Socket
Reel Affirmations 2007
Review by Sean Bugg
Rating: 
(2 out of 5)
Friday, 10/19/2007, 11:15 PM
Feature presentation, $10 at Lincoln Theatre
SOCKET OPENS with a bit of power, cycling quickly through the point of view of a man who’s undergoing treatment in a hospital emergency room. It’s unnerving and compelling.
Then the movie starts and all the energy just drains away.
Hot-shot surgeon Bill has been struck by lightning, but wakes up in his own hospital with no apparent physical effects. But the young intern caring for him, Craig, invites him to a meeting of others like them — lightning strike survivors.
Because this is a city apparently teeming with human lightning rods.
Bill quickly learns that he and the others need new shocks of electricity to recharge. In fact, every group meeting ends with them creating a circular circuit with an electrical amp to give themselves a jump before going out to the nightclub that caters to shock jockeys.
Naturally, Bill finds himself ever more dependent on electricity, which is presented without any subtlety whatsoever as analogous to crystal meth. Soon, he exploits his knowledge of surgery, along with an apparent love for X-Men’s Wolverine, to implant himself with a spring-loaded plug that enables him inject power straight into his body.
In case you missed it, it’s just like crystal meth.
Socket plods along, filled with repetitive scenes of juicing at electrical sockets, bad overacting, and painfully predictable plot developments. If writer director Sean Abley had put down his metaphorical sledgehammer for a moment, he might have teased out an interesting, original story.
Instead, Socket ends up a dead battery. — SB
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