The Net (1995)

What’s really scary about this movie is that there’s a sequel in the works. It’s called “The Net 2.0” and it’s to be directed by the son of the original’s director, Irwin Winkler (who has an impressive resume as a producer). Consider yourself warned. “The Net” is the silliest example of an internet hysteria exploitation film that I’ve seen. By 1995 the commercial internet was just beginning to become a reality and like any new technology it offered Hollywood a new angle to scare the hell out of moviegoers.

Angela Bennett is a beta tester and all around cyber utility infielder who discovers an über virus that an evil corporation is going to use to control all the information and everybody’s identity. Or something like that. While the muddled concept is pretty basic to conspiracy films, “The Net” is riddled with such inaccurate and completely idiotic computer mythology that it’s laughable. The only moment that the film has is an early scene where Angela is in a chat room bemoaning her closeted lifestyle and the responding posts all read: “One of us, one of us,” which is, of course, the closing refrain of Tod Browning’s classic “Freaks” and now a geek mantra.

Casting a woman as the geek might seem as if Hollywood has become enlightened as to gender and role but that’s misleading. The geek is a woman only to accentuate the victimization. If what happens to Angela had happened to a man it would be a different movie; he would be forced to just kill everybody while he screamed “justice” over the rattling of the AK-47 and the exploding mainframes.

Where “The Net” (and “Hackers,” as well), gets interesting is in showing how the computer has transformed from a research tool into a household commodity. By 1995, computers were commonplace even if use of the internet was not. While “Desk Set” had the luxury of having its computer hardware supplied by IBM, the makers of “The Net” and “Hackers” found themselves deep in the so-called Platform Wars being waged by Apple Computer and Microsoft. Or at least a war waged by rabid fans of one or the other operating system. (That war was almost won by Microsoft when it released Windows 95. It was one of the most successful rollouts in computer history and it crushed Apple Computer's already shrinking market share.) To minimize the compatibility problems between the systems (and other systems), the filmmakers just created an environment where all computers could communicate with all other computers seamlessly. And floppy disks could hold the entire contents of a mainframe.

“The Net” would make a dreadful double feature with “Fear Dot Com,” another incoherent cyber exploitation flick that might scare really old people on AOL.

That’s it. A perfect example of internet hysteria outdated before it hit videotape.

"Enemy of the State” (1998) is what “The Net” should have been. It’s pretty much the same movie. What gets interesting is whether Gene Hackman’s character Edward “Brill” Lyle is actually Harry Caul from Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974).

Hackman played both and the similarities are obvious. The bugging of the conversation between Robert Clayton Dean and Rachel Banks in the park is a direct lift from the Coppola flick. What aren’t similar are the movies. “The Conversation” owes a serious debt to Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow Up,” but it’s an excellent film and probably my favorite Coppola flick. It repays the debt not by imitating but by finding a new way to explore aspects of some of the material contained in the original. “Enemy of the State” is just a good, by-the-numbers thriller.