The framing device of this anthology is a form of therapy mildly similar to the psychedelic therapies of the near future, but not really, but kind of. Patients will look into a glowing little purple orb, and then be passed out on the couch having a convincing fake "therapeutic" experience in their heads, while the therapist just sits there. The first patient is extremely paranoid, so when she looks into the ball, her life seems to be going on normally, until she gets home and is attacked by a pack of wild dogs, but after running around for a while, she discovers that the dogs aren't wild and there is only one of them, a neighbor dog named sparky. She is cured. The next guy is also extremely paranoid and in his future shock he returns to his apartment and meets his new Roomate, played by the beautiful Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton Roomate is a bully and steals the protagonists bed and leaves a mess and brings home a satans sl@t. After these intolerable behaviors culminate with that sl@t being found dead and our hero taking blame, our guy goes and buys a gun, drives to his apartment and puts the barrel to Bills head. Protagonist is shot by some cops who are after him for the sl@t murder and winds up in the hospital. Paxton kills him in the hospital and leaves a cig in the guys mouth, asking main characters mom for his deposit back or something. Pretty good but he wakes up in the doctors office feeling no better. Doctor says see you next week. I wonder if, had he shot Bill Paxtons head in, he would have been cured? Anyway, the next one is kind of weird, directed by Matt Reeves of the new Batman and "The Paul Bearer" starring David Schwimmer (worth checking out), our new hero is another guy scared of everything, and explains that he is hesitant to use the machine, but goes in anyway. He wakes up dead, bleeding from the head, soon he is in heaven having a near death experience. "Sleepwalk" plays and he's talking to some dead friends. This one is really cool, better shot than the rest of the movie and much more narratively daring. It's also surprisingly funny. Overall though it lacks coherence, and the established fact that he's not actually near death, but in VR, takes the punch out of everything. It ends with the doctor ominously staring into the orb, as background noise begins to distort. Not implying anything specific, but I guess you can get addicted to VR world if your use isn't controlled by a third party? This movie is pretty good, and kind of predicts psychedelic therapies of the future, I guess? I recommend it to you. Watch it.
Review of Future Shock
