#28 - Evolver

MOVIE:  Evolver (1994)

PLOT:  A kid wins a toy robot in a virtual reality game contest and it turns out the toy robot was actually a former military program designed to create the perfect robotic soldiers.  After playing the toy robot in a real game and defeating it, Evolver begins to evolve...  and realizes, it hates to lose.

OVERALL ENJOYMENT:  Not bad.  Solid b-movie.

GOOD POINTS:  Good performances by the veteran acting cast, solid special effects for the time, even some nudity!

BAD POINTS:  No shower scene.  How can you have a scene in a girls locker room and not include a shower scene?  I am so disappointed.

SPOILERS:  I would have thought the handles on knives were thicker than those tiny balls the robot was shooting, so it would have been hard to fit them into the launchers.  Also, it would seem perfectly ludicrous to me that a programmer wouldn't include an option for the robot to eliminate a player with the toy ammunition and then program that player out of the game, instead of generating an error and causing the robot to try and find better ammo.  That just seems silly.

IMPRESSIONS:  Okay, so this movie is 18 years old.  I can't remember if I saw it before or not.  I am sure I haven't reviewed it before.  Still, reasonable plot, good acting and decent special effects overall.  It might have been more comfortable if it had been released in the 80's, but it's mere existence raises a question.  Didn't we learn enough from Evolver (1994) to know we should NEVER include military grade projects in our children's toys by the time Small Soldiers (1998) was made?  I guess not!  I'm not really sure if this movie qualifies as "horror," but as "Alien" proved, science fiction could be scary, too.  This movie is certainly not as good as "Alien," but I always include sci-fi in my horror list.  Let's put it this way, if there's a good monster in it, I love the movie!  If there isn't, well, it may still be horror, but it's not MY kind of horror.  This movie at least had a robot with a penchant for killing in it, and that qualifies as a sufficiently scary monster type for it to make my list.

OTHER NEWS:  I have a headache and I feel ill again.  For those that know me, nothing new there.  I'm probably coming down with the next virus, infection, flu or cold that's making the rounds.  Strangely, I'm usually pretty healthy during the summer months.  I need to move to florida or something where i'm always warm.  Seems to be a better environment for me.

This has been a decent month full of reviewing new movies, but I think I am going to just review what I want to watch the next few days.  If I find anything I haven't seen before and want to give it a viewing, great, but I'm tired of scouring netflix for stuff I haven't seen yet.  Frankly, most of the movies either suck, or aren't horror, which really narrows down what I can view this month.  Oh well, only 3 days left anyway.  I'll still try and find stuff I haven't reviewed before, but with over 200 posts to look through every time I want to see if I've reviewed something before, I think I'll just hope I haven't reviewed it recently and watch it for sheer enjoyment's sake.  Funny, I haven't seen Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin so far this year.  I will look for it this week.

Also, I love watching "Trick r Treat" every year on Halloween.  If you haven't seen it, one of the best actual "Halloween" movies I've ever seen.  Everything that happens during the movie takes place ON halloween, there's lots of gore and killing and halloween ghost stories and such and so on, and it's fun to watch besides.  Something for everyone!  Reminds me of the original Halloween by John Carpenter.  Plus, Trick R Treat has actual monsters instead of just masked killers!  AND Anna Paquin!  Halloween doesn't have Anna Paquin.  So there!  :-P

Okay, I am going to get a lot of rest and watch nothing but horror the next few days.  See you guys tomorrow night for another review.  We're in the home stretch!