencer Mandel, David Morell
Stars: Adeline Rudolph, Nicholas Hamilton, Jake Manley
Runtime: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Trailer (YouTube):
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
As you might guess, they do enter. A group of urban explorer online fame wanna-bes break into a huge abandoned hotel seeking views and hidden treasure. They run into a competing group and they all run into supernatural troubles. It’s not stupendous, but it’s pretty good and entertaining.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a woman crawling slowly down a hallway and then credits roll. We see old newspaper clippings of gangsters, hotels, and murders.
We cut to Diane, Rick, Cora, JD, and Vern as they do their video show about… subways? No, they’re just disguised as subway workers to sneak equipment aboard the train which allows them to jump off and break into a place to admire graffiti. JD steals a piece of the wall, which enrages Rick, who fires JD for “going against our code.” We then see the video and learn that they’re all “urban explorers.”
Only 82 people watch their video. What can they do to boost views? They want to explore the Paragon next. That’s where gangster Meyer Lansky stashed his millions, and anyone who has ever gone looking for it has gone missing. They notice that JD has started his own channel, and he’s got way more views than they do.
Ballenger, with VICE News, comes to the motel to accompany them to the abandoned hotel. Cora vouches for the guy, but he looks more gangster than journalist. They all soon arrive at the Paragon, and there’s a big “Do Not Enter” on the old place. The only way in is by crawling through the sewers. There are trillions of rats, all running past them (away from something?).
Diane gets separated from the others and runs into something creepy. Cora and Ballenger talk about the group so we know what everyone’s job is. Vern, the photographer, finds weird bloody claw marks on the walls. Rick steps into a bear trap, and it’s pretty nasty. Still, he doesn’t want to leave without Diane, who they still haven’t found.
The group comes to a tree, and hanging from the branches are cell phones, cameras, and other things that clearly aren’t old-timey. Rick spots Diane’s phone there, and now they know something happened to her. Rick decides that they don’t have time to call the police.
JD’s gang shows up, with guns, and takes the group hostage. Tod’s the leader, and he’s more extreme than even JD expects. Ballenger admits that he’s not a reporter, he’s here to look for his wife, who went missing here a few months ago. Tod throws Rick over the stairway, and the fall looks bottomless. Rick, however, had the plans to the motel, so they have to go find him.
They run into Beth, the photographer who was with Amanda, Ballenger’s wife. “He’s coming. We’re all gonna die,” she whispers. JD is killed in the dark and something attacks the group, who start shooting. Beth is accidentally shot.
Meanwhile, Diane, who is not dead, wakes up in a room full of candles and a big pentagram. Cora finds Rick, who isn’t dead either, but knows something is coming for them. The skinny white creature comes after them, and he’s really strong. Cora runs to an elevator, which has power apparently and escapes to a security room full of monitors. She sees the room Diane is in on one of them.
Cora finds videotapes and Diane finds a book, and between the two, we get some idea of the Satanic stuff that’s been happening here. Tod and Mack find the manager’s office with some bodies and a huge pile of cash, but they don’t live long afterward.
Frank drops an elevator car on the white creature, so it must all be over, right? Frank finds Amanda’s phone, and not long after, her corpse, with heart removed.
Frank, Cora, and Vern get together in the security room and decide to find Diane. They see her on the monitor and head that direction. Then they see the creature on the screen, totally not dead.
Diane, in the meantime, has put on a wedding dress to become the bride of the creature. She smacks him in the head and runs away, where Frank tackles him; they both fall a dozen stories. Frank dies, and the creature is impaled on the “phone tree.”
Diane then finds Rick, who for some reason still isn’t dead yet. We get headlines that Lansky’s millions were found. Their video has hundreds of millions of views. Rick surprises everyone by showing them a bagful of money; he’s given up “the code.”
Brian’s Commentary
The hotel is full of sculptures, ornaments, and looks intact inside after being closed for decades (on the NJ shoreline as well). In all those years, no developer wanted that real estate? The creature is well done, but nothing outstanding. The sets are really good, although it’s more like a mall than a hotel.
The acting was fine. It had a few surprises. Nothing outstanding, but I was entertained.
Kevin’s Commentary
At first I was thinking it was a “Hills Have Eyes” situation set in an abandoned hotel, but it was quickly clear that wasn’t correct.
A fundamental flaw, it’s a huge building of prime shoreline real estate, full of salvageable decor, fixtures, and art. It’s a stretch to think that it’s just been sitting there for decades. Plus it seems to be fairly well known that there’s possibly hundreds of millions of dollars hidden in there somewhere. Supposedly everyone who goes in there is never heard from again, or something like that, but that wouldn’t hold up in the real world - action would be taken. But I suppose the dark forces were keeping things the way they were. I had a hard time buying into it.
All things considered though, the cast is good, all the technical aspects are good, the suspense was good. I’d call it a win overall.
2023 Malibu Horror Story
Director: Scott Slone
Writer: Scott Slone
Stars: Dylan Sprayberry, Robert Bailey Jr., Valentina de Angelis, Rebecca Forsythe, and Tommy Cramer
Runtime: 85 minutes
Trailer (YouTube):
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A quartet of paranormal investigating filmmakers look into the footage and clues regarding a quartet of guys who vanished without explanation. They do indeed find out what happened to the four guys. It’s sort of found footage within a movie and well put together. The build, tension, and effects are all good. We both thought it was all right, Kevin more so than Brian.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a bunch of people camping in a cave and making a documentary about ghosts. They have a “ghost communication” device. Ashley lights a candle and starts talking to spirits. Something happens, and the camera sorta-kinda sees something. Josh, Matt, Ashley, and Jess celebrate. Jess shows Josh the footage they’ve already got which doubles as some exposition for us. Four local teenagers went missing in these same caves. Josh found video footage from the teens’ misadventure. Meta-credits roll.
Jake, Carlos, Tyler, and Carter got into a van in 2012 and were never seen again. We get news footage and interviews with their families from ten years ago. Eventually, the police gave up until the van and a video camera were found in the hills. We watch some of their video as the teens party. People were not pleased with the drunken, drugged-up teens and everyone stopped caring that they had never been found.
We’re told that the area where the boys went missing was Indian territory, so there could be all kinds of weirdness there. They did, in fact, find some burial plots. Then they found a cave and went right inside, completely unequipped to do so. They all talk about portals to “other worlds” like the ones in this cave. We then hear about how Jake’s great-grandfather murdered a bunch of Indians that wouldn’t leave his land– he buried them in one of the caves.
Carlos sneaks some of the muffins out of Jake’s bag and unknowingly eats a triple-dose of shrooms. Carlos starts seeing weird things, probably hallucinating. Jakes explains that his grandparents went missing, and they just found the skulls. Could the whole family be cursed? They follow Carlos into a cave, and that’s where the footage stops.
Ashley, Josh, and their group explains a little more about apparitions that appeared in the found footage. Their group is now camped out in the same cave. Jess manages to uncorrupt some additional old footage, and we see what was living in the cave. Carlos was possessed by an Indian demon, a skinwalker. The thing grabs Carter and drags him back into the caves while the others follow. It goes badly for the others, too.
Ashley warns that it’ll get really bad if it possesses one of them, and they did invite it in with the candle ritual earlier. They all start packing up, but it’s too late. All their ghost-hunting equipment starts signaling, and it gets weird inside the cave. Ashley is dragged off by something invisible. Matt goes off looking for her and disappears as well.
Matt gets possessed and starts crawling after Josh as Ashley and Jess search the caves. There’s a lot of wandering around in the dark. The two girls then look for an exit after narrowly avoiding the creature. None of them make it out alive but the cameras record everything…
Brian’s Commentary
About half the film is the documentary explaining what happened with Jake’s group, and the rest is about Josh’s group ten years later. The creature is well-made and looks good, but it relies way too much on loud jump scares to make it creepy. The cave is surprisingly clean, with wide hallways and perfectly level floors.
It was OK as a found footage, but not great.
Kevin’s Commentary
Even not being an expert, I can see it’s a generic mishmash of Native American history and lore, but it gets the job done for the story.
It seemed familiar at a lot of points and in a lot of ways, but it’s well put together. It’s a little on the bland side, but I’d call it a win for entertainment.
2023 Baby Blue
Directed by: Adam Mason
Written by: Simon Boyes, Adam Mason
Stars: Aramis Knight, Ally Loannides, Cyrus Arnold
Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A group of young people attempt a true crime documentary about the deceased serial killer Baby Blue who might still be continuing his work from beyond the grave. There were a lot of elements that we’ve seen before, but it’s well put together with a lot of interesting touches that kept it interesting enough to entertain. We both enjoyed it and would recommend it.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on Laura, in an interrogation room, being questioned for murder. “He made me do it.” Who? “Blue!” She’s possessed by Baby Blue and starts singing there in the interrogation room. She then kills herself with a pencil. Credits roll.
Three half-siblings argue about the merit of making bad prank videos. August, Alice, and J.J. all seem to hate what they’re doing, but they put on the gorilla suit and start filming. Their manager, Mo, hates it; it’s not cutting edge. He wants them to do “true crime” instead. He then fires the group. Alice thinks of doing a film about The Redmont, a place with a lot of deaths. She shows them a video of a man named Kelvin being attacked in an elevator by something invisible and then jumping off the roof. It’s a supernatural true crime, and they decide to investigate.
They stop to talk to Joy, the last person to see Kelvin Jones alive. She warns them that they’re all going to die if they keep investigating. Baby Blue will kill them all; he was the first victim of the Redmont. They go to the Redmont and meet the manager, Bud. The power to the apartment has been shut off, so it’s all dark and creepy– and there are rats.
As April, JJ, and Hutch keep the property manager busy in Kelvin’s apartment, August goes up to the roof. JJ finds a bloody cellphone that used to belong to Kelvin, and upstairs, August hears someone singing a song. Everything that happened to Kelvin now happens to August– but he doesn’t die.
The group goes home and opens Kelvin’s phone. It’s got a video from Kelvin on it, saying that this is really Baby Blue’s phone, and it’s cursed. He warns them not to watch the other video on the phone, which cannot be deleted. Can an iPhone video really be cursed? JJ wants to watch it, but the others aren’t so sure. They toss the phone.
Hutch, on the other hand, digs out the phone and makes his own video with August. We don’t see much of the video, but it seems to involve cannibalism. Hutch then throws the phone into the ocean. They wonder if they’re cursed now.
They are.
Baby Blue comes to Hutch that night, and they have a conversation before Hutch cuts his own throat.
In the morning, JJ has done more research, and they learn there have been many more Baby Blue suicides. August, meanwhile, is freaking out because he knows he watched the video. They interview Manos Sloane about one of the deaths. He sold the phone to Kelvin after his son David bought it.
David lives in the dark basement, strapped to a table to keep him from killing himself. David tells his story; Baby Blue got inside his head. “He goes inside you until he’s in control. He slaughtered over 30 people when he was alive. How many more since he died?” They set up remote cameras to watch over David that night when Baby Blue comes to him. August admits he watched the video, and he’s terrified.
They go to see Ellen, a psychic, to help. She touches the cursed phone and immediately gets taken over. She’s a hoot. She suggests returning the cursed phone to its owner, and maybe the spirit will rest then.
They take August to a motel, tie him up, and gag him for his own safety. “We shoulda done that years ago,” JJ quips. JJ and Alice snoop and find out where Baby Blue lived with his mother and sister. Mama Blue and Sadie Blue still live in the old house in the country, and they invite the siblings inside. Mama says her son didn’t do anything wrong, since all his victims were sinners. Mama explains that she buried Blue’s ashes in the backyard, but she also drugged their drinks, which turned out to be breast milk.
Meanwhile, Baby Blue and August have an all-day conversation.
JJ wakes up chained to a bed with a pacifier as Mama sings the Baby Blue song as she milks herself. In the basement, Sadie makes Alice watch the cursed video of Blue’s suicide. Sadie relents and lets Alice go, and she runs right outside to bury the iPhone. Sadie then kills Mama and releases JJ.
Before she can bury the phone, Baby Blue possesses Alice, who hangs herself. Surprisingly, back at the motel, August puts up quite a resistance to Blue. Blue then comes to JJ and taunts him, but JJ never actually watched the video. JJ drops the phone into Blue’s grave. Blue puffs into a cloud of red flame. And suddenly, Alice wakes up.
In the morning, Alice and JJ return to find August in the motel, bloody but alive. The group then finds the suicide tape online, and now everyone can see it. August admits it was him.
Brian’s Commentary
There are lots of weird little visual details that you have to be paying attention to notice, which add some fun depth to this.
Milk is disgusting, no matter what it comes out of.
There are lots of cameras, and the characters are filmmakers, but it’s not a found footage film. Overall, it’s not bad!
Kevin’s Commentary
The IMDB description refers to the gang who are clearly in their 20s as teenagers, but at least they don’t play that up and aren’t shown going to high school.
If you watch closely, you can see that JJ doesn’t believe in stop signs when he drives.
Little details like smoke coming out of the back of Baby Blue’s head when he was having a cigarette was a nice touch too. Plus it’s a movie that will make you want to have a nice glass of milk afterward.
I thought it was really good.
1992 Lawnmower Man
Directed by: Brett Leonard
Written by: Stephen King, Brett Leonard, Gimel Everett
Stars: Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Jenny Wright
Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A simple-minded guy becomes an experimental subject, which greatly increases his intelligence. And psychic abilities. And cyberspace mastery. The story is cool, but the computer graphics were more ambitious than the technology of the time allowed - they are basic by today’s standards. It holds up pretty well for entertainment, heavy on science fiction, but not so much on computer visuals.
Spoilery Synopsis
We are told that by the turn of the millennium, a new technology, VIRTUAL REALITY, will allow people to enter computer generated artificial worlds. It may be a new form of mind control…
At Virtual Space Industries, Larry Angelo talks about his artificially intelligent ape. He’s a great warrior in the battle simulations. We then see the ape inside the VR system, which rolls and tilts as the ape sees a “realistic” world inside. Credits roll.
Later, the ape picks the lock on his cage and escapes– straight to the VR lab, which he activates. The ape shoots a guard with his own, real gun. The security team is sent to track the ape, which they soon do.
Dr. Angelo tries to watch TV, but there’s nothing on but war. Timms his boss calls Smith about the ape, which is only doing what they trained it to.
We cut to a nearby church, where Jobe, the gardner, whistles at birds. The wounded ape approaches him and determines that he’s not a threat. Jobe hides the ape in his shed from the helicopters. Jobe introduces himself as the Lawnmower Man because he can fix things like lawn mowers. Jobe thinks the ape is Cyboman from a comic book. The priest spots them and calls Timms, who brings in the troops. Jobe is very not-smart and doesn’t really know what’s going on.
Despite Angelo’s screams, the soldiers shoot the ape repeatedly, killing it this time. They want to take Jobe in for questioning, but father McKeen says Jobe has the mind of a child. Jobe’s been a ward of the church since he was a kid, and Father McKeen has no problem using the belt on him. After his beating, Jobe gets to work repairing his special new mower, Big Red.
Father McKeen’s brother, Terry, runs the landscaping business that employs Jobe.
Angelo wants to quit, but Timms warns him that might not be a healthy thing to do. He wants to evolve the human mind and believes that VR is the way to do that. The director of the company wants Angelo returned to work.
Angelo, in the meantime, does VR stuff at home. His wife does not approve of his “hobby” and they argue. After, Angelo notices Jobe outside cutting the lawn and thinks he’s probably smarter than a chimp, so why not use him?
Angelo hooks Jobe up to the computer and shows him how to make it work. The game is a little intense for Jobe, but Peter, the boy next door, says he’ll get used to them. Angelo says he has a game that might be able to make Jobe smarter, and Jobe’s willing to try.
Angelo gives Jobe a shot or experimental chemicals, and then the psychedelic game begins. Meanwhile, Angelo is modifying Jobe’s brain by stimulating certain areas.
Fairly quickly, Jobe starts to change. He notices the sexy neighbor lady, and he’s never done that before. He gets smarter and smarter, but he also occasionally has seizures. Jobe realizes that Father McKeen isn’t such a nice guy after all. Soon, Jobe is beating Peter at all the games. Angelo reports everything to Timms, who says he’ll hold off letting the big boss know about what’s going on.
Jobe stands up for himself against the evil priest. He buys some new clothes and gets a haircut, and now the neighbor lady notices him. She wants her lawn mowed now.
Angelo can’t work from home anymore, so he starts taking Jobe to his big lab in the secret base on the mountain. The VR machines there are far more elaborate, and Jobe can’t wait. Angelo turns the juice way up, and soon, Jobe can read minds, like the neighbor lady, Marnie, which leads to sex.
Angelo realizes that Jobe’s smart, but not educated, so he uses VR to teach him pretty much everything in one afternoon. Angelo says no one can learn that quickly, but it’s true. Jobe admits that he can read minds now, and he doesn’t like it. Jobe’s abilities keep growing, even without the treatments.
The company Director wants Timms to switch out the drug for the one that they used on the ape– to make him a warrior. Timms doesn’t tell Angelo, he just switches bottles.
The next day, Jobe has an unexpected seizure, but Angelo doesn’t figure out why. Jobe can now move things with his mind.
Jobe takes his new girlfriend, Marnie, to the VR lab and wires her up. Things get carried away, and she winds up brain damaged. Angelo says Jobe is moving too fast, it’s unnatural. Jobe knows he’s smarter than Angelo now, and he’s not willing to stop the treatments.
Timms and Angelo fly out to see the Director, who spills the beans about the military drugs, which Angelo says is going to lead to unpredictable results. They want Jobe to meet the Director. Meanwhile, back at the lab, Jobe takes all the drugs and upgrades himself.
Jobe pays Father McKeen a visit and sets him on fire using telekinesis. Jake, the town jerk, also gets his due; Jobe uses his mind powers to put the Lawnmower Man in Jake’s head. Peter’s abusive father is next on the list; Big Red the lawnmower eats him.
Angelo returns home from the meeting the next day and finds the neighborhood in a bit of a mess. Angelo’s wife is now completely on Jobe’s side and pretty vacuous; she’s been changed into someone resembling a Stepford Wife. Angelo knows exactly what happened.
Jobe raves that he’s become one with the virtual world and wants to fix the whole planet. He plans to merge with all technology and make all the phones ring as a signal when it happens. Angelo thinks Jobe has had a psychotic break, but there’s nothing he can do.
Jobe mentally calls Terry for a ride to VSL, where an army of security guys wait for him. Jobe unleashes a swarm of digital bees to take care of them. The security chief shoots and kills Terry, which really gets Jobe in a mood.
Angelo shows up at VSL, and he’s got bombs, a gun, and apparently thinks he’s James Bond now. He plants bombs all over the place. Meanwhile, Jobe’s body shrivels as he enters the computer world permanently. Except he didn’t know that Timms and company already cut the computer off from the outside world. Unless he can find a way out, Jobe is going to be trapped in there and die for real when the bombs go off. And he lost his telekinesis over the real world now.
As Angelo and Jobe battle inside the computer, Peter sneaks inside and is at risk of dying from the bombs. Jobe releases Angelo to save Peter, but he’s still trapped inside the mainframe. As the bombs start going off, Jobe works furiously at the combination to escape. He gets out just in time.
Angelo vows to keep working on the VR project. He, Peter, and Peter’s mom leave town just as every phone in the world rings at the same time…
Brian’s Commentary
I assume Angelo’s going to be facing severe legal issues after destroying the whole VSL company.
I remember the effects being pretty good back in 1992, but they’re laughably dated today. I also didn’t remember it being this long, but then we were watching the extended director’s cut, which I probably hadn’t seen before.
It’s been 34 years, and VR still isn’t really a thing. It’s a pretty good story, but it may be the single worst adaptation of a book ever, having nothing in common with the Stephen King story other than the name.
Kevin’s Commentary
It has very little to do with the Stephen King short story by the same name. New Line Cinema obtained the rights to the story, and they had a script ready to go called “Cyber God.” They slapped Stephen King’s name and title on the script and made it happen. Much to Stephen King’s displeasure who sued and ended up with quite a bit of money from it.
It’s also said in the trivia that a team of 7 people spend 8 months and $500,000.00 on 8 minutes of cyberspace effects in the movie. And they don’t hold up well. I thought the movie overall does hold up. It’s dated, but entertaining.
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