EVOLVER
Worst "killer computer game" movie ever
What is it about movies about video games? The only ones I've ever seen that really captures what's fun about the things, presents us with games we actually think people might play, are fifteen or so years old, like Tron and The Last Starfighter. Movies with this plot these days - not helped by the fact that most new games look old and clunky within about four days - always seem to present us with boring, boring games.
Such is the case with Evolver, which starts with a virtual reality game which is basically a one-on-one shooter against a robot called the Evolver. Think about the things that make shooter games work. Exotic-looking, detailed backgrounds, things to shoot at constantly, frightening villains that you need to shoot about five hundred times or else they'll bite you in half. The Evolver game has none of these things - just cheesy-looking mazes with one stupid-looking villain. All that's special about it is that its villain (which we later find out is, of course, built up from a discarded military program) is supposed to learn from its - and the player's - mistakes.
Anyways, one day, the Evolver-beating whiz-kid (Ethan Embry) wins some sort of contest where the "real" Evolver comes to his house and plays him in a real-life shooter game in his house. Sounds like a recipe for a lot of broken stuff. And it is. Soon enough, Evolver's safeties click off at the school for whatever reason and it's life and death for the kid, his dysfunctional family, and of course the cute chick who sometimes beats him at the arcade (Cassidy Rae, a pornstar name if I ever heard one). But not before they use it to spy on chicks in the girls' locker room, if that tells you anything about where this movie's head is at.
Yup. They brought it to his house, with no apparent concern for whether or not this kid would either break the thing, or sell it to a competitor, to say nothing of the easy lawsuit-avoidance that would have come from not making it capable of lethal force in the first place. Tell me, is this not the stupidest variant on the "computer game is out of control" thing you've ever heard in your life?
John de Lancie is here, playing pretty much the same role he did in Arcade as the game's designer. He fails to liven things up a little when he's onscreen, and I do have to wonder if he's really capable of playing anything interesting other than Q, since I don't think he never has.
I think the most awesomely bad moment in this movie is when a little girl, having fallen into a swimming pool after being chased around by Evolver for a while, saves herself rom being electrocuted to death by it by hauling her soaking-wet carcass ONTO AN INFLATABLE ALLIGATOR. Does this strike anybody else as an unlikely way to save your hide from such a fate?
Most of the awfulness isn't nearly as inspired, however, with lots of moments like the robot saying "GAME NOT OVER!" (voice provided by one William H. Macy!) and of course the tearful family reconciliation at the end. Two people are trapped in a corner by a bunch of lasers which we can see are slowly burning through the wall behind them. You know, if you run really quick through those lasers, you'd probably escape with only the most minor of burns. But they just sit there and cower.
Written and directed by Mark "The House On Sorority Row" Rosman, there ain't one good thing I can say about this movie. Into the pile you go, Evolver. The pile grows, and grows, and grows...
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