“Real, unreal, what’s the difference? So long as you don’t get caught.”

Justin’s rating: Just get a SNES like the rest of us, man. Or, heck, even a Genesis.

Justin’s review: I kind of adore how clueless Hollywood was about video games in the early ’90s. The studios knew that these were extremely popular, yes, but it was clear that nobody in the writer’s room played them or could speak intelligently about them. So we got a lot of bizarre virtual reality stuff like Lawnmower Man and incomprehensible adaptations of popular games like Super Mario Bros.

Cruising alongside of these was the odd attempt to translate video game culture into horror, which brings us to 1994’s Brainscan. I’ll always remember this as one of the stranger titles that I would stock at the video store, thinking that Edward Furlong chose poorly while cashing in on his Terminator 2 fame if he’d gone to a gimmicky slasher so quickly.

Michael (Furlong) isn’t what you’d call “socially well-adjusted.” His mom is dead, his dad not present for reasons, his neighbor Kimberly the subject of his high-tech leering, and his only passion horror movies and violent games.

Honestly, this movie may have had a finger on the upcoming internet culture better than it realized.

He’s the perfect candidate, then, for Brainscan, a weird and revolutionary video game that’s shipped to him for free after a phone call to the company sends him into inexplicable convulsions. Because that’s what video games can do, control you hypnotically long-distance! Or so the studios assume!

Through this virtual reality-like experience, Michael takes the role of a serial killer with the quest to eliminate innocents. This is what we call a “bad idea,” as what he does in the game somehow is translated into the real world. Even worse, Brainscan’s host, a malevolent force known as Trickster (T. Ryder Smith) comes out of the game to taunt Michael and try to take over his mind.

To this movie’s credit, Trickster may be one of the more memorable ’90s slasher villain designs (and he is so, so very ’90s). He’s got a wild punk look with crazy hair, lots of piercings, and some untrimmed fingernails. But unlike most bad guys that are chasing our heroes, Trickster wants to corrupt Michael while being a kind of psychotic imaginary friend with a penchant for black humor. I guess if Drop Dead Fred or Little Monsters got a lot darker, this is where we’d be.

“This doesn’t make sense!” Michael yells to Trickster, and I can sense the filmmakers trying to sidestep a whole lot of illogic that’s happening here. Whether Trickster is real, how the game works, how much Michael is being manipulated… don’t ask, because the movie has no interest in telling you.

Rather, Michael has to keep going through the four discs of Brainscan in the hopes of getting out of this mess and staying ahead of the detective (Frank Langella, the one and only Skeletor) investigating the murders. Actually, he doesn’t do much to stay ahead at all, because the detective sees right through his creepy facade.

It’s amusing to see Michael’s techno-cave, plastered with cult movie posters, cool gadgets, and one big ol’ gamer chair in the middle (not to mention a virtual Igor who answers his phone) as a kind of tribute to ’90s geek culture. And there’s some early CGI in play with a few scenes, especially as Trickster starts messing with this kid.

Brainscan’s biggest problem is its struggle to find a balanced tone. It’s trying to be this dark and edgy techno-thriller, but everything it does is patently ridiculous — and none of it is scary, mind you. A little bloody, yes, but it’s hard to get freaked out when the main character is (probably?) the killer rather than the targeted victim. This film generally plods along, with scenes that stretch out far longer than they should and not enough payoff at the end of them.

Furlong doesn’t do much here to be more than a surly and susceptible teenager who’s kind of unlikable right from the start. It’s absolutely weird how much he spies on his neighbor crush with a video camera — and that she thinks it’s cute (I’m not going to read into that). I also thought it was funny that his voice was still cracking in puberty as it was in T2.

What’s undeniable is that Trickster is the best part of a movie where the normal humans come off as dead weight. He’s a bucket of anarchy thrown into this kid’s life, with intelligence and craftiness oozing through his interactions with Michael. What’s his motivation here? It’s not completely clear, other than perhaps finding a kindred soul with this horror-obsessed teen. In another universe where this movie was successful, I could see it kicking off a franchise and sending Trickster up a few rungs in the pantheon of horror icons. As it stands, he’s merely a curious footnote.

Brainscan’s struggle to be taken seriously as dread-inducing horror is ultimately what makes it cheesy in all the best ways. It’s a product of its time and Hollywood’s fundamental misunderstanding of video games and the intersection of horror and violence.

Intermission!

• “Music by George S. Clinton” Wait, P-Funk is scoring this?
• Apparently ER doctors operate in slow-motion
• Cool hackers have a virtual Igor answer their phones (Igor’s voice is done by the same guy who does Trickster)
• Nothing like walking around your room in your underwear with the windows unshaded. Nothing like having your neighbor watch you with a camcorder. This is so creepy.
• High school horror club is OK showing graphic movies
• Death Death Death Part 2 is the best name of a movie, ever
• Cool kids never dial a phone with their fingers, only with voice commands
• “Video games are ancient history!” In 1994?
• Why would the news show the bloody scene of a murder?
• Foot in the freezer!
• Trickster coming out of the TV and building himself around his organs is a cool moment
• Dogs like severed feet
• “The real question is, are you a winner or a loser?”
• Buddies forever??
• It’s hard to hate a bad guy who likes watching old slapstick comedy on TV
• When your girlfriend turns into a bald zombie, that’s not a good dream
• When your captor knocks himself out, that’s a freebie
• And that is why we don’t arm vigilante mobs, people
• “Goodbye master.”
• She’s a photographing creep too!
• It was all a dream… or was it?