Evolver

I was born in 87, grew up on video games, watched a lot of schlock movies, I can't believe I had never even heard of Evolver until I stumbled across it a week ago. I was like the prime audience for this, would have loved it as a kid.

Evolver was a perfectly fine piece of low budget 90's schlock. Edgy video game kid, goofy friend with loose morals, meat head bully guy, attractive girl aggressively stalking kid who plays video games, killer robot. A perfect storm. I think some of the problems were that it was heavy on the swearing which would hurt it's distribution for kids, and at the same time the kills were kind of weak and bloodless. There were some truly creative moments, like the laser cage, but the kills were mostly lame.

Definitely check it out if you're into cheap-o 90's b-horror geared at edgy thirteen year olds, it a fun watch.

A teen game wizard, Kyle (Ethan Embry) cheats in order to win a contest. His prize is the A. I. robot of the title.

At first, EVOLVER is a "cute" novelty, playing games with Kyle and his friends. Of course, if it stayed like this we'd have another SHORT CIRCUIT on our hands. So, EVOLVER soon becomes a stealthy -if clunky- killing machine!

Terror and death ensue.

If you enjoy killer robot movies like CHOPPING MALL, then this should be a thrill. The cheeeze factor is through the roof, making it a terabyte's worth of fun!

Co-stars John de Lancie as the robot's creator...

I'm one of those guys who enjoys pretty much any movie, so I guess I don't count. There are some things that struck me as stupid, but what could they do? CDRs didn't exist at that time, so they had to fake it. Still, the fact that they stuck what amounts to a CD in a floppy drive and faked reading it. The effects were great for the time, and are still decent. Back to some technical errors. Now, it IS possible to boost a laser to the point where you can burn things, but the power of the laser goes down as the distance goes up. Which means that if you put one up against a magnifying glass or something, the magnifier would melt. Also, boosting the power of a laser would not change the color. But still, it was a more than enjoyable, in my humble opinion.

Kyle Baxter (Ethan Randall) is a teenager who plays very well a video game called `Evolver'. This game was developed by Dr. Russell Bennett (John de Lancie). He wins a competition of Evolver where the prize was a robot similar to the game. What nobody knows is that Evolver indeed is a war machine with artificial intelligence. Therefore, the friends of Kyle are playing against a dangerous weapon. Although being a very predictable and forgettable movie, Evolver really entertains. It has some good special effects and a reasonable thriller. My vote is five.

The plot has been done many times. AI gaming robot with a secret military subroutine. Hmm? I could start a list. You could do a lot with that with CGI and real actors. Here, there's no CGI (yet), so we have toys and stop motion and bad acting, and unfinished characters, and a primitive Robby the Robot concept from the 50s. The whole movie looks 1980s, not 1995. It almost looks like a high school comedy, but turned dark. I couldn't empathize with any of the characters, and kinda wished all of them had been done in. It's also in 4:3 format. I had my fingers on the FF.