Shocker (1989)

Tagline: On October 2nd, at 6:45 a.m., mass murderer Horace Pinker was put to death.

Now he’s really mad.

Curiosity: It was bundled with The People Under the Stairs.

Plot: High school football hero Jonathan (Peter Berg, who went on to create Friday Night Lights) almost has the perfect life. He’s a star player and he’s got an awesome girlfriend named Alison (Cami Cooper) who is super cute despite always talking in a raspy whisper. There’s just one problem: Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi, fuckin’ Skinner from X-Files) murdered most of Jonathan’s family. Bummertown, U.S.A. On top of that, Jonathan psychically witnessed the whole thing.

Using his psychic powers, Jonathan is able to track Pinker’s next move and capture. But receiving the death sentence only makes Pinker stronger, as he makes a pact with a demon to become a being of pure electricity who can take over others’ bodies and travel through televisions or some shit. I don’t know, man.

Thoughts: Shocker is not a good movie. While I consider myself a Wes Craven fan, this is not his finest film. The movie has essentially four things working against it. They are…

1). Sandwiched between The Serpent and The Rainbow and The People Under the Stairs, Shocker just feel like such a light work. Serpent is an excellent zombie/voodoo flick. People is just so damn weird. Shocker, meanwhile, feels like an old school B-movie sci-fi flick. It would be great, pulpy fun if not for the fact that…

2). The running time is too damn long. Shocker is nearly two hours long, but its premise is so preposterous and its characters so goofy that it really needed to come in at a tight 90 minutes. Craven couldn’t do much cutting, though, since…

3). Shocker keeps changing its rules. The creators of Star Trek held a simple tenet: You can only introduce so many rules for your fictional world before viewers stop caring. Once you set those rules, you need to either follow them to the letter or explain why you’re circumventing them. You can’t break the laws of physics, and you should treat your fictional world the same. But Shocker keeps adding stuff. For the first 45 minutes, it’s about a psychic kid. Then it’s about a guy with electrical powers. Then it’s about a guy who lives in the TV. I personally thought the film was strongest when dealing with Pinker as a depowered serial killer. Instead, Shocker has a jack of all trades, master or none thing going on. This is further exacerbated by the fact that…

4). Horace Pinker is clearly Craven’s attempt to create another Freddy Krueger. Dude has the same annoying penchant for one-liners, and the whole psychic kids angle isn’t exactly original for Craven either. I get what makes Krueger so iconic: He tortured kids, he got them while they were at their most vulnerable, and he just straight up looked cool. Pinker’s m.o. is less specific, he just kinda showed up whenever, and he wore a lame orange jumpsuit. He’s a blander villain in every way.

Reflection: Megadeth did the soundtrack, though. So that’s cool.