Fatal Error

In some ways, the concept behind the storyline was a rather interesting blend of several typical movie types in an interesting combination. However, no point in this movie was so obvious that it did not deserve lingering close-up shots. I felt as though I had been beat over the head with the so-called mysterious explanation for the disease killing people.

The writer appears to have simply lifted clichés from other movies as a substitute for writing lines adapted to actual characters. The actors did not help matters. No chemistry. I guess they were supposed to develop some kind of attraction if only for the reason that such is an essential element of these stories. However, the writers didn't work very hard to develop the chemistry. Sure, they're both attractive, but whether they're attractive to each other seemed to be an open question.

The confidence Turner's character shows in Sabato's developed far too quickly and for no particular reason. Sabato's character is supposed to be a discredited doctor who just can't seem to play by the rules. Think of the Jeff Goldblum character in "Independence Day." Usually, that kind of character is supposed to demonstrate some kind of talent or brilliance. Sabato's character does not. He's Cassandra with just the crazy and all the prophetic skills of a magic eight ball. He appears to be right by random chance.

The death scenes are comical. Every actor was really trying more than a little to hard to demonstrate the agony inflicted on them. The symptoms looked like bad claymation, sort of like that video from the 80s, Peter Gabriel, I think.

I've come to enjoy some of these dreadful TV sci-fi movies. I'm not quite sure why, but stuff like this is entertaining. The plot is flimsy to say the least and includes several huge leaps of faith. Think DEEP SHOCK or FROZEN IMPACT.

The plot revolves around a mis-matched couple, the Mulder and Scully of this story, who're on the trail of a computer virus that can kill people as they watch the screen. This is off-the-box stuff, but there's no spoilers here because it doesn't actually do anything else.

Oh, and watch out for the laughably bad "server room", a room full of outdated junk in racks, with no other furniture than a water cooler. Yeah, right. Glorious!

Like so many media experiments, this amateurish effort contains seeds of a very interesting social commentary. In the 5+ years since it was released, the premise has been made less outrageous by real world events in software development, and I found it less boring than the previous commentator for that reason, I imagine... The director clearly is a fan of Hitchcock, and it's too bad that the film was not better executed, but in fact, it is nearly a parody of pulp fiction, including the soundtrack screeching at us when we are supposed to pay attention. One can almost see the exclamation points and capital letters on a yellowing page.

I have to admit I found it rather entertaining for all these reasons and more. Sometimes the slick has less to offer us, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in deconstructing it for education purposes. Oh yes--and even though the seams showed and it creaked a lot, my heart rate went up, and I was reluctant to get up and take a break.

I found this to be a poor adaptation of the novel. Having read the print version some time ago and hoped that a movie would be made of it, I was thoroughly disappointed. Plot was muddled, and drastically different that novel. The poor screenplay was the downfall of this movie.

I don't know why I'm writing a review for this but I wanted to say how strange this film was. It was actually very bad, but for some reason it was too interesting not too keep watching the whole thing. It's about all these mysterious deaths caused by a signal from a cable television box, and we know this all along so I'm not spoiling anything. The acting is reasonable, if you don't count the terrible performance (as always) from Antonio Sabato Jr. My advice is watch this because it will undoubtedly draw you in with its storyline but don't expect anything above average.