THE DRONE

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

What will movies look like in thirty years time? Will Hollywood have a little sub-industry dedicated to evoking nostalgic memories of 2019? Will some Tarantino type three decades hence be crafting meticulous recreations of the movies they grew up with, the way we currently have directors putting together loving homages to the 1980s? (Do we even have anything worth developing nostalgia for?) It seems odd that with all the developments in cinema and film-making over the years, there's still an audience for films that hark back to days gone by, in style if not in content.

In terms of its technology, The Drone is set now, but otherwise it's an eighties B-movie of the ilk of Chopping Mall, although the closest comparison is actually the Tom Selleck tech-gone-wrong thriller Runaway. Not only do both films feature a character named Ramsey, but Jon and Al Kaplan's score for The Drone clearly nods to Jerry Goldsmith's very 1980s synth soundtrack for Runaway. A young couple find an apparently dumped dronecopter in their trash: he decides to keep it, unaware that it's possessed by the spirit of a demented serial killer (in the manner of the original Child's Play) and that it now has the hots for his wife...

It's an extraordinarily silly idea and an extraordinarily silly film, but for the most part it's a great deal of dumb fun, depending on the drone being able to remotely control the entire house, from the laptops to the security system, and flit around the house without anyone noticing (and without apparently needing to recharge). Towards the end it does get out of hand, veering out of silly and towards stupid with more soul transference and nods to the original Terminator, and that was a pity because up till that point I was happily going with it. Not a masterpiece (it's from the makers of Zombeavers, so a masterpiece was frankly unlikely anyway) but it's mostly efficiently done that does the retro without getting cheesy, and more than worth a look.

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