The Lawnmower Man
- Directed by
- Brett Leonard
- Written by
- Brett Leonard, Gimel Everett
- Produced by
- Gimel Everett, Milton Subotsky, Clive J. Turner, Robert Pringle, Edward Simons, Steven A. Lane
Why it’s HorroRated
The Lawnmower Man earns its place in horror history less for how well it holds up and more for what it represents: the moment mainstream horror decided virtual reality was worth being afraid of. The mad scientist framework is a classic one and Pierce Brosnan commits to Angelo's growing dread as his creation spirals past his control. The CGI sequences are a genuine time capsule of early-90s digital ambition, more historically interesting now than visually impressive. It's a product of its exact moment and it knows it, offering B-movie thrills wrapped around a legitimately unsettling core idea about what unchecked technological intervention does to a person. Solid, dated fun with real ideas underneath the cheese.
Synopsis
Dr. Lawrence Angelo has been running secret VR intelligence experiments on chimpanzees with limited success until he brings in Jobe Smith, a simple-minded groundskeeper, as his new human test subject. The experimental treatment accelerates Jobe's intelligence far beyond anything Angelo anticipated, and Jobe begins using his new abilities to settle old scores against the people who mistreated him. Pierce Brosnan plays Angelo's mounting horror at what he's created with real conviction, and the film's early-90s CGI, primitive by today's standards, was considered genuinely cutting-edge at the time. Brett Leonard directs from a premise loosely inspired by a Stephen King short story, though King successfully had his name removed from the marketing.
Filed under
Quick facts
- Release date
- March 5, 1992
- Runtime
- 1 hour 48 mins
- Country
- United States of America
- Language
- English
- Content rating
- R
- Entry type
- Movie
