Future Shock

An anthology of maybe horror stories where Martin Kove plays a psychiatrist who uses a virtual reality machine to probe the minds of his patients. Three overlong crappy tame made-for-tv style stories follow, none of which are worth your time in the slightest. Bill Paxton shows up to chew some scenery in the second segment but can't even save it. There's a nice cast of whose who including Brion James, Vivian Schilling, etc. And apparently J. J. Abrams composed the music.

I knew FUTURE SHOCK's packaging was a scam, as "The Roommate" short subject has made the "tournee" circuit a couple of times since 1987. However, this three-part anthology is still pretty good.

"The Roommate" is by far the best segment. Bill Paxton excels as a squirrely, abrasive con artist who barges his way into a roomie relationship with meek apprentice coroner Scott Thompson. He rips off, torments, and abuses Thompson. Thompson tries to kill the unwelcome visitor, with ironic results. The black humor keeps the film from being a thoroughly unpleasant experience. James Karen has a welcome supporting role as one of Thompson's co-workers.

The least successful entry, "Mr. Petrified Forest," was a USC master thesis and is predictably filled with arty composition and paper-thin sentiment. The title character is a "chicken little" type who waits nervously for a predicted earthquake to hit LA. It never hits, but he falls in love with another paranoid. He tells the story from a heavenly "wait station," as doctors on earth frantically try to revive him from a mysterious accident.

Another examination of paranoia, "Jenny Potter," stars and was written by interesting actress Vivian Schilling. She lives in a Malibu house decked out like a fortress, with silent alarms and a computerized security system that talks. Her husband (Brion James) leaves her alone one night and her nightmare fears of being attacked by dogs edges into her real world. The episode is scary but pointless.

As you might expect, the weakest link in FUTURE SHOCK is its framing sequence, in which doctor Martin Kove interviews each segments' protagonists. He uses a funky strobe light thingie to hypnotize them and lead into each of the stories.

This movie is a compilation of three separate movies. The last one is "Mr. Petrified Forest", which is the Masters Thesis film of Matt Reeves, which he completed for his Masters in Film at USC. He fund raised, wrote, directed, cast, edited, etc., every aspect of "Mr. Petrified Forest". Subsequently, USC sold his Masters Thesis film, which was incorporated into this theatrical, commercial film. No one connected with "Mr. Petrified Forest" received any monetary compensation, including the actors, crew, director, writer, editor, etc,. when it was incorporated into this commercial film. USC should not have sold it!!!! Perhaps there are copyright infringement issues. It is an outrage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUTURE SHOCK is complete garbage although it definitely had potential. Certain scenes are great but I was turned off by the whole virtual reality thing and by some of the incredibly bad acting. The actor that played Dr. Langdon looked like the late actor Michael Landon and I thought that the character name was actually Dr. Landon. Coincidentily, Michael Landon died in Malibu, California where some of this movie was made. The best actor in this sad film had to be James Karen who gave yet another hillarious performance as Kefka, the mute boss. Overall, not BAD BAD, but not as good as it could've been. I strongly believe that it was the whole virtual reality thing that sunk FUTURE SHOCK into future schlock-**1/2out of****.

Imagine a woman alone in a house for forty five minutes in which absolutely nothing happens. Then this goes on twice more. The writing is flat and lifeless, and jokes unfunny, and the bad acting keeps you from caring about any of the characters, even when they battle wolf packs and get beaten up by fraternity goons. Anyone that ranked this movie higher than a two is not fully sane.