Movie Review: Arcade

Some movies have good concepts and not so good execution and when you can appreciate what the film makers are TRYING to accomplish, I think you can enjoy a "bad" movie. Full Moon Pictures' Arcade is a perfect example. Before David Goyer would go on to pen the script for Batman Begins, Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, he wrote a screenplay for a little B-movie about a possessed video game that would consume the souls of it's players. Now, in 1993, the technology seemed ridiculous, but fast forward to 2013, where video games are almost more real than realty and a lot kids are living in that realty. Arcade doesn't seem stupid at all, in fact, it is downright scary.

We are introduced to Alex, a troubled girl who's mom committed suicide and who's father doesn't seem to care for her at all. So her friends and boyfriend are all she has left in the world. This is actually a pretty sad story and is told through some creepy dream sequences.  Her boyfriend Greg (played by a young Bryan Dattilo from Days of Our Lives, yes I looked that up because I knew him from somewhere) and the rest of her friends (featuring a young Seth Green, who still looks the same) decide to check out the local arcade: "Dante's Inferno," which looks more like a seedy underground nightclub than any arcade I went to as a kid. There they are introduced to a new virtual reality game called "ARCADE." I can't believe how many times I just typed the word Arcade, do kids even go to arcades anymore? A creepy business man, who shouldn't be allowed around children, gives away a bunch of home versions of the game after Greg plays it and disappears from sight. Alex begins the search for her lover and to try and stop her friends from suffering the same fate. To do this Alex needs to beat the game and destroy the soul that possess it. 

The special effects in Arcade are pretty bad, even for 1993. The 3D scenes inside the game come across very cheap looking and are obviously shot on an early version of a green screen. The bad guys look terrible as most are just floating heads and one of them is a orb of some kind. It also looks like Full Moon went to the Tron Reject Store for our heroes costumes while in the game. I'm also pretty sure they recycled the same alien terrain used in another Full Moon pic Dollman and just superimposed the actors onto it for one of the scenes. Despite some obvious budget constraints when it came to effects, and well, it was also 1993, where CGI wasn't exactly perfected anyway; there are some REALLY eerie scenes in Arcade, almost all of which take place outside of the video game realm. The dream sequences with Alex and her mother (played by Sharon Farrell from It's Alive, who does a FANTASTIC job here) gave me chills up my spine as they really did feel like a dream, the makers of Nightmare on Elm Street would be proud. The other scene that really creeped me out as well was when Alex and her buddy Nick find another girl who has been consumed with the game. She stares blankly at the TV, almost in a trance, grooling and smiling away, not unlike a lot teens do today (OH SNAP!). The strength of this movie is acting, the directing and the writing. Most of the young actors here went on the have careers after this and I can see why. Director Alex Pyun, who is only famous for doing B-movies, did a really good job of setting up some eerie scenes and seemed to hit his mark on this film. Of course, David Goyer would go on to write a few blockbusters that were also critically acclaimed so we knew the writing would be solid.

Arcade is the type of movie that Hollywood SHOULD be remaking as it has a good concept and ideas but the execution is off. Instead of re-imagining a classic like Halloween, why don't we look to lesser known titles and try to spruce them up? At least they would seem original and not be (for the most part)  poorly done rip offs. I really think that the themes in Arcade ring truer today than ever and a well done haunted video game movie may connect with todays illusive teen market and scare the pants off of their parents as well. Imagine that: a horror movie the whole family can enjoy.

Best Scene: Alex's dream sequence
Worst Scene: Floating head chase scene climax
Grade: 8/10
Viewed on: Full Moon Streaming