If in the mid-late ’90s you watched a lot of movies over the weekend on USA Network (like me), you may recall being exposed to a quirky horror/sci-fi anthology film titled Future Shock. But, like me, you might not have even remembered the actual title of the film, instead only recalling a memorial scene where a shy, uptight man is driven to shout “Satan’s slut!” in recognition at seeing a woman’s dead body. Indeed, if you’re even more like me, you might have thought that the line “Satan’s slut!” was said multiple times, which, sadly, isn’t the case.
If not that, you might know this movie for Vivian Schilling, the writer/director and star of Soultaker of MST3K notoriety and who stars in the first segment, “Jenny Porter”. And if not that, you might have heard this movie stars Bill Paxton in its second and most well-known segment, “The Roommate”, or that the third writer/director to contribute to this anthology through its last segment, “Mr. Petrified Forrest”, is Matt Reeves, who created the TV series Felicity, directed the modern Planet of the Apes films, and has recently been tapped to fire up a new Batman film franchise yet again.
The narrative glue that brings this anthology together concerns Dr. Langdon (the hugely prolific Martin Kove), a psychologist who delves into the cutting edge of ’90s virtual reality for therapeutic purposes, treating his patients’ phobias and anxieties by subjecting them to intense and convincing false memories. Each of the anthology’s stories revolves around a different patient: a wealthy woman Jenny (Vivian Schilling) faces her fear of being home alone as she experiences being stalked by a mysterious wolf-like creature that defies even her paranoid security measures; a shy, neurotic, and easily intimidated morgue attendant George (Scott Thompson) gets stuck with the ultimate roommate from hell Vince (Bill Paxton), but things quickly get far more serious than just sleepless nights and late rent payments when George becomes the prime suspect in the brutal murder of Vince’s one-night stand, “Satan’s slut” (Timothi-Jane Graham); and a photographer Fred, after witnessing the sudden death of a close friend, has to choose between conquering his paranoia about death and a blossoming romantic relationship with a woman named Elfie (Pat Alexander)…that is, if he hasn’t already been marked by death itself.
As an anthology, it actually works quite well. The theme of being irrationally paralyzed by fear actually runs strongly through all three vignettes and the tone and quality remains consistent, although I do agree with the critical consensus—well, such as it is out there—that “Jenny Porter” is the best of the segments, especially in how it communicates a genuine feeling of helplessness and dread. It’s undermined a little by some constant shots of wolves and dogs where the story would have been better served by keeping the threat reduced to growls from an invisible source, but that’s a mild complaint for an otherwise genuinely well-presented and well-acted study of terror in isolation.
But that’s not to say the other two segments are worth skipping; far from it. “The Roommate” is darkly funny from how Bill Paxton captures the spirit of a grown-up bully in the same mold as the thug who kicks sand in the skinny guy’s face at the beach to George’s boss, who is (mostly) mute and communicates his emotions and instructions through very grim facial expressions. And while “Mr. Petrified Forrest” is probably ill-fitting for what is to some degree a horror anthology, it does its work through some pretty effective storytelling, like a fairly subtle scene where Fred’s father nearly breaks through his son’s paranoia but he realizes some badly timed news has made his efforts futile. It also has some beautiful shots, from Fred slowly watching a small plane that crashed and is burning in someone’s front yard to him sitting in bed bathed in blue and surrounded by film stock, highlighting his fear and its consequences better than dialogue ever could. There isn’t much to say about the framing story about Dr. Langdon because it isn’t much of a story in of itself, although it does also have a genuinely funny section in which a staff member frightens away a couple of prospective patients by arguing about a previous patient who went insane from the virtual reality treatment on the phone.
That said, there are some baffling creative choices here and there. There’s a bizarre sequence meant to communicate the idea of a “food chain” that involves a random man who is implied to have violently kicked a dog for no reason (!!). Also the ending, which sees Dr. Langdon apparently tempted by his own virtual reality device or questions his own sense of reality, and a brief scene where Jenny’s virtual reality experience is being observed by a group of doctors within the dream itself don’t really make sense and feel like remnants of an earlier draft of a script left in. This is somewhat supported by the fact that this movie had an indie comic book adaptation of all things, discussed by Linkara here, which does give more context to both the doctors and the ending with Dr. Langdon, but in my research I couldn’t verify if the comic is actually based on an earlier draft of the script, in which Dr. Langdon had much more sinister motives but was also himself a patient experiencing virtual reality, or if the comic was deliberately “dumbed down” for a stereotypical comic book readership or a little from column A and column B.
As for the movie itself, it doesn’t quite transcend its low budget, so it has an unpolished feel, which depending on your tastes is part of its charm or one of its flaws. Nor do all three of the segments seem to have been originally written for the virtual reality motif. Only “Jenny Porter” really feels as if it was intended for the framing story. “The Roommate” has a twist ending that really doesn’t make sense as part of George’s virtual reality experience while “The Petrified Mr. Forrest” has its own framing device of sorts, Fred having a near-death experience in Purgatory, which means in a way that the story is double framed. Again, though, the stories do share and effectively convey a common theme, which is more than can be said for a lot of movie anthologies.
While I’m more conscious of the flaws here than I was when I first saw the movie as a kid, I’m still very fond of it. It’s genuinely a solid anthology that I would still say is worth watching if you catch it on YouTube or dig up the DVD or VHS copy somewhere. This is even more true today, as it’s the sort of creative, low-budget movie that’s sadly an endangered species in our current era of mega-media monopolies and creatives who are spoiled by choice for potential platforms yet are starved of opportunities for getting their work out there.
Trash Culture 