BRAINSCAN

REVIEWED BY SCARLETT POWELL

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: graphic gore, nudity, language

Rated:

Video games. One of the most rampant crazes of our generation. They are often violent, bloody, and sensual. Concern over the ability of these games to influence human behavior has become prevalent in recent years, ever since the Columbine Killing Spree. Brainscan is a disturbing thriller that raises a lot of questions about violence connected to game-playing, but doesn't provide the answers.

Michael Bower (Edward Furlong) is your semi-typical teenage boy. Living alone with his dad, who is away on business trips most of the time, he spends all of his free hours listening to heavy metal, playing gruesome video games, toying with his high-tech computer, disturbing the principle with the gory fodder of his "horror club" at school, and spying on the girl next door. When his best friend Kyle (James Marsh) calls him about the latest computer game advertisement, Michael isn't all that interested. It's called "Brainscan," and is supposedly the most terrifying and gruesome experience that players will ever encounter. Deciding on a whim to make inquiries about the game, Michael rings up the service center. Several days later, he gets the first disk in the mail. Popping it into his computer drive, he is amazed with how realistic the game was.

The "mission" he was sent on was a random killing, a gruesome, brutal murder in the middle of a night to an innocent neighbor. Michael thought it was all fun and gory games ... until he opens his refrigerator and discovers the man's severed foot. Somehow, under hypnosis, the game became reality. Police, including Detective Hayden (Frank Langella) are swarming over the neighborhood. No one can figure out a motive. Michael destroys the first disk and vows never to play again, but then a second disk arrives in the mail. The monster that dwells inside the computer, calling itself the Trickster (T. Ryder Smith), informs him that the game is not yet complete. If he does not want to lose and be turned over to the authorities for manslaughter, he must keep playing -- kill off the only witness, and cover up the evidence.

Michael is caught in a horrific game from which there is no escape. Hayden is growing suspicious, and his desire for a relationship with Kimberley (Amy Hargreaves) is jeopardized by his secret. Both a mild social commentary and pure slasher from beginning to end, Brainscan was disconcerting in the sense of what it forces its audience to see: the world through a desperate killer's eyes. I am a firm believer that simulated violence increases children to behave more irrationally. There is a danger in playing gruesome computer games, but also a danger in viewing gruesome films and if nothing else, this film is gory. Horrifically gory. I've seen some terrible depictions of violence and slaughter in my time, but nothing akin to the sight of the camera staggering into a room and brutally stabbing a man in his sleep many times, forcing us to have the perspective of the killer. His foot is severed, with a crunching of bones. The foot is carried around by a dog, and later buried in the woods. Men are shot and killed; several more murders implied.

Trickster is a demonic figure with a clown-like visage that made me very uneasy. Add to that upper side nudity when a girl undresses in front of a window, Michael spying on her with a camera, a dream in which they passionately make out, several skimpy outfits, a dozen f-words, five abuses of Jesus' name, and the disturbing aftertaste the final twist left me with, and you have a movie that is both repulsive and dangerous. Scenes with the police as they threaded together clues were fascinating but too few and far between. It would have been more interesting as a dramatic thriller rather than a cheap horror film, following the investigation behind these murders and discovering the supernatural link to a video game. That would have given the audience reason to speculate on whether Michael's claims were true, or if he was insane. Instead it has rather a cheap conclusion, the only good thing being that Michael swears off violent computer games for life. Maybe we should do the same for slasher films.

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