The film begins with a young girl dreaming about an horrific experience: the suicide death of her mother. That's...upbeat and cheery- thanks, movie! She meets up with her boyfriend and his friends outside of school. Amongst that group is a rival boy dressed like a hipster-version of the kid from A Christmas Story and a barely-adolescent Seth Green. On the upside, it actually makes sense for Seth to be this short at this age- booyah! Anyhow, they hear about a brand new game being brought to their favorite video arcade- Dante's Inferno. You want to know what dates your movie? The existence of arcades in America! They go inside, only to have Seth get into a mix-up with a kid about three times his size. Fortunately, the other dad from That '70s Show come in and break it up. For those keeping score, he only really shows up here. This is broken up by the arrival of the game's creator: Q! He takes them to the backroom to introduce them to his game: Arcade. Seriously, that's the name of your game? Why not just call it Pixels or Flashing Lights?!? On the upside, he face-palms Green as he stands in the doorway ogling the arcade machine. That's a preemptive strike against Idle Hands! The kid that is not Ralphie tries out the game first and is blown away by it's immersion of the virtual reality game. Yeah, all I can do is stare at the large, jagged pixels.
After he exits, the boyfriend of our heroine stays behind to play the next game. The rest of the group goes outside...for some reason, leaving him alone in the giant cabinet. To be fair, it's to get free stuff- although, it's still silly. During his game, the talking game threatens him and beats him, leaving him trapped in the game. No, I don't know how this works. In the subsequent hours, the group leaves and nobody hears from the guy. Not-Ralphie is amazingly-convincing when it comes to making our heroine completely ignore a legitimate concern and just go home. Later that night, she has a bad dream that pads out the experience and continues to be worried about her guy. The next day, he doesn't show up and his friends act nonplussed about the whole thing. Gee, I hope nobody kidnaps you ever! That afternoon, she plays the home version of Arcade and gets a little freaked out. One little game knows your name and talks about kidnapping your boyfriend & you freak out? What a cry-baby! She goes over to see Not-Ralphie, who is also playing his home-game. She breaks his into his house and turns off the game, which kind of annoys him. After some nagging, he agrees to go see one of their other friends. When they get there, she's a little crazy and has the game talking to her. After the game console zaps her and makes her body disappear, the guy is on-board.
In what feels like a bizarre bit of distraction, Not-Ralphie and our heroine drive to the game company's headquarters and complain. They use their leverage to get game tips from the producer, who warns them that the game is ever-changing. Wow, so you just told me how pointless your role was- thanks! Before the plot goes back to normal, we get Seth's last scene, which involves our heroes telling him to go home and not do anything. Thanks for coming, Seth- keep this off of the resume. They go back to Dante's Inferno- still subtle, movie- and play the game together. Things don't go well, but they manage to make it past the first level. By the way, most of the blue screen work here is utter shit, even by 1993 standards. Almost all of the levels look like bad screen-savers or levels out of Legends of the Hidden Temple. To be honest, I lost interest by this part, so most of it is a blur to me. At some point, the girl gets left alone, makes it to the ending level and dies. Thankfully, the guy picked up a random item that gave her an extra life, restoring 'the player's soul' in the process. Yeah, that's extremely-stupid! She ends up with some little kid, forcing some pre-adolescent actor to wear an Avengers-style bodysuit- Ew. She wins the day, but the kid ends up talking in the game's voice, setting up a non-existent sequel...
Wow, this movie is lame. Mind you, I didn't expect much from a Full Moon film directed by Albert Pyun. I mean, this is a collaboration between the people that made Puppet Master vs. The Demonic Toys and Alien From L.A.! The plot has potential, but just takes too damn long to get to anything good. In a way, it's like the inverse of my issues with Tron. Don't get me wrong- it's a classic. The thing is, you get no sense of parallel to the real world, since over 70% of the movie is in the game world, almost never cutting back. The price of immersion is no contrast and a chance to get used to the mysterious world. In Arcade, they take so long to get to the game world that I literally did not give a shit. Mind you, when I tried to pay attention, it was still shit. It's a shame that nobody can get a balance between the two worlds- besides The Matrix, anyways. The acting is pretty bad, save for 'Q'- who is just always awesome. The rest of them could be replaced with those cardboard 'standies' with little speakers on them, for all I care. There's very little to recommend here, to be honest. It's not stupid enough to be funny and it's not interesting enough to make you care. Much like most Albert Pyun films, it's just kind of there. Hell, the movie is not even scary. You want to see the only scary part of the movie? Here it is...
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