PULSE
It's like "Virus Lite"
As if Virus wasn't lite enough already.
The good news is it's not too bad. The bad news is that Joey Lawrence doesn't die. But then, he doesn't sing either.
A suburban couple looks across the street to see one of their neighbors going on a rampage in his house. The police come, only to find the guy's house all smashed up inside, with an inch of water on the floor and of course the nastily electrocuted corpse of the owner in one corner. And then little pulses transmit themselves over the power lines across the street...
The suburban couple is actually the man's second marriage (enter lots of "Why don't get you back together with mom?" from the kid), and thankfully, Roxann Hart isn't cast as a floozy or a bimbo (I can't believe I just used the word "floozy") as "the other woman". Anyway, soon enough, their own electrical appliances start acting kinda funny.
This movie raises more questions than are worth spending on it - where do the pulses come from? No idea. Where does the crazy old man who knows where the pulses come from come from? No idea. Why does he leave after two scenes without telling us anything? No idea. What does that line "She thought I was nuts when I built the fallout shelter, but I was right about that too" mean? No idea. What's with the TV "scanning" the kid's face? No idea. How can the "pulses" control non-electronic objects, like faucet handles and windowpanes? No idea. What's with the TV repeatedly showing the "birth" scene from Starman? Idea: a clue as to what the "pulses" want - or want to become.
The direction is quite cool here, with the camera poking into all sorts of places we don't normally see, like the insides of TV's and garborators. The effects (minimal as they are) are also quite cool when we're actually looking at the circuits of the appliances as the evil pulses reconfigure them, break old connections, make new ones.
Not bad overall, if not too distinguished, even from its recent cinematic descendant.