Subject: REVIEW: SCREAMERS (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Ram Samudrala)
Date: 21 Nov 1996 21:15:51 GMT

SCREAMERS
                       A film review by Ram Samudrala
                        Copyright 1996 Ram Samudrala

The year: 2078 A.D. The location: planet Sirius 6B.  The New Economic
Block (NEB) and the Alliance are at war with each other over the
mining of Berynium, the solution to the energy crisis on Earth.
During the course of the war, the Alliance manages to create
autonomous machines to attack the enemy (they're called screamers, and
for good reason).  However, these self-replicating and self-evolving
machines have gotten more and more sophisticated with their tinkering
and now pose a threat to all living beings on the planet.  The
evolution of the screamers reaches a point when a screamer is
indistinguishable from a human.

Most of the action in /Screamers/ revolves around the remaining humans
fighting off the screamers.  There is a great deal of suspense created
in this movie, like in the books by Philip K. Dick (whose 1953 story
Second Variety forms the basis for the plot), in not being able to
distinguish human from screamer.  There are also some
thought-provoking moments when we are confronted with screamers that
not only acquire intelligence that would enable them to pass the
Turing test, but also feel human-like emotions.  The setting is bleak
and desolate and it works quite well for the theme of the movie.  It's
definitely worth renting if you're a sci-fi and/or a Philip K. Dick
fan.

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