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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: August 28th, 2018.
Director: John Flynn
Cast: Edward Furlong, Frank Langella, T. Ryder Smith, Amy Hargreaves, Jamie Marsh, T. Ryder Smith
Year: 1994
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Brainscan - Movie Review:
At one point in John Flynn's 1994 horror picture Brainscan, a character named the Trickster (T. Ryder Smith) - dressed in a crushed velvet coat, tight leather pants and sporting a bouffant mess of reddish hair - pulls out a compact disc, leers to the camera and holds the disc up at which point he proclaims 'Don't leave home without it.' After that he puts the disc in the CD player and dances around the room in something akin to John Cleese' schtick from Monty Python's Ministry Of Silly Walks sketch to the sounds of Primus' Welcome To This World. It's probably the goofiest scene from a remarkably goofy movie, but it sums up the vibe of the picture rather succinctly.
The story revolves around a sixteen-year-old high school student named Michael Brower (Edward Furlong). When he's not videotaping his neighbor Kimberley (Amy Hargreaves) as she changes in front of her window he and his 'buddy forever' Kyle (Jamie Marsh) are playing horror video games, watching horror movies and reading Fangoria. And judging by the obscene amount of product placement in the movie, they're also frequently jamming the fuck out to Aerosmith's Get A Grip album (though ironically enough, there's no Aerosmith music used in the film). Michael's dad is away for an extended period of time for work and his mom is dead, so he's more or less left to his own devices.
This comes in handy when Kyle informs him about an ad in the latest Fango promoting a game called Brainscan, touted as the most intense interactive experience around. Bored, but intrigued, Michael has his weird robot computer phone system call the number and, after a strange phone call wherein the guy on the other end of the line seems to know too much about him, a disc shows up in the mail. Michael loads up it and finds himself playing a POV game where he is the killer. When the results of the first disc seem to be real and a murder in the neighborhood makes the news, he finds himself being watched by a cop named Detective Hayden (Frank Laneglla) and trying to defeat the guy in the crushed velvet jacket mentioned earlier.
Made only a few short years after 1992's The Lawnmower Man, Brainscan is another one of those nineties-era movies about video games and virtual reality technology that hasn't really aged very well. Still, it has some interesting ideas at play and some of them work quite well. The scenes where Michael is playing the game through the eyes of a murderer do tend to be well shot and we get a reasonable amount of tension here. There are also some okay effects - a mix of digital and practical - but then, there are also some not so okay effects. Early in the film the Trickster bends his fingers back and claws out his eyes to prove to Michael that he can't hurt him. This part is neat. Later in the movie Michael and the Trickster morph into a weird hybrid of one another. These effects are not so neat. We also see a few too many 'swirling through the digital vortex' clips than we really need to. Once was fine, but every time Michael fires up the game we get this, and while maybe it was cool by the standards of the day, here it looks like a corny video game effect. Maybe that's not a bad thing though, at least under the circumstances?
The movie is wildly uneven, not just in its effects work but in its acting as well. Furlong is whiney. Most teenagers are whiney, so some of this is to be expected, but he's unnecessarily whiney. We're supposed to feel for him when he's creeping on his neighbor but he just kind of comes across as creepy when he does it. Maybe he's just playing the character as written or maybe he's just bad but either way, he's a bit grating here. Worse than he is Jamie Marsh as Kyle. To be fair, Kyle is a complete 'horror/metal guy' cliché, it's clear that the script isn't trying to give him anything to work with here but what we wind up with isn't good, it's like a horror nerd version of Bill or Ted. Amy Hargreaves, however, is very likeable as the neighbor. She has the right 'girl next door' quality to her to work really well in the part and as she gets pulled into Michael's mess we want the best for her. Additionally, Frank Langella makes a fine cop, bringing some quality screen presence to the movie and making his character just intimidating enough to work.
And then there's T. Ryder Smith… the Trickster himself. This character was ever so obviously designed to be, what the producers likely hoped, the next horror franchise icon. He makes wisecracks like Freddy Kruger and dresses like that annoying goth kid you want to college with but he lacks the charisma of a genuine horror icon. He's kind of funny and occasionally intense enough to stand out but he's goofier looking than he is frightening. Thankfully, however, Smith would go on to redeem himself by doing the voice of Baron íœnderbheit on The Venture Brothers, and for that we thank him.
Still, for its many and obvious flaws, Brainscan is entertaining enough. It doesn't overstay its welcome, it is paced quite nicely and it has a certain stupid charm to it that almost makes it endearing. Maybe it's nostalgia for those of us of a certain age creeping into the mix, but as dopey as all of this it, the movie is still a fun watch.
Brainscan - Blu-ray Review:
Brainscan lives again on Blu-ray on this 50GB disc in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer that frames the image at 1.85.1 widescreen. Possibly the result of an older master, things look a little on the soft side here but this is still considerably better looking than the old DVD that came out years back. Colors look quite nice and skin tones are fine. The picture is very clean, there aren't any print damage issues here at all, while black levels are solid. The image is free of compression artifacts and obvious edge enhancement problems. Not a reference quality transfer, but a fine HD offering of a title few people probably expected to ever reach the format in the first place.
The English language DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo mix on the disc is rock solid. There's nice channel separation throughout, clear dialogue and strong bass response. Levels are properly balanced and the track is free of any hiss or distortion. No complaints at all. Optional English subtitles are also provided.
There are a lot more supplements on this disc than you'd probably expect given Brainscan's pedigree, starting with an audio commentary with assistant to the director Tara Georges Flynn, son of the late director, moderated by Michael Felsher. He spent a lot of time on set and shares some stories from his experiences working on the film. He also talks quite a bit about what it was like working with his father, providing some fun anecdotes about the man and his work.
From there, a few new featurettes, the first of which is A Virtual Debut, an interview with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker that runs fourteen-minutes. Here he speaks about his script - the original version - and what was changed, including the rather drastic bit that the Trickster was never supposed to appear in the movie, just be a voice (it probably would have worked better that way). He also talks about his time in the industry and some of the other projects he's worked on over the years. In Talking With Trickster we spend fourteen-minutes with actor T. Ryder Smith and learn about how he got the part, his thoughts on the character, how physically demanding the role was and what it was like working with Furlong. He doesn't really get into his thoughts on Primus, however, and that seems like a missed opportunity (I kid). Merging Realities is a nineteen-minute piece made up of interviews with special make-up effects supervisor Steve Johnson and special make-up effects artists Andy Schoneberg and Mike Smithson. Lots of interesting insight here into what went into creating the Trickster's look and some of the other practical effects work featured in the picture, as well as where some of the inspiration came for the movie. They also cover the creature featured in the deleted scene, the blending of digital and practical effects featured in the film and more. Musical Virtuosity is an eleven-minute long interview with composer George S. Clinton who talks about how he got into the business before then laying down the specifics of his work on Brainscan such as the equipment that he used on the film and his thoughts on the finished product.
After that, dig into Trickin' With Trickster, an obnoxiously named five-minute vintage behind-the-scenes piece shot on set during production and showing off some of the interplay between Furlong and Smith. As mentioned earlier, there is a single deleted scene included here, presented from a tape source without any audio - it's actually quite interesting to see. There's also another eight-minute behind-the-scenes footage reel here, and it mostly focuses on the effects crew working on the footage that wound up in that deleted scene.
Outside of that Shout! Factory offers up a teaser, a theatrical trailer, a TV spot, a few still galleries, menus and chapter selection.
Brainscan - The Final Word:
Brainscan is very much a product of its time, ripe with mid-nineties pop culture references, goofy computer graphics and questionable choices in its depiction of technology. It showcases a genuinely terrible villain and some rather stinky acting from its lead… and yet it has something about it that makes it watchable. If that something appeals to you, Shout! Factory's Blu-ray should as well, as it offers the film up in nice shape and with more extras than anyone probably ever expected the film to receive. Brainscan… it might not be good, but it is kind of fun.
Click on the images below for full sized Brainscan Blu-ray review screen captures!
I love this movie so fuck this review. Kidding. Wanna dance?
Maybe it's not too late for The Trickster to make a comeback?