Brainscan (1994) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 6

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What the heck is a CD-ROM?

Brainscan presents an interesting idea: what if there was a video game so real that the players thought they were actually doing the things in real life? How would that affect them as a person? And what sort of lessons would they learn? Yet, this film doesn’t seem to have much of a lesson for audiences, and apparently, the filmmakers didn’t learn much either.

Before Viewing

The trailer presents a story familiar to all. A disenfranchised and rebellious youth seeks out new and exciting prospects, discovering an interactive horror video game. Some demon character, calling itself the Trickster, manifests to make all the lads’ wishes come true. Suddenly real dead bodies begin piling up and the youth has no idea he was complicit in real-world killings. The fears of the internet and early computers manifest in Brainscan!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

After a brief flashback/dream sequence of a young bloodied child crawling from a car accident in the rain, audiences are introduced to Michael (Edward Furlong), that same child, now a teenager. His friend Kyle (Jamie Marsh) calls to ask if he’s seen the advertisement for a new interactive CD-ROM, called “the most frightening experience available on this planet.” Michael spaces out on the call because he’s watching Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), a female classmate, change clothes in the window across the street. Michael calls the phone number listed for Brainscan and gets a live person who tells him the game interfaces with his subconscious, and that the first installment will be on its way.

At school, Michael is called before principal Fromberg (David Hemblen) for showing Death Death Death Part 2 in his Horror Club. The principal cancels the club telling Michael he must personally approve any new movie or game the boy wishes to share. Back at home, Michael’s father calls and apologizes that he will be away for work for a few more days. Angered that Kim is having a party he wasn’t invited to, Michael shuts off his phone and puts in the Brainscan game that arrived in the mail that day. A flash of strobe lights signals the start of the game and suddenly Michael is in the point of view of a killer.

The game, which appears amazingly realistic compared to other computer and CD-ROM games of the 90s, prompts Michael to enter a stranger’s house and kill him. He cuts the foot off the victim and is encouraged to put it someplace safe. Michael comes out of the trance the game has put him in sweaty and euphoric. He completed the level with time to spare. The next day he sees a news report of a murder in town. Stopping by the victim’s house he realizes it was the same house and victim from the game. Freaking out, he returns home.

A strange shape emerges from his television monitor turning into an odd-looking man called Trickster (T. Ryder Smith), congratulating Michael on his achievement. The youth doesn’t believe what is happening, repeating that it doesn’t make sense. Trickster tells him it doesn’t have to, and that he has to take on the next mission–eliminate a witness. Michael tries to dispose of the first victim’s foot, which he finds in his freezer. Kyle stops by to borrow the game, but Michael gives him the brush-off. When the second disc arrives, he refuses to play but then gets an idea.

Michael starts the second session with a video camera running on himself. He awakens from the game session with no memory of what happened–unlike the last time. Looking at the video, he sees his body leave the house as if in a trance. Inside his freezer, he finds Kyle’s necklace. ​​Lieutenant Hayden (Frank Langella) & Sergeant Martin (Victor Ertmanis) stop by to question Michael about the death of his friend and become suspicious. Trickster presents Michael with disc three, and promises he will not have to kill anyone, only remove evidence. But during the round Principal Fromberg is crushed by bricks and Sergeant Martin is shot by a vigilante neighborhood watch group.

The final disc is offered by Trickster who needs him to eliminate another witness–Kimberly. Michael heads to her house but can’t go through with it, so Trickster tries to take over his body. Michael fights back and destroys him. Kimberly says she’s in love with Michael as well and has been secretly taking pictures of him. Trickster reappears opening the door for Hayden who shoots Michael dead. Michael awakens in his room just after the first game session. The whole game has been the ultimate experience in terror and all in his head. The party’s still going on at Kimberly’s house so he goes over and asks her out. She says maybe later and they share a brief kiss. Michael takes the Brainscan game to Principal Fromberg to review for the horror club. A mid-credit scene has a dog running through town with the first victim’s foot.

“It doesn’t have to make sense. All these horror movies you watch.” – Trickster

Not to be confused with Braindead, Brain Dead, or Brainstorm the 1994 horror film Brainscan presents a topical film about a lonely teen looking for entertainment to make up for his lack of friends and family. It’s a film that looks for horror elements in modern-day technology, much like Videodrome, 976-Evil, or The Lawnmower Man. But instead of being about television, chat lines, or cyberspace, this film deals with a video game, specifically one played on a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM, which stands for compact disc read-only memory, was a type of software for computers that could store much more data (often video and audio) than a standard floppy disk. It was introduced to the public in 1986 and used to hold the Grolier Academic Encyclopedia. It became a popular format for immersive computer games through the late 80 and throughout the 1990s with Myst (1993) being one of the most popular interactive games.

Like other sci-fi and horror films of this era, Brainscan asks questions about technology and the nature of reality. What if the computer experience was so real, that you couldn’t discern it from real life? This was tackled incredibly well a few years later in The Matrix, but it was a question that had been raised for decades utilizing various types of technology. As new and better experiences were made available to the consumers, new and better films sought to capitalize on the idea of getting lost in the game, or film, or computer. However, Brainscan owes more to one particular film, and franchise, than any other–and it’s not one about technology. The game is marketed as the “ultimate experience in interactive terror.” Michael’s time within the game “interfaces with [his] subconscious” and doesn’t necessarily make any sense. The host of the game is Trickster, a raucous and rebellious spirit-like entity with long fingers and a wicked sense of humor. What other film could this be similar to except A Nightmare on Elm Street?

T. Ryder Smith’s villain is the highlight of the film and seems completely inspired by Freddy Krueger. He jokes with Michael and cajoles him into performing the tasks. In the end, he’s as much a figment of Michael’s dreamspace as Freddy is on Elm Street. But that’s about where the similarities end. Within the nightmares of Elm Street, characters are not safe. If they are attacked and killed in their dreams then they die in real life. But Brainscan creates a dreamworld, which the audience is initially unaware of, where bad things happen but do not affect reality. Kyle is killed in the game but is later seen alive. So the terror experienced by the character, and the audience, throughout the film ends up being make-believe–much like horror films in general.

In fact, the nature of reality is one of Trickster’s messages to Michael. “You wanted the ultimate experience in terror. Well, terror’s in the doing. It’s not watching horror films like some child.“ The sadistic, demon-like character compares Michael’s reality to a film–while within a film. It’s self-reflexive and meta, but ultimately belittles the film itself. Brainscan appears to be creating an ultimate terror experience yet having the fake-out ending that everything was “all a dream” cheapens the horror, especially for hardcore fans of this genre. Maybe that idea was telegraphed earlier by having the name of the in-film game be the same name as the film itself. Again, it’s like creating the Matrix inside a film called The Matrix–it foreshadows the twisty nature of reality.

Brainscan reportedly did horribly at the box office, being pulled from theaters within the first two weeks of release. It might be due to audiences not liking the simulated reality within the film, but I’d wager it had more to do with other elements in the film. For starters, Edward Furlong’s acting is absolutely atrocious. I don’t think it can be blamed on the substance abuse that he fought throughout his twenties. It’s more just the nature of youth and inexperience. He was around 16 or 17 at the time and this was only his fourth film, and it was a lead role to boot. His dramatic range goes from sleepy to manic within seconds, and his go-to move is brushing the hair out of his face. But there are even more elements of the film that just don’t track. Most of these can be chalked up to things that happen in the game that don’t have to make sense like Michael hiding in some bushes along a path where a dog stops to smell him, but the owner is completely unable to see him. The bushes are only about two feet high. The film also opens with Michael’s dream about a car accident that presumably killed his mother and left him with a scar on his leg. What purpose does this serve in the overall scheme of the story? Michael has a limp. Michael is unsupervised. Michael craves parental interaction. What are the filmmakers trying to say?

Overall, Brainscan seems like a myriad of horror films that were trying to push the genre, both in its usage of gore and violence, but also in its perceptions of reality. It attempts to set up an unlikeable character (loner, voyeur, obsessed with graphic horror) so that the audience will buy into the fact that Michael committed these killings. But the reveal that it was all in his head is detrimental to the overall story–even if it was a wake-up call for the character about the direction of his life. The melding of the elements of Michael’s fictional story, and his real story aren’t a cool ending to the film. It just makes the audience question the filmmakers. Within the game, Kimberly confesses to Michael that she’s really in love with him, and she also takes voyeuristic pictures of him, something that carries over into reality, just not as strongly. Even the final scene of the film, which takes place partway into the credits blurs the lines even further. These end scenes had commonly become a place for jump scares and a final moment of horror. Here the filmmakers show the dog running around with the severed foot in its mouth. So was the man killed after all and Michael really did bury the foot? I’m not sure even the filmmakers know. Maybe the moment proves that Michael is on a deeper level of another game–setting up stakes for Brainscan II, which never materialized. The film could have been better, though T. Ryder Smith’s performance is certainly a highlight. Otherwise, the scares are low, and once the viewer knows the twist ending, it removes a lot of the tension.

Assorted Musings

• The scenes from Death Death Death Part 2 are actually a movie called The Dracula Saga (1973), a Spanish horror film.
• Frank Langella might be remembered by horror aficionados for his role in the 1979 adaptation of Dracula.
• Edward Furlong got his start, famously, in Terminator II: Judgment Day but also starred previously in Pet Sematary II.
• This film’s screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker, is probably best known for his screenplay for Se7en and has also written scripts for Sleepy Hollow and The Wolfman.