Carver's Gate

In a desolate future, people play VR games to escape their crappy reality. A totally lame attempt at a Phillip K. Dick kind of story showcases a pool of poor talent in all arenas.

Bad acting, bad script, bad effects, bad direction, bad cinematography.. And not in a "so bad it's good" way, either--this movie is so awful I cringed through the whole thing.

Did MST3K ever do this one? It's even worse than "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank."

Imagine if your Quake game started spewing out monsters in the real world who would like nothing more than to kick your ashes all over the floor.

In a bleak future (is there any other kind in sci-fi?) humanity escapes from encroaching eco-doom in a game called the Afterlife. The inventor of the game finds a way to bridge the gulf between the virtual game world and the real world, but is brutally murdered soon after. A dreamcop (responsible for making sure everyone plays this game) investigates and discovers that the bridge is turning into a floodgate for all the evil existing as opponents in the game to flood into reality.

Sounds crappy, but this is a lot better than you would think. Michael Pare is an average actor who has a real talent for picking unusually interesting scripts: "Streets of Fire", "Moon 44", etc. Check this one out if you get a chance.

Sure, there were things that this movie lacked, but on the whole it delivered on what it promised. It was a fast-paced action movie, that was ahead of its time (released years ahead of The Matrix and EXistenZ )

There are some very competent performances (Peter Wylde, and Tara Maria Manuel), and some that fell short (Michael Pare), but on the whole this movie was entertaining and without pretensions. Could this be the grandfather of virtual reality movies?

You know the definition of a Popcorn Movie. It's a movie that you know you shouldn't take seriously. It's little more than an excuse to sit in front of the screen together with your friends and have a laugh.

If that's the approach you take to watching Carver's Gate, you might not be disappointed. The props are obviously smoke machines, black light, and rubber masks. The characters are decidedly one-dimensional. And the inspirations for the plot are something less than inspirational, even for 1995. And yet, there's something about this movie that makes you want to like it.

That something is Michael Pere. Pere has the most important (though not all) qualities of a leading man: a handsome face, a resonating voice, and an ability to appear cool in the most ridiculous situations. If James Bond were an American, Pere might be the next Timothy Dalton.

But, alas, this movie was made for television, and like so many other attempts at TV-movie greatness, this one has but a single attraction. (Take William Hurt in the SciFi Channel's take on Dune, for example.)

The rest is a throwaway story about a virtual-reality video game called Afterlife that makes its players feel as though they really are in another world, fighting demons and ghosts and whatnot. Inevitably, some people become addicted to the game, and a policeman of sorts (Pere's Carver) is needed to bring them back out.

The monsters are so real indeed that some of them cross over into the physical world, don rubber masks, and start attacking everyday folks, who inhabit a dark, misty environment not unlike dozens of others in the annals of sci-fi. (Picture Blade Runner on a made-for-TV budget.)

Throughout it all, Pere remains the focal point of our attention and hope for better entertainment. He is cool, collected, and cute, and if your company happens to be a gaggle of teenage girls, you might have a squealing good time. Otherwise, just turn down the lights and turn your mind off for ninety minutes' worth of dumb, low-budget fun.

The biggest mistake the film makers made with this film is they actually FINISHED it. And the biggest mistake the TV network (whoever it was) made by buying this movie was that they actually BOUGHT it and AIRED it! This is so bad the film should be stripped from the reels and used to tow out cars stuck in the snow.