Cyberpunk

I've been thinking about Gamer for a while and I've been hesitant to post about it because it really is a bad movie. But I also think it firmly falls into the cyberpunk category. So here we are.

The movie is about a company that invents some new technology which allows you to remotely control other humans. They use this technology to make a new reality TV show where death-row inmates fight to the death for the chance at a pardon. So similar to Running Man, except here the inmates are remotely controlled by teenage video gamers. And while that makes absolutely no sense, that's the story they went with.

However, there's a subplot with a second TV show (or just video game?) run by the same company, and this game is called Society. Society is basically The Sims except you're controlling real people who get paid to be avatars. This is where the movie goes off the deep-end with social commentary and it isn't subtle.

Because this woman signs up to be a character:

And ends up being controlled by this guy:

And that goes about as well as you'd expect. So the plot points are already unsettling but the movie goes out of their way to make it as disgusting as they can.

Anyway, eventually it's revealed that the CEO of the company wants to use his technology to mind-control everyone and only Gerard Butler can stop him. It's a very strange movie and if it didn't try so hard to be gross I feel like it could've been a good movie.

Here's a trailer. You can watch it on Tubi.