Ghost In The Machine

Karen Allen stars as Terry Munroe, a pretty divorcee who goes to an electronics store to buy a gift for her boss. She hits upon a program which allows one to scan one's address book, with the names, addresses, and phone numbers converted into a computer image. Too bad for her that she accidentally leaves her address book behind, and even worse for her that one of the employees happens to be Karl (Ted Marcoux), a.k.a. the Address Book Killer, a local psychopath who's been stealing address books and slaughtering everyone he finds listed. He gets hold of Terry's book and sets out to pay her a murderous visit, but has a near-fatal accident on the way and winds up in hospital. While he's being scanned for X-rays, a bolt of lightning hits the building and, as Karl dies, his soul gets zapped into the computer mainframe. Now he's a malevolent electrical spirit, able to travel anywhere the juice will take him.

In short order, he begins to make life hell for Terry and her young computer-loving son Josh (Wil Horneff). He wipes out Terry's bank account, turns up menacingly in a virtual reality game Josh plays, and lures their dog to drown in the swimming pool. Then he gets serious, killing off the names Terry scanned from her book at the shop: he cranks up her boss' home microwave to the max, frying him; burns a guy she's been dating to death at his job; and electrocutes a pretty babysitter who's watching Josh at his friend's house.

Help is on the way, however, in the form of Bram (Chris Mulkey), a nice-guy computer serviceman who bonds with Josh and ultimately realizes what's going on. Since Karl is nothing but an electrical stream at this point, Bram realizes that a large enough magnet will "erase" him, and that a particle accelerator will do the job nicely. Dropping a virus into the mainframe, Bram forces Karl's spirit to travel into the system at a nearby lab, where he hopes to trap him in the accelerator. And although Karl forms into an invulnerable, computerized human form and attempts to kill Terry and Josh, Bram manages to activate the accelerator and obliterate him.

GHOST IN THE MACHINE is the kind of film that demonstrates just how much contempt the makers of a horror film can have for their audience. It's a sure bet that characters, situations, and dialogue as ridiculous and illogical as those on view here wouldn't be allowed to pass in a film in any other genre, but clearly the producers and studio behind this one figured the horror crowd would swallow anything. The script by William Davies and William Osborne (who usually write comedies, like TWINS and STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT--and, it could be said, have done so here) is full of foolish gaffes. For example: Why is Terry made to be so stupid that she leaves her address book at the shop, when Karl kills only those people whose names she's already scanned into the computer? If Karl's spirit, as we're shown, can get into any electrical line he wants, how does Bram trap him by dropping a virus into just one mainframe system? Why is Josh made to be so obnoxiously "hip" if he's supposed to be a sympathetic character? And how could a woman director (Rachel Talalay) justify scenes like the one in which Josh and his pal pay the sexy babysitter to open her blouse for them?

Talalay, who at the very least demonstrated some understanding of how the horror genre works in her previous film, FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE, seems to have lost it completely. The death-by-device scenes are laboriously built up to the point where any suspense or surprise are drained out of them, and Karl is a rather uninteresting villain (moody, beady-eyed, became a killer because he had a bad family life--you know the type) before his transformation. The potentially creepy notion of an Address Book Killer is rendered ludicrous through the exposition, and though the idea of a hacker using his expertise to strike at people (as the characters at first believe is happening) has possibilities, the scenario presented here is way too literal to be creepy. (A scarier presentation of appliances amok--in part because there's no explanation--can be found in the little-seen 1986 chiller PULSE.)

The actors fight a losing battle against their sketchy characterizations and grim dialogue (Josh to Terry, a '60s rebel turned complacent: "You used to march on Washington--now look at you!"). The special effects are good, with some nifty computer-generated animation, but they're an empty, ineffective crutch on which to support an entire film--and besides, better visuals had already appeared in THE LAWNMOWER MAN. Horror fans, refreshingly, saw through this silliness and avoided GHOST IN THE MACHINE in droves. (Violence, profanity.) leave a comment