Following an unfortunate lightening strike Dr Bill Matthews is taken to the hospital where he works.  During his recovery Murphy, a male intern, takes an unusual interest in his case. When Bill gets out of hospital he finds himself full of strange compulsions, including tidying his bachelor home, much to the amusement of his lesbian friends. His experience is placed in some perspective when Murphy introduces him to a group all of whom have been electrocuted and now use electricity as a sexual stimulant, but something dark lives in Bill as he takes his addiction to the extreme and starts killing people...

Socket (2007) was directed and written by Sean Abley. Shot over nine days on a shoestring budget the film attempts to be homage to the works of David Cronenberg. So there is the eroticism of Crash, although in this case more explicit and strangely less erotic, and the body dysmorphia which has become a trademark of Cronenberg films, such as Videodrome, without the intellectual weight behind.

The film covers the very niche market of gay science fiction horror, and you don’t get more niche than that, but is it any good? Frankly the answer has to be no. Whilst Abley has done what he can with both the time and budget at hand, the result is under whelming and clichéd. Bill only appears to have gay friends; his lifestyle is the predictable hedonistic tripe, which outside of a section of inner city gays does nothing to move the image of gay culture further than a bunch of bitchy guys who would shag anything in trousers.

As a science fiction film it has holes in the plot that you could drive a truck through. Worse, the film doesn’t so much as die a slow death as grind to a halt - this is how the film ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

That said, there are some good things about the film. The editing does wonders with what are very meagre pickings. Matthew Montgomery is very naturalistic and believable in his role of Murphy, which is more than can be said of Derek Long who overacts to the point of caricature. The rest of the cast are pretty much awful.

The special effects are not bad and reminiscent of early Cronenberg, but nothing which would realistically hold up to a modern audience

The film says nothing about mans relationship to his machines or his own body. What we have here is a cheap and cheerful piece of schlock, which will please few.

The PR blurb says that there will be extras, but these were nowhere in sight on the review disc so I cannot comment.

3

Charles Packer