Evolver (film)

Evolver is a 1995 Mark Rosman horror/science fiction B-movie. It starred Ethan Embry, Cassidy Rae, Chance Quinn, and John de Lancie. It also had William H. Macy as the voice of Evolver (Credited as W.H. Macy). The movie was frequently aired in the early days of the Sci Fi Channel.

Plot synopsis

Teenage computer whiz Kyle Baxter (Ethan Randall) enters, and subsequently cheats in a virtual reality version of laser tag. The prize is a robotic opponent to compete against in a real-world version of the game. When "Evolver" (the robot, voiced by William H. Macy) is first delivered, it appears to be quite simply a toy. Kyle, his friend Zach, Jamie, (a girl he met during the competition,) and his sister Ali (Nassira Nicola) soon begin the game with Evolver. The first game (Evolver vs. Kyle, Zach, Jamie, and Kyle's sister) passes quickly, and all appears to be fine. Later, because Evolver has recording abilities, Kyle and Zach send Evolver into the girls locker room at their school. However, Evolver is discovered and is pushed into the boys locker room, where he switches to game mode. The only occupant, Dwight, a bully jock, meets Evolver, who takes him as an enemy to defeat.

As Evolver is defeated and proceeds to the next "level" of the game, it "evolves" to become more dangerous and develops a human-like evil personality becoming sentient and vengeful. For this reason it replaces the original ammo (soft foam balls - which it deemed "ineffective" in the first round) of his compressed air gun with ball bearings from Zach's room and when Dwight throws Evolver against a wall, Evolver reacts by shooting the bearings at his face and knocking him down the stairs, killing him. After getting home, Evolver continues to absorb negativity from his surroundings, for example swearing and hostage-taking from a TV movie. The next day, Zach, too impatient to wait for the disk recording Evolver's adventures in the locker room to eject, kidnaps Evolver and tries to remove the disc manually. However when doing so, Evolver gets turned to game mode, and nearly kills Zach by dropping a car raised on a jack onto Zach, who was hiding under it, after chasing him with a saw blade. When Kyle comes to see Zach being loaded into an ambulance, he hears Zach says something about Evolver, making Kyle start to think about Evolver's increasing lethality. While making his way home, Evolver wanders into the arcade where two marijuana-smoking teens are playing the Evolver vitual game. They are soon killed and Evolver makes it home, leaving Kyle unaware of his misdeeds.

When Kyle looks through Evolver's programming, he sees a program titled S.W.O.R.D. (later revealed to be an acronym for Strategic War Oriented Robotic Device). When he goes to Cybertronix; the company that built Evolver, to complain about the lethality of Evolver, the creator, Russell Bennett (John De Lancie), dismisses Kyle and says he will look through the disk Evolver recorded. The disc shows Evolver killing Dwight and the danger of Evolver then becomes clear to Bennett. Meanwhile, Kyle and Jamie sneak into a lab at Cybertronix and look into Evolver's past and see that Bennett had originally intended for Evolver to be programmed as an artificially intelligent military robot, but the project failed when the program killed rather than disarmed the enemy.

Meanwhile, Ali has started playing with Evolver alone. Evolver loads steak knives into his shooting arm and chases Ali into the pool, where he tries to electrocute her. Kyle and Jamie save her and Kyle defeats Evolver, after which he kicks Evolver into their backyard swimming pool. Cybertronix and Bennett come to take Evolver back to be dismantled. Bennett assures that Evolver will be destroyed, but on the way back to the lab Evolver "wakes up" and kills Bennett and the Cybertronix technicians in a fiery explosion and continues to pursue Kyle for the final game.

Evolver returns to Kyle's house and takes his mother and sister hostage, using a laser-gun, a kaleidoscope, and a super-charged battery to form a cage to keep them from escaping. Kyle and Jamie see the wrecked van from Cybertronix and return home to find the highly evolved Evolver, now with destructive laser guns and ball bearings for ammo. Evolver plans to execute his hostages if Kyle does not win in three minutes. Kyle places a metal pan on his chest and goes out to confront Evolver one last time. Evolver shoots Kyle in the chest and celebrates as if he has won. But Evolver's sensors hear Kyle breathing through his nose, showing Evolver hasn't won. Kyle shoots Evolver again in the sensor and Evolver loses, which causes extreme confusion of his programming and Kyle beats Evolver with a bat until it shuts down. Kyle and Jamie free his mother and sister and are about to leave when Evolver comes back. Now armed only with his robotic claws and brute strength, Evolver grips onto Kyle's leg and is about to dispatch Kyle, claiming "Evolver never loses!" when Kyle jumps over him, grabs the laser gun attached to the battery, saying "Yeah, well there's always a first time" and shoots at Evolver with the laser until he explodes. The family goes to the hospital and the CEO of Cybertronix goes to confront the press. The camera pans over to Ali's bedroom, to show Evolver's single glowing eye. The last scene shows Evolver's screen reading out "KILL NOT CONFIRMED" before finally fading to static and black out, leaving the door open for a sequel that never came.

Filming locations

Los Angeles, California, USA

External links

• Evolver at the Internet Movie Database