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The Matrix (1999)
8.7/10on IMDb
Released
Start here if you want the rules of a virtual world explained through action. The city looks like the late 1990s to the people living in it. Once Neo sees it as software, fights and chases start turning on what the system can be made to do.
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Ghost in the Shell (1995)
7.9/10on IMDb
Released
Choose the animated original if you want a networked world where someone can meddle with your memories. Major Kusanagi hunts the Puppet Master, but the hunt keeps raising a harder question about how a person could tell which thoughts were ever their own.
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eXistenZ (1999)
6.8/10on IMDb
Released
Try this if you want a video game that feels bodily and strange. Players plug living game pods into a port in the spine. As the designer and her companion try her new game, peculiar lines of dialogue and unexpected impulses make it harder to tell who is deciding what they do.
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The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Put this on for a murder mystery with two places to investigate. A programmer enters a simulation of 1937 Los Angeles, where the people carry on with lives that feel real to them. Pay attention to how the detective work changes once a person in one world can wear someone else's face in another.
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Nirvana (1997)
6.1/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this Italian cyberpunk movie to see what it looks like when a video game character wants out of the loop. Solo knows he's trapped repeating the scenarios someone wrote for him. He asks his creator to erase the game, setting up a programmer's search for a way to give his own character a choice.
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Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
5.6/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this if you want a scrappy chase movie where a man's memory is a storage device. Johnny carries corporate data inside his head and can only hold it for so long. The race to get it out makes the cost of being permanently useful to the network painfully physical.
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The Lawnmower Man (1992)
5.5/10on IMDb
Released
Watch for the early computer graphics and a virtual reality experiment that keeps exceeding the lab's control. Jobe becomes more powerful as he learns inside the system. His new abilities turn an experiment meant to change one person into a question of whether the world outside can keep him out.
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Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)
2.6/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this sequel when you want the first movie's wilder idea in full view. Jobe aims to bring people into a network he can control, while a young hacker can reach places inside it that the adults can't. It's a pulpy take on who gets to own a shared digital world.
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Mindwarp (1992)
5.2/10on IMDb
Released
Inworld gives its residents a life they can dream into existence. Judy asks to see what’s outside and gets a wasteland instead. Pick this for a grimy bit of early-’90s science fiction where a life spent plugged in can look appealing once you see what people are hiding from.
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Virtuosity (1995)
5.5/10on IMDb
Released
Try this for an action movie about a person who begins as a piece of software. A virtual killer built for police training gets loose in a physical body. The cop tracking him has to deal with a program that still treats a city full of people like a game.
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Arcade (1993)
4.7/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this for a low-budget nightmare about an arcade game people can't walk away from. A new cabinet draws its players into a virtual world, and Alex has to play to find her missing friends. The clunky graphics are part of the fun if you remember how mysterious a new cabinet could look.
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Brainscan (1994)
6.0/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this horror hybrid if you want a game that follows a player out of his bedroom. An interactive disc puts a lonely teen into a violent scenario and gives him a host who eggs him on. The clues outside the game make his time inside it much harder to explain away.
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Evolver (1995)
5.5/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this for a small-scale example of a game taking its rules outside the screen. A teen wins a home version of a virtual reality game, and his opponent arrives as a robot. The danger grows because the robot is learning how to win while the players are still treating the contest as a toy.
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Strange Days (1995)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Try this near-future thriller if you want to see an underground trade in someone else's memories. A dealer sells recordings you experience directly through the original person's senses. When a recording implicates people in a crime, the same intimacy that makes the format addictive makes it hard to look away.
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Open Your Eyes (1997)
7.7/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this Spanish mystery if you would rather discover the nature of the technology as you watch. After a disfiguring crash, César seems to get his old face and his future back. People he trusts begin behaving like different versions of themselves, and the good fortune starts to feel like part of a design.
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Total Recall (1990)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
Try this for a Mars adventure that starts with a purchasable alternate life. Rekall can give you memories of a trip and let you choose who you were on it. When a construction worker pays to remember being a secret agent, he has to decide whether the life that follows is even his.
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Until the End of the World (1991)
6.8/10on IMDb
Released
Make time for this long road movie if you want to see an early version of a very familiar habit. A portable device lets its users replay their own dreams. As the travelers withdraw into the images on their screens, the most unsettling part is how little the device needs to do to hold their attention.
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Ghost in the Machine (1993)
4.7/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this for early home-computer paranoia in a slasher frame. A killer's consciousness survives inside a mainframe after a medical scan goes wrong. Once he can move through linked devices, ordinary objects in a home start looking like things another person can reach.
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Cyber Vengeance (1995)
3.5/10on IMDb
Released
Try this obscure action movie for a grim use of shared virtual space. Paying customers can hunt incarcerated people inside a simulated prison. The users who treat the setting as entertainment have a very different relationship to its rules from the people stuck there.
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Darkdrive (1997)
3.1/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this lower-budget prison thriller for a virtual world its users are forced to inhabit. A corporation runs incarceration as a computer simulation, and a system failure sends someone in to restore order. You get a view of a whole institution assuming its software will behave.
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Hologram Man (1995)
4.1/10on IMDb
Released
Try this if you like a B movie that takes a digital identity to a very physical conclusion. A prisoner escapes confinement as a hologram that can pass through walls. The police have to work out how to stop someone whose new body makes ordinary barriers pointless.
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