Horror in the 90s: 'Brainscan'

Brainscan (1994)

Directed by John Flynn

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker

Starring Edward Furlong, Amy Hargreaves, T. Ryder Smith, Frank Langella

Release Date April 22nd, 1994

Published April 29th, 2024

When I saw that the sci-fi horror movie Brainscan was written by Andrew Kevin Walker, famed screenwriter of David Fincher's Seven and the credited screenwriter on several famous Blacklist screenplays, I got a little excited. Walker is a brilliant, risky, and unpredictable screenwriter with a lurid edge to his work. I went from having exceedingly low expectations to curious and hopeful. Then, I watched Brainscan and my hopes were dashed. It turns out, Andrew Kevin Walker wrote and sold the screenplay seven years before it arrived in theaters as a very, very different movie.

Brainscan stars Edward Furlong, fresh off his blockbuster role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as horror movie junkie, Michael. Michael's life revolves around horror movies. Alongside his best bud forever, Kyle (Jamie Marsh), Michael runs a horror movie club at school. The club has even attracted Michael's crush, his next door neighbor Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who we first meet as Michael is spying on her with a telescope as she undresses in front of her bedroom window, which is completely open. This is so the screenwriters can cheat and have dialogue indicating that Kimberly wants Michael to spy on her.

See, he's not a creep, it's a weird fetish thing. It's totally okay. Not hard to tell that men wrote and directed Brainscan, is it? Anyway, getting past what a little creep Michael is, let's get back to his horror movie obsession. While reading Fangoria Magazine, in a bid for free coverage from the magazine, yay corporate synergy, am I right, anyway, Michael finds an ad for a new CD-Rom horror game called Brainscan. The game promises an immersive experience as you go inside the perspective of a serial murderer as he carries out a murder.

As the title and plot indicate, Michael orders the game and sets about playing it while his friend's are having a party next door. Once the game begins, the outside world fades away and Michael finds himself inside a stranger's bedroom. There is a knife in his hand and Michael watches helplessly as the man is stabbed to death. We watch everything from the killer's perspective, as if Michael were the killer and we were in Michael's head. Waking up the next morning after playing the game, Michael is deeply disturbed.

It turns out, spoiler alert: Michael was the one killing this guy. It turns out that the guy who got murdered is from Michael's neighborhood and the cops, headed up by Detective Hayden (Frank Langella) are crawling all over the place. When Michael runs home, having discovered that he was a killer, he encounters the breakout character of 1994, The Trickster (T. Ryder Smith). The Trickster is the host of Brainscan leading Michael through the four stages of gameplay. First up was the murder. Next, Michael has to play the game again if he wants to destroy the evidence that he's the killer.

Day 3, The Trickster tells Michael that someone witnessed him killing the first victim. So, Michael has to find the witness and kill them. Naturally, this comes with a twist. I won't spoil it, but Michael has to kill one our other main characters. The fourth day, Michael is forced to choose between the girl that he likes and spending the rest of his life in jail. Will he kill Kimberly or will he turn himself into the cops and spend the rest of his life in jail. That's the plot of Brainscan. Every now and then, The Trickster pops up and torments Michael and even tries performing a song. It gets cut off.

Brainscan stinks, there really is no other way to put it. It's quite clear that the people who made Brainscan thought that The Trickster was going to be their Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. They really thought that a character that looks like what would happen if you electrocuted and burned Alice Cooper while on stage, was going to be the key to franchise money. This is indicated by the fact that The Trickster has a song on the soundtrack, written by and performed by Primus. It's poignant in its misguided and failing grasp for glory.

Funny thing about The Trickster, he was not in Andrew Kevin Walker's original screenplay for Brainscan. In the original screenplay, there was just a voice of the game that would torment Michael when he would call the Brainscan hotline and demand to be let out of the game. The game was also a VHS based game in the original screenplay which is funny for just being a wonderful artifact of the 1980s origin of this screenplay. T. Ryder Strong does give his all to the performance of The Trickster but he was doomed from the start by the empty, grasping greed of filmmakers desperate for that horror franchise dollar.

The most famous aspect of Brainscan is the hatred that director John Flynn had for star Edward Furlong. The only actual teenager in the movie, Furlong was flush with cash and clout coming off of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and was apparently enjoying his newfound fame on a nightly basis. Furlong reportedly showed up on set and immediately went to sleep. According to Flynn, Furlong would have to be slapped awake every morning to shoot his scenes and, having seen Brainscan, I am inclined to believe him. Furlong's performance is sleepy, low energy and just not engaged.

That could be due to his being unprofessional or due to the fact that he read the script and he knew what he was getting himself into. If the screenplay is going to lazily chase franchise money, Furlong may have felt justified not giving the movie his full attention and time. Brainscan also coincided with the 16 year old Furlong being involved in a relationship with a 26 year old woman who claimed she was his manager and ended up stealing a lot of his money in a 'questionable' lawsuit. With the drugs and alcohol going around as well, it's a wonder Furlong had anytime for a silly role in a very silly horror movie.

Brainscan is the latest subject of the I Hate Critics 1994 Podcast, a spinoff of the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. Each week, myself and my co-hosts Gen-Z'er M.J and Gen X'er Amy, talk about a movie that was released 30 years ago that same weekend. It's a fascinating glimpse into how movies and culture have changed in just 30 years. We're having a blast on the show and we'd love for you to listen and give us a review on whatever platform on which you listen to podcasts. You can find the I Hate Critics 1994 Podcast on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Brainscan is also part of my ongoing book project, Horror in the 90s. I am making my way through the theatrically released horror movies of the 1990s to examine how this pivotal decade changed the horror genre forever. I'm serializing pieces from the book in Vocal's Horror Community and you can read more than 20 entries in the book already up at the Vocal Horror Community. It's how I am funding the project, sharing pieces of the book here helps me monetize the time and allows me to ask if you'd like to support the book. You can support Horror in the 90s by making a monthly pledge here on Vocal or by leaving a one-time tip. Thanks! More entries in Horror in the 90s coming soon.