The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Videogames refers to games that are played on a video or computer with the user interacting with action that is happening on the screen. The first videogames appeared in the 1970s and expanded into arcades in the 1980s and then the home computer and game box to more recently mobile phone apps.
There have been films about videogames since the 1980s variously depicting people sucked inside game environments and Virtual Reality games, or stories where game characters step into the outside world. An increasingly popular trope is the twist where characters discover that they are characters inside a game.
For films that have been adapted from videogames see Videogame Adaptations.
A film spun out around a YouTube channel of videogame reviews. This sinks down into unfunny fannish in-joking, while the attempts to be a mock bad movie only seem silliness for its own sake
A quickie effort made by Albert Pyun for Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions to exploit the Virtual Reality themes popularised by The Lawnmower Man, concerning a malevolent VR videogame
Disappointing live-action film from anime director Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, construed as nothing beyond a live-action videogame with kick-ass girls engaged in serial combat encounters
Visually stunning live-action film from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, set in the beautifully stylised faded sepia tone world of a Virtual Reality game
This has the interesting idea of mind-controlled people being used as shooters in a live-action videogame. However, the rest of the film is a routine low-budget action film
One of the many virtual reality films that came out after The Lawnmower Man with Edward Furlong dealing with a figure from a horror videogame who turns his life upside down, urging him to become a killer
This has the interesting idea of a group of people selected to take place in a live-action videogame only to find themselves trapped in a The Belko Experiment scenario.
A British horror film in which people open an old 1980s videogame that is cursed and forces them to make horrible choices concerning the deaths of people around them
At face value, this seems to be no more than a Lorenzo Lamas action film for video release, but it surprises one and becomes a quite reasonable Cyberpunk film that conducts a smart airing of the tropes
I will defend Orson Scott Card as an exceptional science-fiction writer, his controversies aside. While this is an extremely faithful adaptation of his book, it works unevenly as a film and never soars dramatically
David Cronenberg tackles Virtual Reality themes in an interestingly mind-bending work. Cronenberg has some interesting takes but this ended up being overshadowed by the phenomenon that was The Matrix the same year
Ryan Reynolds discovers he is a character inside a videogame. This has a conceptual ingenuity and originality and is the most fun and outrightly enjoyable mainstream film seen of recent
A reality bending Bollywood film in which a wheelchair-ridden woman videogame designer is haunted by mysterious events, although quite what is all about is a very good question
Film somewhere between Counterstrike and The Running Man where convicts are controlled as avatars inside a live-action videogame. A difficult to believe premise that is pumped up with hyper-adrenalised action visuals
A Virtual Reality/horror film about a malevolent spirit incarnated inside a videogame. This churns all the Virtual Reality cliches as though nothing had changed since the tide of shabby 1990s Lawnmower Man copies
From SF writer Jim Munroe who made the impressive Ghosts With Shit Jobs, a micro-budgeted work set in a post-cyberpunk future where the fascination lies in the casually littered assumptions around the edges
The eighth of the Hellraiser films. By now a long way from Clive Barker’s original vision and no more than a haunted house story where the Cenobites occasionally turn up. With a young unknown Henry Cavill
Horror movie about computer game designers dealing with a motion-capture suit that has gained life and is trying to kill them. This has nothing in common with the 1950s film beyond the title
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the reboot of the 90s Jumanji, was a box-office success. That mandated a sequel. The central problem is where exactly does a film about characters sucked inside a videogame go with its premise?
A revival of Jumanji. The original’s boardgame is now a videogame that sucks the players inside. The adventure elements are routine but the film’s has comedic fun with its bodyswapped characters
One of the sillier films made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is recycling third hand cliches and reduces these to simplistic fantasies of military heroism for the videogame generation
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
Chris Marker, the director of La Jetee, returns to SF. Though this is set around a Virtual Reality game, it is in fact a documentary essay about the Battle of Okinawa
Videogamers fight a demonic entity unleashed from a 1980s game. A film that is far more fun that you expect and comes loaded with videogaming in-jokes
Mike Flanagan horror mini-series adapted from Christopher Pike’s book, this is set around a group of patients in a hospice who form a group to tell each other horror stories
Rogue James Bond film made outside the regular series due to a complicated copyright battle. Sean Connery was inveigled back the role and this has some standout casting that is a welcome relief from the unserious Roger Moore films
Strong and intelligent Cyberpunk film with Christopher Lambert dealing with a videogame character that has come to life
This has a certain cuteness to its premise – of seeing a bunch of classic videogames brought to life. Beyond that, Pixels is a one gimmick film that suffers from two people whose films I hate – the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the irritatingly smug presence of Adam Sandler
A Bollywood venture into science-fiction that does a reasonably impressive job of trying to mount CGI superheroics … on the other hand, the plot deals in simplistic black-and-whites and draws on models of SF two decades out of date
I had a lot of liking for Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, a depiction of the inside of a videogame from the viewpoint of the characters. This expands the concept to the internet. Despite being the ultimate product placement film, this also rather appealingly shows Disney poking fun at themselves
Steven Spielberg adapted Ernest Cline’s book about a massive virtual treasure hunt through 1980s pop culture trivia. The film winds up the pop culture references by a factor of ten, but misses the book’s compulsive readability
Mind-bogglingly surreal, almost indescribable film from Joel Potrykus as a slacker attempts to complete a videogame sitting on a couch as assorted things including the Y2K apocalypse happen around him
From the film’s poster, you could easily mistake this for a generic fantasy film – instead, we get a film about gaming nerds on a road trip. Much is drawn from Fanboys and this is not a particularly funny variant, although there are occasionally cute scenes that mimic Lord of the Rings
An Edgar Wright directed comic-book adaptation made in a bewildering restless visual style that feels like two different films happening at once, one a sweet nerd romance and the other a completely gonzo superhero film
Not to be confused with the Joss Whedon film, this starts out seeming like a weepy romantic drama before pulling one of the most absurd M. Night Shyamaalan-esque conceptual twists ever put on screen on us
For reasons not clear to me, Space Jam is considered a classic. Now we get a sequel that updates it to the present featuring a different NBA star LeBron James
The third in the series is no longer even a Spy Kids film but a Virtual Reality videogame film. Robert Rodriguez has some fun creating the virtual worlds but the parody that the other films engaged in is missing
Robert Rodriguez revisits his juvenile spy capers franchise after a twelve year absence. Not perfect but it improves over the last couple of sequels
This comes with the completely nonsensical premise of Countess Bathory having been reincarnated inside a videogame. Needless to say it is one that the film does nothing to make credible or even indicate it has read anything about the historical Countess Bathory
A Roland Emmerich produced Virtual Reality film that toys with some ideas that almost make it a great SF film before cliches and a bad twist ending take over
Genuinely eccentric Barry Levinson film that plays out as a post-Reaganite version of Willy Wonka and features some of the most amazing sets ever designed for a film.
A flop in its day, nobody at the time saw how revolutionary this was in that it predicted the idea of cyberspace and the internet. The design of the world inside the computer all in candy apple colours and geometric shapes is extraordinary
Completely ridiculous martial arts SF film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a future cop fighting a videogame character incarnated in the real world
This was the first film to ever depict the internet with Matthew Broderick as a teen innocent hacker who accidentally hacks in and triggers a nuclear alert thinking he is playing a computer game
WarGames was a thriller that was way ahead of its time; this sequel is no more than video fodder exploiting recognition factor that reduces the original to hacker movie cliches in a technically ill-informed and incoherent plot
Luc Besson written/produced effort where a videogamer kid is transported to Ancient China. A blatant copy of The Forbidden Kingdom that manages to be fundamentally implausible on every level and one of the worst attempts to pander to the Chinese box-office
One of the best Disney animated films in ages. Has the winning concept of the secret lives of the characters inside videogames. Imagine Tron by way of Toy Story. The animators have clever fun with the idea, while the film creates a character arc that become the strength of the film
A multi-director anthology of zombie-themed short films. As always in an anthology, the episodes vary but these are generally good with the standout being the side-splitting episode where Jesus faces a zombie horde