by Tim May
In Brainscan, our second killer video game movie (after the excellent Arcade), Edward Furlong plays Mike, a kid who’s obsessed with horror movies and video games. He spends his time watching and shooting his next door neighbor undress, bossing around his computerized butler, Igor, and showing slasher films to the “horror club” he started at school.
The horror club’s in trouble, however, when the principal calls Mike into his office for a little chat. The principal asks what the name of the film Mike was screening was. It was ingeniously titled Death, Death, Death, Part II. The principal then asks why Mike enjoys horror films. He calls them an “escape,” to which the principal replies, “Like lighting up a marijuana cigarette and escaping the real world, hmm? Or like watching a pornographic sex film, getting an erection, and raping someone, hmm?”
Furschlong simply says, “I don’t think erections rape people. People rape people.” This kid’s a badass. Although we all know the most badass kids wear Public Enemy t-shirts.
The principal would not budge, “Consider the horror club banned.”
Now Mike must have every film or video game the horror club chooses to indulge in reviewed personally by the principal.
Mike’s bedroom is absolutely ridiculous. He has a kitchen, the aforementioned robotic butler, and a widescreen TV. A widescreen TV! In 1994!
Mike’s friend Kyle shows Mike an advertisement in the latest issue of “Fango” (what the characters in this film call Fangoria; the magazine is mentioned so much, I can’t imagine the film didn’t recieve a great review upon its release) for a new video game called Brainscan. Apparently the new standard in interactive horror, Mike, of course, wants to play it, but he is a bit of a Scully. To quote, he’s “played them all,” and he can’t imagine a game ever surprising him again.
Regardless, he calls the number to order the game, gets a robotic voice, which he affectionately calls R2-D2, and waits for the first part of the game to arrive.
We then get into some “character development,” in which we learn Mike’s mom has died and that his father is always out of town on business trips. Why is it that in all ’90s movies with a teenager as the main character, that character must come from a broken home? It’s almost as if no crazy shit ever happens to kids who’s parents are still together.
When the package finally arrives, Mike pops the game in. He is told to “think like a killer” and is (of course) sucked into the game. After murdering someone in the game, he completes the first disc. He tells Kyle that it’s the best game he’s ever played because it “feels so real!”
Meanwhile, the girl who Mike spies on every night, Kimberly, obviously wants his dick as much as he wants her pussy. Feeling pretty confident, Mike goes over to her house, just to say hi. He is greeted by her parents, who seem to hate him for some reason. This subplot is pretty underdeveloped and we never learn why Kimberly’s parents are such assholes. While he’s waiting for Kimberly, Mike hears a news report about a murder that sounds eerily similar to the one he committed in the game. Freaked out, he scrambles away before Kimberly can come downstairs.
Upon returning home, Furlong realizes that the game was real, and that he killed someone in real life. He receives the next disc and pops it in to find out what’s going on. So, of course, a wild and crazy guy who looks like Sloth from The Goonies with a mohawk pops out, introduces himself as “The Trickster,” and begins dancing to terrible music. He has terrible quips like, “Never leave home without it” and “This one’s going to the top of the charts!” He also hates country music, and is just an all around “crazy” villain. The Trickster torments Mike for the rest of the movie, and he somehow convinces Mike to continue playing the game.
Mike starts acting pretty suspiciously around the detective investigating the murder (played by Frank Langella). He stops going to school, because he’s worried people will think he was the murderer. Still, Kimberly, being the nice girl she is, brings Mike not only his homework, but his mail, and the day’s newspaper! So, of course, Mike decides to yell at her and tell her he doesn’t need her sympathy? What an asshole.
Mike films himself playing the next part of the game, trying to find “clues” to clear himself of the crime. He, of course, winds up killing another person in the game, and clears the next disc. He calls up Kyle to apologize for a fight they’d had earlier in the movie, but Kyle doesn’t answer. The detective does! The person Mike killed in the game was his best friend. How tragic!
Kimberly comes over to comfort Mike, and shows him a petition Kyle had started at school to save the horror club. “Buddies forever?” it asked. Kyle’s death brings Mike and Kim closer together, and Mike stops being an asshole for the rest of the film.
The detective is more suspicious of Mike than ever before, so much so that he goes into Mike’s house and collects evidence without a warrant.
The film’s climax sees our renegade detective asking a bunch of citizens to help hunt Mike down, while Mike plays the last part of the game to find the clues he needs to clear his name. The game has now become so real that it’s pretty much just the real world. Furlong goes through a bunch of stupid chase scenes until he finally ends up in Kimberly’s bedroom when The Trickster shows up and sucks Mike into his mouth.
Mike then finds himself in his own room, the television telling him that he had completed Brainscan. The entire movie had been inside the game! Nobody was murdered! Kyle was alive! Mike didn’t even miss school!
Overjoyed, Mike goes next door and asks Kimberly out. Surprisingly, she actually says she’ll have to think about it. Mike finds a bunch of pictures of himself undressing in Kim’s room, though, so he knows he’s got it in the bag.
The film ends with Mike going back to the principal, asking him to review Brainscan for the horror club! That sly motherfucker.
There’s also a sequence during the end credits where a dog runs around and picks up a bone, but it makes no sense, so who give a shit?
Brainscan is a lost classic of ’90s virtual reality terror. As Roger Ebert says on the back of the box (though, hilariously, not in his actual review), it’s “terror on CD-ROM!” Grab a copy of this and Arcade, and have a double feature that will leave you too scared to ever pick up a video game controller again.