Michael Bower(Edward Furlong)is an alienated teenager who loves horror films, is still haunted by the car crash that left him with a limp & took his mother's life, and is in love with a girl named Kimberly(Amy Hargreaves), for whom he records with his camcorder. Michael is also bothered by a business father who stays away from home for long periods. He has a horror buddy named Kyle(James Marsh)who informs him of a brand new terror game for the computer which is supposed to be a state of the art virtual experience. He decides to give it a shot expecting it to simply disappoint like other games he has played along the line. This game is called "Brainscan" and it has four different stages with the first having the person playing actually committing a crime of brutal murder. When Mihael partakes of this the whole game becomes all to real when murders in reality begin taking place. When Michael discovers the death of a suburban man to be the one he killed in the video game, he wearily wishes to discontinue the experience altogether. This becomes difficult when a character within the game named Trickster(T. Ryder Smith really hamming it up)makes life unbearable telling him about messes he needs to clean up. Each stage Michael has to play in the game becomes more difficult and it seems more deaths are a result. Actually, the film can be quite fun mainly because our hero keeps sinking further and further into quicksand with every decision to play the next game. Frank Lagella plays Detective Hayden..a man is our source of tension for he keeps suspicion towards Michael always poking about. The film's special effects are hokey, but the idea works for me..this poor kid decides for the ultimate experience and is thrust into a macabre world of his own doing basically because he likes escape through the horror genre often criticized for displaying mindless violence in the way of entertainment.
Review of Brainscan
