V-World Matrix (1999) — Triskaidekafiles

V-WORLD MATRIX

WRITER: Written by Tim Sullivan, Story by Jeffrey Leroy

DIRECTOR: Ron Ford

STARRING: Mikul Robins as Gordon

James Servais as Evans

Tim Sullivan as Dr. Parks

Stephanie Beaton as Veronica

Ron Ford as Slavin

Sydnee Steele as Dark Woman

QUICK CUT: Some dudes learn about the dangers of online gaming.

THE MORGUE

Gordon - An office drone who is an almost too nice guy. Doesn’t like violence. Doesn’t like s…well, he likes sex, but consensual, and socially acceptable sex. He is very reluctant to give in to the debauchery of V-World.

Evans - Gordon’s best friend, and his direct opposite. Give him all the sex and drugs and murder. It’s just a game!

Mr. Carlson - Gordon’s boss, and more like Evans. But much farther down the road, and very much enjoying the ride.

Dr. Parks - The man who created V-World, and is more than willing to take the system down to apply the latest bug fixes.

Mr. Slavin - The man who owns the business side of V-World, and you know the type. He’s more than willing to let a few people be hurt, if it doesn’t affect the bottom line TOO much. Even then, he does know when to cut his losses and do the right thing.

Dark Woman - The main antagonist in V-World. A brutal killer, a sexual being, every man’s deepest desire and worst nightmare.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions. For my birthday adjacent review this year, I picked, uh. This. V-World Matrix. I came across this years ago while digging up other movies, and because it sounded ridiculous, I wanted to give it a Triskly whirl. And here we are.

The movie opens up in your average looking city, with a pair of average looking dudes dressed like they're gonna go do some grocery shopping or any other mundane task. Oh, and they're carrying guns.

We see a shot of a black widow spider and then OH SO CLEVERLY cut to a dangerous looking woman dressed all in black.

They start shooting at each other, and because this movie can't afford actual bullets, they instead fake muzzle flashes by...flashing the screen. And occasionally add in REALLY REALLY BAD gunshot effects.

When you order Trinity from Wish dot com.

We watch as she handily disarms both guys, and then disappears in a puff of ray tracing. YUP this was all a simulated VR game. And I gotta say, if you're going to have characters enter a VR world, and it looks exactly like the real world, and the characters look normal, to the point of mundanity...what is the point? I mean yes, the point is to save money on a budget of 3.50, but come on.

At least create a visually interesting world, because nothing else in this movie is.

But that concludes their free trial, and we watch a WHOLE HECK OF A LOT of 90s video game footage of a sub whooshing through an obstacle course, and just LISTENING to people go WHOOoooOOOOAAAHHH to try and make this sound impressive. It isn't. It wasn't then either.

Gordon and Evans pop back into the really real world, head back to their boring lives, and we just kinda...wait. Evans is all in on V World, but Gordon is much less so. He doesn't trust it, all the violence, it can't be right!

And just...there is so much of this. So much sitting around and talking. How best to capitalise on the popularity of The Matrix? I know! Have thrilling discussion action! I get it, they don't have Matrix money and have to fill time somehow, but...

But all this talk does establish there are legitimately some concerns with the technology harming people, or making them harm others. But like it's a shark on Labor Day, Mr. Slavin ignores the warnings for profit.

There IS a pretty solid idea with Gordon having dreams about V-World, telling him to go back to V-World, and the use of supposedly subliminal encouragement could have been a great plot point.

But that's good enough to get him to go back, so Gordon and Evans return to V-World to confront Dark Woman!

They arrive once more into sheer mundanity, and Gordon reads off from a menu of options they can experience. He homes in on "hookers" but Evans is unimpressed, saying they can get hookers at home.

And we are subjected to a ridiculously long sex scene with the hookers. This movie at least knows how to pad out the run time.

Eventually, Dark Woman bursts in and kills the women, sending the guys off on the run. And it turns out this is against Dark Woman's programming, as she's supposed to wait until AFTER the sex to bring the violence.

Dark Woman finds our zeroes on the run and starts firing. Evans takes cover, and Gordon stands there like a fool. And somehow manages to avoid getting hit by every single bullet by wobbling around.

That's not computer code! That's not even spreadsheet calculations!

But Gordon's can don’t attitude keeps Dark Woman busy, while Evans gets a bead on her and kills her. Yay! The day is won, the movie is over, and we can all go home now!

...Aww dangit, we're not even halfway through yet.

That's when Gordon's boss, Mr. Carlson, and his wife Veronica, show up to congratulate them on a murder well done.

Believe it or not, I'm not William Katt, he'd never be in this movie...

Carlson is impressed by Gordon's taste for murder, assuming he’s into this shit for being in the game, and this might actually help him get a better position at work.

His boss wants to hook up with the boys so they can have more fun, and Gordon continues to not Get It. The movie keeps mentioning this is a virtual world, with zero stakes, it's a video game, and Gordon just...keeps balking at any and every action.

Carlson is there to arguably represent the hedonism of it all, he's totally into it, and could be used to say things about desensitization, and Gordon the counterpoint, but these ideas are just kinda...there. They're never fleshed out, never worked with. It comes SO CLOSE to having a point.

On his way out, Gordon runs into Dark Woman, who tries to sex him up. He still fights the game, and ends up shooting her when she starts to go from sex to violence. Which again impresses everyone.

Gordon doesn't take his first act of (fake!) murder well at all, and we get an attempt at philosophizing the movie's ideas. He says he actually feels bad for her, dying all the time. But once he's drunk and killed a bit more, Gordon starts getting into it.

Back in the really real world, Dr. Parks and Nurse Recreation have discovered a virus in the code. They talk Slavin into shutting down the game, and retrieving the guests, so they can debug it properly.

Meanwhile, Carlson and his wife find more programs to have sex with and ENOUGH WITH THE LONG SEX SCENES. Jebus, this movie is horny.

The hooker he's banging decides she's had enough once he starts beating her, takes control, and shoots Carlson. This causes him to wake back up, which is probably good for the evacuation.

Veronica is chasing down Dark Woman out on the streets, and ends up meeting much the same fate when the video game villain shoots her dead in the head.

These violent delights have violent ends.

I have never been so upset by how bad these special effects are…

But it's then revealed that it is NOT the Carlson's that woke up, but rather Dark Woman and the Hooker have taken over their bodies. And spoiler; this will be a potentially interesting plot point that will instead be wasted.

The hooker is concerned, but Dark Woman tells her she is empowered! She can do what she wants! Like murder! ...this is not how feminism works.

Dark Woman and Hooker Carlson go on a bit of a killing spree, eventually running into a man who insists he is "Film Star Randall Malone!"

...WHO?? Ehh, he's dead now, it doesn't matter.

But alarms start going off, so Dark Woman finds a terminal so she can access the V-World code and do...whatever her plot is. Oh, she deletes her primary directive that forces her to always lose. So there's that.

Meanwhile, Gordo and Evans notice some things aren't working right, and wander around trying to find answers. They run into a programmer sent to get them out, he explains vaguely, until Dark Woman shows up and kills him.

They make a run for it, but run into the hooker, who starts beating Evans with, what I can only describe as sounding like he's being hit with a cardboard tube.

Shitsnakes! I can’t access the PEN15 satellite without the shriek command codes!

Gordon jumps in to save his friend, but Dark Woman finishes him off. And Gordon, the coward that he still is, bravely runs away.

Back in the really real world, Slavin is about to get out of there because the security team is compromised...which means security was playing the game and taken over by being murdered in the game? ...Whatever.

Anyways, they stop Slavin from leaving, and Doctor Parks tries to do something with the computer, but is soon grabbed, drugged, and tossed into V-World himself.

Okay so.

Let me see if I got this straight; the plot of the movie is, Dark Woman desires freedom, so kills people to possess their bodies (How? No one knows and the 'science' is dodgy) so she can access a computer in the real world, rewrite her programming, so she can...go BACK to V-World, with no restrictions?? Buh?? What a waste of gaining free will.

Sid 6.7 would be so disappointed in you!!

Unfortunately, I must get back to the movie… Gordon is running through a forest, runs into Dr. Parks, and he gives him an infodump on everything I've been dealing with here.

While they're running, they run into a group of hunters and...wait a second...IS THIS FOOTAGE FROM EYES OF THE WEREWOLF?!

Parks and Gordon escape the reused footage, and the doctor explains that somehow, "a simulacrum has entered the personality of a tourist."

"I don't see how that could happen!" "Some sort of psychosis triggered by violent emotions has triggered a personality transfer." WHAT. Science better, movie!

But fortunately, he explains that he programmed a "spike" into Dark Woman's hack, which will causes a complete system crash. In an hour. So good luck surviving until then!

The end of the movie HAS to be around here somewhere…

All Gordon has to do is last that long, stay on the run, and not get shot. Now...stay alive in a virtual world for an hour could have been an entire movie's worth of plot BY ITSELF. But here? in V-World Matrix? Relegated to the final ten minutes

Literally, that is what the rest of the movie is. Nothing but Gordon running through construction sites...er, virtual locations, as Dark Woman chases behind him. All we're doing at this point is running out the runtime until the spike happens.

We do get one last slap fight between the two, and Dark Woman probably would've killed him if the satellites didn't explode, and Gordon wakes up back in the really real world, surrounded by dead bodies.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

VIdeo: Not grrreat. Very clearly a VHS rip, very washed out. It’s in the category of “I’ve seen worse” but it’s very poor quality.

Audio: It sounds fine, but nothing noteworthy.

Sound Bite: “What's a gurbull?" "I think it's an animal." Yes, Gordon misread “gerbil”.

Body Count: It gets a late start, but ti definitely has a decent body count. Kinda. Virtual deaths are hard to quantify. I think Dark Woman is on this list like, five times.

1 - 22 minutes in, and Dark Woman 'kills' a hooker.

2 - And then a second one.

3 - Dark Woman is killed by Evans.

4 - Gordon kills Dark Woman a second time.

5 - The "gun man of V World" gets gunned down by Gordon

6 - Hooker kills Carlson.

7 - Dark Woman shoots Veronica

8 - Dark Woman in Veronica's body stabs a nurse through the eye.

9 - And snaps the neck of another.

10 - Hooker in the body of Carlson kills a tech with a monitor

11 - Hooker chokes out Film Star Randall Malone

12 - Dark Woman kills his friend.

13 - Dark Woman shoots the programmer

14 - Evans is killed by Dark Woman

15 - Mister Slavin gets killed by one of the possessed security guards.

16 - Doctor Park gets shot

17 - Gordon shoos Dark Woman again.

Best Corpse: Evans gets a bit of a moment at least.

Blood Type - D+: Bare minimum with splotches when people get shot. I want to give it zero points for being such a bland virtual world.

Sex Appeal: Again, this is a very horny movie. It has more boobs than it has blood.

Drink Up! Every time the movie fart flashes between the two worlds.

Movie Review: I dunk on this movie something fierce. But I do genuinely like the core idea here. The debate between is it real, does it desensitize us, what’s the morality here? are all fantastic issues to explore. A virtual character wanting more from her life is rife with possibility. But they’re all kinda breezed past. Lots of opportunity, with very little payoff. But I see the potential here. And it’s called Westworld. The thing that kills this movie is the production values. It’s made on the cheap, and it looks it. Nothing is believable or interesting. I’ve seen worse ideas do more with less money. This is a movie of missed opportunities. Two out of five dead Dark Womans.

Entertainment Value: There is some stuff to entertain and laugh at here, for all the wrong reasons. But it’s still so bland, and that’s hard to get over. The random “film star” is the best bit of WTFery, and that’s kinda sad. It’s almost worth seeing to see how poorly these sorts of ideas can be. Two out of five possessed redheads.