Future Shock

Imagine a woman alone in a house for forty five minutes in which absolutely nothing happens. Then this goes on twice more. The writing is flat and lifeless, and jokes unfunny, and the bad acting keeps you from caring about any of the characters, even when they battle wolf packs and get beaten up by fraternity goons. Anyone that ranked this movie higher than a two is not fully sane.

The other reviewers have gotten close, but they've missed it: This movie takes two entirely unrelated short films (I'd guess student projects), adds them together with writer/"actress" Vivian Schilling's newly-filmed segment, and links them all with a weak "virtual reality" device plotline. So the producers only had to shoot a third of a movie. And the bonus is, they get to claim that Bill Paxton is a major player in the film. As far as the segments, I particularly enjoyed the "afterlife" one with the guy who chokes on olives, if memory serves. Still, the other reviewers sum it up pretty well: it's bad. Very bad.

An anthology of maybe horror stories where Martin Kove plays a psychiatrist who uses a virtual reality machine to probe the minds of his patients. Three overlong crappy tame made-for-tv style stories follow, none of which are worth your time in the slightest. Bill Paxton shows up to chew some scenery in the second segment but can't even save it. There's a nice cast of whose who including Brion James, Vivian Schilling, etc. And apparently J. J. Abrams composed the music.

Future Shock (Eric Parkinson et al., 1993)

This could have been a fantastic movie. It's an anthology film set around the office of a therapist who's come up with a new method of hypnotherapy. Over the course of the day, he sees three of his truly screwed-up patients, subjects them to the hypnosis, and waits. We get to watch what happens during the waiting.

The writing is just shy of good. The acting is just shy of good (save a few memorable performances, most notably from Bill Paxton, back when his contract still allowed him to play sleazy bad guys; he's as good and rowdy in here as he is in Near Dark). The production is just shy of good. Unfortunately, it all adds up to bad, albeit bad in a kind of endearing way. The potential in each of these stories tends to get in the way of the sheer, mindless enjoyment. The exception is the last story, "Mr. Petrified Forest," a shaggy-dog story about a guy having a near-death experience who can't remember how he got outside the gates of heaven.

Ah, the potential. It's worth a free viewing if it pops up on TV, but don't go out of your way. **

FUTURE SHOCK is complete garbage although it definitely had potential. Certain scenes are great but I was turned off by the whole virtual reality thing and by some of the incredibly bad acting. The actor that played Dr. Langdon looked like the late actor Michael Landon and I thought that the character name was actually Dr. Landon. Coincidentily, Michael Landon died in Malibu, California where some of this movie was made. The best actor in this sad film had to be James Karen who gave yet another hillarious performance as Kefka, the mute boss. Overall, not BAD BAD, but not as good as it could've been. I strongly believe that it was the whole virtual reality thing that sunk FUTURE SHOCK into future schlock-**1/2out of****.