National Video Games Day

September 12th is National Video Games Day a day to celebrate sitting on your ass, eating snacks and mashing buttons on a game controller for hours and hours. I’m not much of a button mashing kind of guy but the rest of it sounds spectacular so I needed to celebrate the day with a movie. There is definitely no shortage of horror movies based on games. Hell there’s like a thousand Resident Evil movies. There’s even a bunch where games are a major plot point but none of those are Brainscan. And none of them have a villain like the Trickster.

The Movie
Brainscan is the story of Michael a teen obsessed with horror (weren’t we all?), video games, and his next door neighbor Kimberly. We know this very quickly because stares longingly at her from his window as she changes in her room. He also takes pictures of her- not ones she knows he’s taking. Michael is also very tech savvy and has a whole early 90s video call system and a computer that dials for him. When his best friend Kyle reads him a review of a new game called… Brainscan, Michael has to have it. He calls to order it since it will satisfy his sickest desires. The game interacts with his subconscious and he’s all in. The next day at school, Michael shows his horror movie club a particularly gross film called Death Death Death Part 2 which causes the principal to ban the club. Michael is mad but things get better when he gets home to find his Brainscan CD Rom in the mail. Oh and there’s also been a murder in his neighborhood and he meets Detective Hayden played by Frank Langella in an award worthy performance in which he shows off a wide range of emotions… well not so wide a range, really just kind of pissed.

Michael loads the game and the instructions are intense. He is ordered to hide clues and act as though he is a murderer. Michael hesitates but not for long and soon he is in a stranger’s room, killing the man and slicing off his foot. After the game, Michael is exhilarated, celebrating with milk and suddenly he has the courage to talk to Kimberly. He heads over to talk to her but while waiting in her living room (he didn’t break in, her parents let him in), he sees a news report on the murder of a local man- the same man he just killed in the game. He runs off and winds up at the crime scene and another run in with Detective Personality sorry Hayden who shoos him off again. Some twisted logic leads Michael to go play the game again but this time the game sends him an ambassador, The Trickster. The Trickster, a red mohawked man in standard 90s goth clothing, dances for an unimpressed Michael. He also gouges his own eyes, tells Michael there is a witness to the murder he committed and that he is also a witness. Don’t worry Michael, the Trickster won’t tell unless they play country music then he’ll tell everything. As the movie progresses, Michael’s interactions with the Trickster become increasingly strange- Trickster settles in to watch TV- and more violent as he tries to convince Michael to kill Kyle and Kimberly so they can’t rat him out. Michael is pretty fucked but you’ll have to watch Brainscan to see if he extricate himself from his technological nightmare. Will the Trickster eat all of Michael’s food and take over the house like some ginger mohawked, pale Kato Kaelin?- Hey it was a timely reference when the movie was released. WIll Frank Langella’s Detective Hayden portrayal continue to be Oscar-worthy? Will Michael kill the only two people in the world who seem to like him? What the fuck were we wearing in the 90s? Come to think of it, I don’t know the answers either.

How It Fits In With the Day/ Why Did I Choose This Movie
Obviously it’s a movie about the dangers of video games and how they can make you do bad things- nope that’s bullshit. Brainscan was the choice because of the Trickster and Frank Langella. The Trickster is one of the strangest villains of the 90s. He is as much unwanted houseguest as killer and the look is, well, very 90s. Some might say Frank Langella seems uninspired but the range of seriousness he portrays is stunningly small. Brainscan is definitely a product of its era and that’s not always a bad thing.

Lessons

• Don’t bring back 90s fashion. What the fuck was wrong with us? Who thought these looks were cool? Cut off flannel shirts? Those jeans? Just say no to 90s clothes.
• If a strange man comes through your TV and dances for you, let him but make him leave afterwards. Before long, he’ll be watching your TV, eating your food and trying to kill your girl.
• If a CD Rom game promises to fulfill your sickest desires and is delivered to you even when you chicken out and don’t order it, don’t play it. This probably holds true for video cassettes, CDs, 8 tracks or any other outdated media.
• Frank Langella=Legend.