The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Virtual Reality (or VR) refers to a simulation of the real or an imagined world inside a computer environment. VR technology is a very likely real world development of the near-future. On screens, this is depicted as full-immersion that replicates all five senses.
Depictions of VR began in the 1980s, although there have been a number of works that can be said to prefigure its themes. Interest peaked in the 1990s as real world fascination with the topic heated up.
Stories concern people caught in lifelike VR simulations that are unable to be detected from the real thing or characters inside VR simulations coming to life in the real world. The Cyberpunk genre made depictions of VR commonplace. There is the surprising popularity of a number of erotic films with VR themes.
Another variation on VR themes is the hologram in particular the holodeck stories of various of the modern Star Trek tv series.
The second of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films where series regular Jonathan Frakes takes the director’s chair and delivers an exciting adventure, showing an excellent hand with the special effects. Far more satisfying than the previous film
The first of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films is an odd affair that seems like a routine episode of the series that accidentally gained a big-screen budget. This crosses over with Classic Trek where William Shatner mugs his way through a grand old airing of Captain Kirk
Third of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films has Jonathan Frakes back in the director’s seat where he again plays to his strengths with great visual effects scenes but the story feels like a filler episode
The tv special that George Lucas would have all copies destroyed, a work of legendary badness – a Star Wars Thanksgiving special featuring most of the original cast and a series of variety performances that are mind-boggling in their ineptitude, not to mention complete and utter fumbling of everything that Star Wars was
Film adaptation of a popular series of Young Adult books about a teenage spy. Made not long after the Austin Powers films, this seems unable to decide if it is being serious or a parody
A Kathryn Bigelow directed Cyberpunk film scripted by James Cameron concerning an illicit technology that can replay memories. This offers a powerful vision of a socially divided L.A. on the eve of the millennium
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
Belgian film shot in the first person about an extreme agoraphobic who seeks to cultivate relationships with other people online
The third in a series of Biblical End Times films withGary Busey as a decent cop who wakes up in a future ruled by the Anti-Christ. The heavy-handed slinging of Bible verses makes this hard-going for anyone who is not a believer, while the conspiratorial tone frequently verges on nuttiness
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
Tron was a genuinely groundbreaking work. It is hard to describe how ill conceived this sequel is where we have gone to predicting the idea of cyberspace to a fight over a glorified 3D printer
Tron was a groundreaking work that predicted the advent of cyberspace. Three decades on, this sequel never does anything as imaginative, although advances in effects technology allow for a dazzling reinvention of The Grid
The English-language remake of Open Your Eyes, starring Tom Cruise. The Spanish version is still the superior of the two but this stays surprisingly faithful to the original
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
Completely ridiculous martial arts SF film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a future cop fighting a videogame character incarnated in the real world
One of the numerous Virtual Reality films to come out in the mid-90s, this seems undecided whether it wants to be an SF or an erotic film
Produced by Roger Corman back when the idea of Virtual Reality was new and fascinated with the erotic possibilities. Jeff Fahey tests out a VR system and becomes lost in it after creating a simulation of his late girlfriend
Essentially a frothy British romantic comedy version of Weird Science where a girl manifests the perfect guy. The VR aspect is no more than a trendy buzzword appropriated as explain-all
Director Brett Leonard started the fascination with Virtual Reality off with The Lawnmower Man but shot himself in the foot with this absurd braindead follow-up in which Denzel Washington pursues a madly OTT Russell Crowe as an android serial killer
An anthology film that has been intended in the same vein as tv’s Black Mirror, offering a series of dark reflections of technological changes
Clearly influenced by the original Westworld, this is an interesting film about people waking up inside a computer-simulated Western town. Without realising it, this was the very first film to depict Virtual Reality
Fascinating work from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the earliest depictions of Virtual Reality on screen and one that sets most of the genre’s tropes in place
Film that imagines what might have happened if the Y2K Bug had occurred and resulted in a machine revolution
This is Terry Gilliam largely going back to revisit Brazil, albeit having been updated to the 2010s and the era of the internet. A renaissance of many Gilliam themes, nevertheless this feels like one of his slighter works