CYBERSTALKER, instead of terrifying the audience with its e-mailing terminator, dazzles the eye with computer graphics that prove more believable and visually intriguing than the plot. More important thriller considerations, such as the pacing and the handling of red herrings, fall by the
wayside.
Several computer lonely-hearts find that it doesn't pay to surf the Internet when a comic-book-obsessed killer strikes without warning. Stymied by the murderer's phantom-like ability to slay without leaving trace evidence, police detectives Salinas (Blake Bahner) and Jordan (Schnele Wilson) can
only deduce one common link: The perpetrator and his victims read the Cy-Com fantasy comic book series, "Cyberthoughts." While the crazed serial killer taunts police by gunning down a man in his shower, Jordan and Salinas badger the creator of the comic "Cyberthoughts," a hopped-up sleazebag named
Coberman (Jeffrey Combs).
Although the cops suspect the wrong man, Coberman is sexually involved with the mousy murderess, Neuman (Annie Biggs), who identifies with Coberman's comic book character, Zeiss, a human being who has been converted into a computer-dependent being. Psychotically responding to her computer's voice,
Neuman kills in the delusional hope of reaching the next level of her computer transformation. She tries to accelerate the process by slicing a woman's throat and stuffing her in a car trunk.
Bold enough to provide the cops with false clues, Neuman presents herself to Jordan as a potential victim. Neuman then blithely electrocutes her next target and chloroforms Jordan the following morning. When Jordan regains consciousness, Neuman informs her that she needs Jordan to become her
disciple in her computer crusade before she can become like the Zeiss character.
As Neuman tortures Jordan, Salinas puts two and two together via a database linking Coberman to Neuman. After dispatching sadistic Coberman, Neuman murders Salinas's back-up officer when Salinas breaks into her sanctuary. Shrewdly faking a change of heart, Jordan overpowers Neuman.
Instead of presenting the scenes of Neuman's computer interaction as the figments of a deranged imagination, CYBERSTALKER goes overboard with a sci-fi subtext that suggests Neuman really is transforming herself. Aside from the admittedly technically accomplished scenes of the madwoman conversing
with her personal computer, CYBERSTALKER is a pseudo-sci-fi crimestopper with a feeble grasp of how to whet an audience's curiosity with its dissemination of evidence. Because it doesn't take a computer genius to crack this obvious case, Detectives Salinas and Jordan seem rather slow to figure out
what the audience perceives quickly. With its police procedural material kept at low boil, CYBERSTALKER never sets viewers' pulses racing.
Only cult star Jeffrey Combs has an inkling of how to play this bizarre material; his mercurial presence makes the rest of the staidly-directed, drably-acted CYBERSTALKER look like shoddy goods indeed. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, sexual situations, substance abuse.) leave a comment