Arcade
- Directed by
- Albert Pyun
- Written by
- David S. Goyer
- Produced by
- Full Moon Entertainment, Cathy Gesualdo, Charles Band, Michael Catalano
Why it’s HorroRated
Arcade is a product of its exact cultural moment — early 90s VR paranoia, Full Moon Entertainment's direct-to-video ambitions, and a premise that Tron had already mapped but nobody had applied to horror quite this directly. The CGI hasn't aged well and Albert Pyun's direction is workmanlike, but Megan Ward is a legitimately strong lead and the brain cell origin story gives the villain more psychological weight than most DTV horror bothers with. It's rough around the edges and knows it. For fans of early 90s tech horror curiosities it's a worthwhile dig.
Synopsis
Alex Manning and her friends get early access to Arcade, a VR game being test marketed by a tech company CEO with more going on than a product launch. One by one her friends stop coming home and Alex figures out what losing actually means. The game's AI has been spliced with brain cells from a murdered boy, which gives the premise a darker foundation than the Full Moon Entertainment branding might suggest. David S. Goyer wrote the script and the cast includes Seth Green, Peter Billingsley, and John de Lancie.
Filed under
Quick facts
- Release date
- March 30, 1994
- Runtime
- 1 hour 25 mins
- Country
- United States of America
- Language
- English
- Content rating
- R
- Entry type
- Movie
