There are a number of aspects of video game addiction that are inherently scary, each suited to the odd tastes of the horror fan. There’s the gross-out horror element, which causes grown men to store bottles of piss and other bodily fluids in their disgusting rooms; there’s a body horror element that’s present when you see the changes that people undergo when isolated away from the sun for days at a time; and there’s even a compelling psychological horror take buried within, present in the dozens of stories of men and women who have died after marathon gaming sessions in internet cafes all over the world. What does that do to a person? Well, director Graham Skipper (Almost Human, Beyond the Gates) wants to explore this in his new film Sequence Break, which debuted last Friday on the streaming service Shudder. It’s a mixed bag, but an entertaining one.
Sequence Break tells the story of Oz (Chase Williamson, who looks distractingly like Adam Pally), an arcade/retro game shop employee who is asked by his boss (Lyle Canouse) to show a young woman named Tess (Fabienne Therese) an old game that she’s interested in purchasing. It turns out she doesn’t actually want to buy the game — she just wants to play it for a moment for old time’s sake — but this moment turns out to be an interesting meet-cute for the two, and they become a couple. Eventually, the shop is forced to close, but not before an odd man (John Dinian) drops off what looks to be a motherboard for an old arcade cabinet, which Oz installs in a spare he has lying around the shop. He begins to play the game (which is never satisfyingly realized, but whatever), and slowly becomes entranced by it, even though it seems to be having an odd and strenuous effect on himself and his relationship. It also begins manifesting weird sexy and fleshy stuff, which is a plus.
Now, I know you’re all curious if he actually does wind up fucking the arcade game, and I’m happy to say that he does in an astonishingly gross fashion.
Skipper emphasizes the most disgusting shit that he can in a tactile and ugly way, with pushed buttons oozing liquid and a squishy-ass joystick covering our dude’s hand in a thick, creamy substance, and it’ll cause people with weak-ass stomaches to leave the room and/or dry heave. It gets even grosser throughout, though it never really compares to the real OG shit like Videodrome, which outclasses it in every way, shape and form, and which you should probably watch first if you haven’t seen it already. Still, these moments wholly make the film notable and watchable, and I imagine it’s the whole reason a site like Shudder picked it up.
Yet for all of the Cronenbergian hallmarks and pleasures present, Sequence Break never really distinguishes itself from the rest of the “horrors of video games” pack, occasionally going so stiff and awkward that it’s like your uncle who says “Mario” like “Mare-io.” The metaphor never really works as well as Skipper thinks it does, sadly, and it gets really boring when he tries to push the film into outright Lynchian weirdness in the final third. The often-intoxicating body horror creepiness is buried well under boring interpersonal interaction by the small ensemble, who aren’t really up to the task of carrying an entire film by themselves. The effects work really runs the gambit of “I can’t believe they did that on this budget” all the way down to “Jesus Christ, who told them that looked good?” but I guess it works well enough in context.
Anyways, there are better horror films about our relationship to tech coming out — Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade is hitting theaters on June 1, in fact — but Sequence Break isn’t totally bad if you’re without options and you want to watch something blissfully ephemeral that might make you throw up.
Sequence Break is currently available to stream on Shudder.