So many movies get forgotten the older I get….well, not all together, just certain details or plot points seem to evaporate into thin air. Often, I go to my collection and stare for hours until a title pops out at me. Then I revisit it. Recently, I went back and blew the dust off of my copy of Rachel Talalay’s (director of Freddy’s Dead) Ghost in the Machine.
Now I remember the things that made this movie so much fun. The year was 1993, so at the time I was 9. The prospect of digital reality gaming was huge in that era with jumps from 8 bit to 16 bit and even the incredible 64 bit Jaguar system. Naturally, movies had to capitalize on this ever-growing trend and make a scary movie that could hook in the younger crowd, even though this was a R rated film. I mean, let’s face it, Mortal Kombat was on the news, Doom was on the news, and this film might have been an R rated horror film, but going back and watching it, it’s clear who was targeted to be the audience.
Ghost in the Machine has some really great imagery and sort of blends the universe of Shocker and The Lawnmower Man together in a pretty bad ass slasher style film. Packed full of that 90’s charm with all of the cheese of an 80’s film. Slick techno-savy kids and adults who are not up with the hip new interwebs make this silly at times, but never full-blown idiotic.
The acting is pretty spot on and the killer really only manifests himself in the last 20 minutes of the film, which is nice and really gives an air of menace to all things electronic. Twenty years after its release, it’s pretty rad to me that I can say, ya know, that movie was pretty far ahead of its time. Maybe not in terms of visual effects, but in its overall execution it still holds up really well.
I give this movie 2.5 virtual shootouts out of 5.
