Virtuality

Wow, I'm actually at a loss for words. I'll try and find a few. Shite is one that springs to mind. Yes, this film is shite. Definitely shite. So this film was actually a pilot for a TV show that mercifully never saw the light of day. But the network was contractually obliged to show the pilot anyway, so it became a dreadful "made for tv" movie.

Okay, so it's sometime in the future and the earth is going to shit. 12 people are on-board a space ship heading for a nearby star system. Of course space is fairly big, so this nearby star system is still ten years away. Presumably they're going to try and find an earth-like planet or something. I'm not sure, I didn't care. Oh yeah, apparently the whole mission is being televised as some sort of Big Brother type show too. To stop the crew going mental-trousers insane and killing each other, they each have a virtual reality headset where they can escape the utter boredom of the real world. I wish I had a virtual reality headset to escape the utter boredom of this film. Seriously, nothing happens. Ever.

The crew are about six months into their mission. They're reaching a critical "go, no-go" decision of whether to slingshot around Neptune and fuck off into deep space, or just bog off back to earth with their tails between their legs. We see various crew members in their virtual reality fantasies. These range from the American civil war to being a spy who's masquerading as the female lead singer of a Japanese rock band (oh how I wish I was kidding). Rather inevitably something starts to go wrong with the virtual reality system. This creepy guy keeps turning up in the crew's VR fantasies and generally doing nasty things like shooting them. The girl who's the spy/rock chick actually gets raped by this unsavoury character. Thankfully we don't see the actual act. That would've seriously lowered my opinion of this film. And let's face it, my opinion couldn't get much lower. The crew have a meeting about the malfunctioning VR module. After a rather long and boring meeting it's decided that the VR module will stay, as the negative effects on the crew of having no escape from their mind-numbingly boring existence would be too great. So the VR stays, despite having a rogue murderer/rapist in its midst.

So the crew bog off into deep space. And oh no, there's a problem with the outside of the ship which means some of the crew have to attempt a space walk to fix it. Some of the crew don their space suits including the commander. The commander is out in the airlock. He hasn't had time to put his helmet on yet but oh no, the airlock door closes. He thinks it's one of his colleagues messing about and tells them to open the door. But they find they're unable to. And shock horror, the outer door to the airlock starts to open. Despite protestations from the crew, the ship's computer seems unable (or unwilling) to close the door again. "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that". Long story short the commander dies. Everyone is sad. Apart from the commander of course. He's dead.

The film ends (see, I told you nothing happens) with one of the female crew going into her quarters. She sees a VR headset on the table next to some little toy soldiers from the American civil war. Hmm, that was the commander's VR fantasy. Just in case anyone is completely and utterly stupid, or if they've just lost the power of rational thought because they're so bored out of their minds (probably more likely) the woman asks the computer whose VR headset is on the table. And of course the computer responds by saying it's the commander's headset. The woman dons the headset and is taken into the commander's fantasy. There are lots of wounded people lying around. All of a sudden the commander appears and asks the woman to help with the wounded. The commander tells her "None of this is real" and that she'll only find out the truth if she follows him "through the looking-glass and down the rabbit hole". Ugh. The commander rides off on horseback into the sunset. The end. Hooray!

This film is utter nonsense. It's all too clear to see why it died on its arse and never became a series. Okay it's a pilot for a TV show, but it tries to introduce us to all 12 characters. In a TV series you can do that, in a 90 minute film you just can't. All the characters ended up melding in my mind into one generic mush. The acting wasn't great anyway, so no one really stood out for me. It was definitely "made for tv" quality acting here. The special effects and space scenes were actually not bad, but they just didn't have the story and the substance to back them up. This film is like some sort of grotesque bastard love child between Big Brother, Star Trek and 2001 (yeah I know that's three parents, just go with it). But all of those are way better than this. Well maybe not Big Brother, let's not get too carried away.

Rather inexplicably this film has an IMDb rating of 6.1 out of 10. I have no idea why it's so high. This film has nothing to redeem it whatsoever. I can't recommend that you watch this. Not even if you're the nerdiest of nerdy sci-fi fans. I think even they would struggle to find the good in this film. Wow, I suddenly went all Star Wars for a minute there. Don't watch this, unless the only alternative is Big Brother.