Terminal Error

The art of tension is creating high stakes, and then dancing on the edge of disaster until the climax.

When the audience is cringing at the plethora of ridiculous scenarios spewed onto the screen in front of them, tension is not achieved.

The basic premiss is not too bad. We've seen these virus films before, and the potential is there for a couple of programmer spods to do effective battle with a virus. But you have to truly research the subject, and you might realize computers can't fire guns, sign cheques, take showers... any of which would have not seemed out of place in this dross.

There is little grace in the action. They pull over to have domestic conversations. Insert irregular and obtrusive dialogue. We might as well put a colour coded bar on to denote main and subplots.

All that said, if you are the kind of person who doesn't know how to wind up your sundial, then you'll probably love this film.

As Terminal Error unraveled, I couldn't help compare it to 2001: A Space Odyssey (IMDb score 8.3), Colossus: The Forbin Project (IMDb score 7.1), and many others that successfully broach the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Also couldn't help but marvel at how badly Terminal mangled the concept despite having three decades during which the most rudimentary knowledge of internet and computers became common.

For example, given that the highest voltage in computer gear (aside from 120Vac going into the power supply) is usually 12Vdc, exploding rack panels and monitors are ridiculous. There would be no source of the voltage needed to produce the fireworks. The keyboard layouts look like something the props department cooked up, when they could have easily gone to a computer store for real computer keyboards and bought a scrap of believability. By 2000, the idea of one large computer controlling every item in a home or business (let alone, most of a city) had gone out the window. If a door lock needed to be intelligent, it probably had its own microprocessor. Cruise missiles launching vertically from silos on US soil is rubbish. Add cheesy special effects, and a variety of voices the virus employs. There's ample other evidence that those responsible for this movie had been living under a rock, technologically speaking.

We also get an OD of the bratty son who makes us understand why some species eat their young. Michael Nouri's character is totally one-dimensional, while Marina Sirtis just seems she never shed the aura of Counselor Troy from Star Trek TNG.

We ultimately must conclude that, for Terminal Error, "AI" has to mean "Artificial Idiocy." Something this bad doesn't happen naturally.

In the '50s the standard low budget movie monster was some innocent insect enlarged by radiation; today, it's a computer or similar technological device run amuck, often infected with a virus or some such. Neither premise was ever much grounded in science, but at least followed a series of familiar conventions, both with respect to the human and non-human protagonists. "Terminal Error" fits the genre, though, of course, made for the drive-in has succumbed to direct to video or (in this case)made for cable .

That said, this is an ominous enough little film that its ambitious, but ultimately cheesy special effects (thankfully limited to a small screen) and entirely predictable plot don't keep it from being entertaining in the same way those old drive-in films kept you watching.

In brief, a disgruntled employee uses the teenaged son of his ex-boss to infect the company's computers with a virus designed for revenge. Since these computers are widely used as control devices, the area's power grids, elevators, traffic signals, Army missiles are all put in the hands of our evil doer until the virus begins to mutate and turn on humankind in general.

The acting is competent enough, and there is even a bit of witty dialog between the boss and his Stephen Hawking-like associate.

If you don't expect much from this movie and need a monster fix, that's what you'll get, and you probably won't be too disappointed.

I should have read the reviews first. But then I would not have witnessed how bad acting and directing can be.

For the director, just looking at his abysmal ratings over his career tells it all. Why would any producing company invest in such movies? Money, even if profits are low?

The acting: the performance of Dylan, played by Matthew Ewald is exceedingly irritant from start to finish. When I read that he received numerous nominations and awards, I discovered that two of his best decorated performances (coffins ...) had no rating and no reviews.

In conclusion, the movies industry follows the same Gaussian pattern as the one for IQ.

Irredeemably amateurish as this is, it is more entertaining than many big-name flicks...maybe on account of its very trashiness.

Nouri, something less than an A-list actor even in his prime, plays Brad Weston, head of the crappiest looking software company you ever saw. After Busfield (employee reject of the year) throws a spaz and uses Weston's son to download a smart virus into the company computer (in a song no less)which manages among other things to blow a Ukraine nuclear facility to the hereafter - this has to be the WORST special effect ever foisted on to the viewing public at large - things just get dopier.

One must pay homage admittedly to the plastic plane sequences, not to mention the hand-drawn silo launching fx. Salaries aside (assuming anyone was PAID for this) the film obviously had a budget of less than $500....refreshments included! Defying plausibility from the word go, the conceptual brilliance of wiping out an entrenched super-virus, capable of speech and thought incidentally, with a hand-held "Game-Boy" is nothing short of awesome in its originality.

A classic of low-rent sci-fi.