The Cyberstalking

As far as T.V. movies go, the Cyberstalking is as formulaic as they come. Its clean-cut, television quality mixed with standard special effects is mildly pleasing, but eye candy can only get you so far. If you've seen one of those Sci-Fi T.V. movie you've seen this one. If you've seen the Outerlimits with Mark Hamil, then you've definitely seen The Cyberstalking. The only interesting twist is a song sung by Holly Moon (that's the character's name -really)played by Jean Louisa Kelly. "Only in Hollywood," will definitely stick in your head and you'll find yourself humming a line or two. However, they do overuse this song and it'll get old faster than it takes to summarize the plot. Too bad they didn't add a couple of other songs. Holly Moon plays a struggling singer who desires to make it big. Working effortlessly to promote herself and perfect her craft she gets the opportunity of a lifetime when a producer hears her demo tape. Meanwhile his current artist reaches critical mass and ends up blowing a lobe after an intense session in the virtual reality simulator. Her brother knows something killed her in the program. Through the use of cybernetics, the producer links Holly Moon to a sort of

virtual reality mainframe whereupon she constructs a world by the power of thought in which to present her music; like a music video minus the annoying VJ's. However, things go wrong as a malignant phantom glitch appears in the simulation apparently out to kill again as it did the first time. It's up to the crusading brother to save Holly Moon... Brian Grant, the director should stick to what he does best -t.v. shows.

There have been various comments here about the song that Holly sings, all positive as I recall, so some proper identification is in order. It is in fact called "Holly" (not "Only in Hollywood" or anything else), and was originally recorded by the band that wrote it, Republica, on their self-titled 1996 album. I would say that the original version as sung by the band's little spitfire of a lead singer is somewhat better than this movie version (though there's nothing particularly wrong with the latter). Although Republica only had their 15 minutes of fame here in North America (maybe a half hour in their native UK), they might be familiar for their two hits "Ready to Go" and "Drop Dead Gorgeous". The movie itself is formulaic (it was clear to me all along who the "dark presence" was), but the SF theme is interesting and FX are indeed good.

Not exactly Academy Award winning material, but it made for a couple hours entertainment. The special effects were visually stimulating, and I found the concept of the musician basically creating the setting and costume for the music video using her own imagination to be a fascinating idea. Her main song was very catchy, and even after not watching the movie for several years, I still remember it. The identity of the "glitch" was a unique twist, and even if the characters seemed a bit idealized and cookie-cutter, it was still interesting and entertaining time spent.

Okay, one more review. I recently acquired a copy of this movie in a $5.00 bin of movie dvds. It had 8 movies on it and all of them were pretty good. However, I have watched this movie at least five times already. I loved it. The ladies are hot and the men are pretty good looking as well. All the actors/actresses were great in this film. All very believable. I to think the graphics were great and the music was fantastic. Anyone could relate to doing whatever it takes to make your dream happen. How clever, a virtual reality world that takes what you can imagine in your mind and make it real. Awesome idea for a movie script. I think they should sell it to a bigger studio and make an all out production. They could use several young singers, men and women and thicken the plot some more. Use more than one demon in the mix to scare the audience. Yes this was a bit cheesy, but for a made for TV movie it was fantastic and ahead of its time for 1999. A newer version could really make it on the big screen I think. This thing is over ten years old and I am hooked after one viewing. I can't believe I missed it on TV. I wish I could get a copy of songs as performed on the TV episode. I will check out the Republica version. Loved jean louisa kelly in this role and Jason Hildebrandt? What happened to this guy. He was great and can't find nothing on him. He must have done other stuff. I whole heartedly recommend this movie for anyone who likes music and out of the ordinary possibilities. It left me wishing I could go into VR and see what my imagination would create. WOW!

I really don't know what this weird virtual reality story is all about, but the highlights of this dark Phantom-of-the-opera-goes-cyberspace-movie is Jean Louisa Kelly's performance as cyberspace singer "Holly Moon", singing a Chemical Brothers-like big beat techno song called "Only in Hollywood", and all of the virtual computer effects of her performances. The rest is a confusing plot about Holly being threatened by an unknown phantom during her performances, but the thrills got lost. A good techno-style video clip with a weak alibi story linking the interesting visual. Don't follow the story, just dance to it!