Choc mortel

I have read the novel Reaper of Ben Mezrich a fews years ago and last night I accidentally came to see this adaption.

Although it's been years since I read the story the first time, the differences between the novel and the movie are humongous. Very important elements, which made the whole thing plausible are just written out or changed to bad.

If the plot sounds interesting to you: go and get the novel. Its much, much, much better.

Still 4 out of 10 since it was hard to stop watching because of the great basic plot by Ben Mezrich.

I don't know why I'm writing a review for this but I wanted to say how strange this film was. It was actually very bad, but for some reason it was too interesting not too keep watching the whole thing. It's about all these mysterious deaths caused by a signal from a cable television box, and we know this all along so I'm not spoiling anything. The acting is reasonable, if you don't count the terrible performance (as always) from Antonio Sabato Jr. My advice is watch this because it will undoubtedly draw you in with its storyline but don't expect anything above average.

I've come to enjoy some of these dreadful TV sci-fi movies. I'm not quite sure why, but stuff like this is entertaining. The plot is flimsy to say the least and includes several huge leaps of faith. Think DEEP SHOCK or FROZEN IMPACT.

The plot revolves around a mis-matched couple, the Mulder and Scully of this story, who're on the trail of a computer virus that can kill people as they watch the screen. This is off-the-box stuff, but there's no spoilers here because it doesn't actually do anything else.

Oh, and watch out for the laughably bad "server room", a room full of outdated junk in racks, with no other furniture than a water cooler. Yeah, right. Glorious!

In some ways, the concept behind the storyline was a rather interesting blend of several typical movie types in an interesting combination. However, no point in this movie was so obvious that it did not deserve lingering close-up shots. I felt as though I had been beat over the head with the so-called mysterious explanation for the disease killing people.

The writer appears to have simply lifted clichés from other movies as a substitute for writing lines adapted to actual characters. The actors did not help matters. No chemistry. I guess they were supposed to develop some kind of attraction if only for the reason that such is an essential element of these stories. However, the writers didn't work very hard to develop the chemistry. Sure, they're both attractive, but whether they're attractive to each other seemed to be an open question.

The confidence Turner's character shows in Sabato's developed far too quickly and for no particular reason. Sabato's character is supposed to be a discredited doctor who just can't seem to play by the rules. Think of the Jeff Goldblum character in "Independence Day." Usually, that kind of character is supposed to demonstrate some kind of talent or brilliance. Sabato's character does not. He's Cassandra with just the crazy and all the prophetic skills of a magic eight ball. He appears to be right by random chance.

The death scenes are comical. Every actor was really trying more than a little to hard to demonstrate the agony inflicted on them. The symptoms looked like bad claymation, sort of like that video from the 80s, Peter Gabriel, I think.

I have seen a lot of TV movies lately,only because they happen to go on TV on days like Monday when there is nothing else to do. I dont say that the are really good,but I found some of them entertaining.Even all of them has a low budget they still manage to have a decent story.This one is an ok thriller with a very X-files feel to it.I wasn't bored while watching the movie so therefore I have to say that it was average.