Trilogy of Terror: Solarbabies (1986)
This year we’ve already looked at three films featuring games that celebrated, encouraged, accelerated death. With Solarbabies , we cap off the year with one featuring a game that brings life. In each of these films, a heinous social order is upended. It’s only Solarbabies , though, that stays true to the prediction of Gil Scott-Heron; its revolution is not televised. Solarbabies is also, by quite a wide margin, the worst actual film I’ve ever seen. By “actual film” I just mean we can totally ignore homemade crap like The Lock In . Of any movie that’s ever had actual effort invested in it by actual human beings with actual equipment, Solarbabies has got to be the worst. Which, of course, makes it pretty fucking wonderful. It feels like it’s cobbled together from several scripts of totally different genres. It’s an action movie, a sports movie, a post-apocalyptic nightmare, a road movie, a coming of age tale, a journey home, a science fiction saga, and God knows what e