Entertainment
Extremely R-Rated 90's Sci-Fi Thriller Is A Mind-Bending Hidden Gem
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Nearly a decade before The Matrix proposed the whole brain in a jar idea that we all know and love, or are genuinely afraid is an accurate depiction of our simulation-induced reality we are not yet ready to face, writer director Adam Simon gave us 1990’s Brain Dead. While there is not a red or blue pill to be found in Brain Dead, we are taken on a trip through the human psyche at its most fractured, resulting in a visually disturbing journey through the subconscious that is not afraid to hallucinate your greatest fears into existence. Starring and carried by Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, Brain Dead is one of those increasingly odd trips through the human mind that is willing to get violent and kaleidoscopic to drive its point home.
With a reported budget of $2 million dollars, Brain Dead was always destined to become a cult classic thanks to its cheap but clever special effects, surreal set design, and constantly unraveling narrative that keeps you questioning what is real versus what is imagined. Bill Pullman’s straight-faced concern with his own mental wellbeing as his research sends him spiraling is especially effective here, because this film fully commits to taking you on a trip. Any overacting would have softened its impact, and Pullman wisely avoids that trap.
What makes the experience even stronger is Bill Paxton, who also plays things surprisingly straight. He brings a level of corporate scumbaggery to the mix that only he could convincingly deliver, grounding the film’s more outlandish ideas in something that feels uncomfortably familiar.
Brains In A Jar, Near And Far
Brain Dead introduces us to Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman), a highly respected neurosurgeon who focuses his research on mental abnormalities through brain mapping. Rex knows his stuff and takes his work seriously, so seriously that when he is approached by old friend Jim Reston (Bill Paxton), a successful entrepreneur working with the Eunice Corporation, the offer immediately raises red flags. Jim looks the part, with slicked back hair and a fixation on results and the bottom line in whatever experiments Eunice is overseeing without any regard for their ethical implications.
Jim’s proposition to Rex is simple but morally grey. He wants Rex to map the brain of a psychotic mathematician named Jack Halsey (Bud Cort), who previously worked for Eunice before going off the deep end and destroying his own research. Rex’s job is to poke around inside Halsey’s brain in hopes of either recovering the lost research or wiping his mental slate clean so the information cannot be shared with competing companies.
Conflicted about the work, Rex decides to interview Halsey to size up the job. What he finds is a broken man who talks a mile a minute and speaks almost exclusively in conspiracy theories. After Rex is struck by a van, he wakes up and inexplicably decides to move forward with the research, setting off a chain reaction of traumatizing events that he can no longer distinguish as real or imagined.
Rex soon learns that Halsey murdered his family and research assistants after completing his work, and that a man named Conklin (Nicholas Pryor) may actually be behind the slayings for reasons that remain unclear. As Rex begins exhibiting the same paranoid behavior as Halsey, especially after losing his grants and laboratory access, he finds himself trapped inside a labyrinthian mystery involving Halsey, Conklin, Jim, and Eunice. Solving it may be the only thing standing between him and the complete loss of his faculties.
A Stylish, Low-Budget Cult Classic
Brain Dead thrives on showing rather than telling, forcing the viewer to piece the mystery together with the same creeping paranoia its protagonist experiences in real time. The film earns serious points for suggesting that we might all be brains living in jars housed by the Eunice Corporation, while never fully committing to that explanation. Just because the idea is implied does not mean it is true, and that uncertainty is part of the appeal.
Bill Paxton delivers the goods as a corporate sleazebag desperate to placate shareholders by extracting valuable research at any cost, which perfectly offsets Rex’s more ethically driven approach to the work. The tension between those perspectives gives the film its emotional weight beneath all the hallucinations and fractured realities.
Is Rex losing his mind because he has gone too deep into his own research, or is he on the verge of exposing a conspiracy involving brain manipulation at the hands of the Eunice Corporation? The only way to find out is by watching Brain Dead, which is currently streaming for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
CareerSprinter Pro combines résumé and interview tools for $49.99
TL;DR: The CareerSprinter Pro Plan lifetime subscription is available for $49.99 (reg. $499), providing job seekers access to AI tools for résumés, cover letters, interviews, and salary research.
Job searching often means revamping your résumé, cover letter, and other interview prep across multiple job boards. All the steps that take up a lot of brain power and time. However, CareerSprinter Pro is designed to bring those steps into one platform, helping users organize and refine their approach without having to use multiple different tools. For a limited time, the lifetime subscription is priced at $49.99 (reg. $499).
CareerSprinter Pro focuses on the foundations of the application and interviewing process. The software offers unlimited applicant tracking system (ATS) checks and résumé enhancements, using AI to spotlight strengths and fine-tune formatting so documents mesh well with today’s screening algorithms. Cover letter generation is built in as well, so users can spin up tailored drafts in less time.
Mashable Deals
Aside from application materials, this software leans into preparation and research. Salary research tools provide data-backed ranges to help users understand market expectations before negotiations. Mock interview sessions simulate common interview scenarios and deliver feedback that users can review and polish up over time. CareerSprinter also includes industry and company research features, providing context on trends, growth areas, and workplace culture before you submit your application.
The Pro Plan removes all limits. Subscribers enjoy unlimited résumé enhancements, salary research, mock interviews, and priority support. This appeals to active job seekers, career switchers, recent graduates, or professionals returning to the workforce who expect to run several applications at once.
CareerSprinter is a guided platform and not a replacement for human judgment, so the results depend on how users put its feedback to work. It’s also best suited for those comfortable with AI tools and digital recommendations.
Mashable Deals
Get CareerSprinter Pro’s lifetime plan today while it’s on sale for $49.99 (reg. $499).
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entertainment
Perfect, R-Rated Comedy Thriller Will Infiltrate And Destroy Your Life
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Working as an office drone is the worst possible way to spend your time, especially if your doppelganger is showing up for work, running circles around you, and tarnishing your good name. Not only does Jesse Eisenberg’s doppelganger do all of these things in 2013’s The Double, nobody else at work seems to notice that his primary antagonist is his exact body double. It’s a bleak reminder of how little your coworkers actually pay attention to things like who they’ve been working with for the past seven years, what they look like, and what they do for a living.
After thinking about it for a minute, it’s not even that far-fetched of a scenario. Having to wear a shirt and tie, commute to a central office, and sit in a cubicle inside a windowless room, all while attending meetings that could have been an email, only to be rewarded with a slice of room-temperature pizza left over from yesterday’s sales meeting, is more than enough to suck the soul right out of you and turn you into a shell of a man who locks in without soaking in their surroundings.
While The Double is clearly an unrealistic story, what’s depicted here doesn’t feel that far removed from what office culture could easily devolve into over the next decade.
An Office That Makes Office Space Look Like A Beach Paradise
Set mostly in oppressively dank apartment buildings, corner offices, and cubicles, The Double centers on Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), an office drone of the highest order who’s wandering aimlessly through life. Though everyone at the office works for a cold-hearted authority figure known only as The Colonel (James Fox), it’s never made entirely clear what anyone actually does for a living. It’s obvious they’re clerks for some wide-reaching, dystopian government agency, but beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.
This level of impersonality in The Double feeds directly into its central conflict. Simon frequently forgets his ID badge and is never recognized by the security guards or his coworkers. He has to sign a visitor’s form just to go to work, as if he barely exists. Simon feels this same kind of invisibility when it comes to his coworker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), who lives in the apartment building across from him but doesn’t even know he’s there. He admires her from afar, often collecting her torn-up art projects and saving them in a notebook for himself.
It’s a lonely existence for Simon James, until he meets his doppelganger, James Simon (also Jesse Eisenberg), who appears out of nowhere and suddenly starts working at the same office.
James Simon is everything Simon James is not in The Double, which immediately creates a number of problems. Simon is shy, reserved, and lacking confidence, content to blend into the background and quietly move through life. James, on the other hand, is charming, assertive, and instantly recognized as a standout employee, despite doing similar work to Simon, who barely gets acknowledged by anyone. Slowly but surely, James begins intruding on Simon’s life, eventually earning Hannah’s affection, much to Simon’s dismay. To make matters worse, nobody at the office seems to notice that Simon James and James Simon are identical, calling Simon’s grip on reality into question.
As Simon spirals, he gets to know James better, and the two even swap places on occasion in an attempt to live in each other’s shoes. These exchanges usually backfire, further straining their already toxic relationship and forcing Simon to question what it even means to be alive.
Sounds Like Another Movie That Came Out At The Same Time
Based on the 1846 novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double shares a similar premise with 2013’s Enemy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. While it might be tempting to chalk this up to parallel development, the coincidence is actually stranger than that. Enemy is based on a completely different novel from 2002, also titled The Double, written by José Saramago.
Both films explore what happens when two perfectly identical men occupy the same space, and the personal fallout that follows when one’s likeness is used by someone else with questionable intentions. While they tell very different stories, they make for an interesting double feature if you want to see how two doppelganger narratives released in the same year end up echoing each other in unexpected ways, as if they were each other’s doppelgangers all along.
Strangely enough, both films also exist within liminal, brutalist environments, trapping their protagonists in fluorescently-lighted spaces as their identities fracture and their personal lives collapse while they try to figure out where they belong in the world.
As of this writing, The Double is streaming for free on Tubi. Enemy, which explores similar themes and came out the same year, is currently streaming on Max.
Entertainment
The Most Disturbing CSI Episode Is Pure Nightmare Fuel
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
For 15 years, CSI reigned on CBS as one of the highest-rated shows after perfecting the procedural formula. Every now and then, the series broke its formula, from “Lab Rats” focusing on the side characters to “4×10” telling a series of short stories, but none shattered viewer expectations quite like Season 11’s “Sqweegel.” The night-shift team was trying to figure out the motives and identity behind the gimp-suit-clad serial killer, leading to the most unexpected ending of the entire series: They failed.
The Bad Guy Wins
Every now and then, there’s an episode of CSI where the villain’s triumphant, going back to Season 1 that occur din “Chimera,” except the doctor with twisted DNA eventually was brought to justice in a later episode. Sqweegel, named after the noise a little girl heard in a carwash, is never arrested, his identity is never uncovered, and he’s never seen again. When the episode starts, viewers know something is off about what they are about to see by the way the killer moves through a posh, upscale Las Vegas home. Slipping in through a window is one thing, but the way he walks up the stairs in a strange, herky-jerky motion that’s also inhumanly smooth and fluid is immediately unsettling.
The team, led during this era by Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) and Dr. Raymond Langston (Laurence Fishburne), starts piecing together Sqweegel’s motive when they realize each victim was a hypocrite. The first was a disability-rights advocate who killed her son, but she admitted what she did and was allowed to live. Of the rest of the victims, a firefighter who starts fires to be a hero, and a cheating wife who serves on the Family Values Committee. As far as motives go, it’s par for the course for the procedural. It’s also the only part of the episode that’s normal.
The visual of Sqweegel stalking his victims and slipping into spaces too small and tight for a normal human is somehow more disturbing than the usual dead bodies. Sqweegel’s final shot, lacing up the gimp suit and saying, “I am no one,” is more dark and more haunting than you’d expect from a network show. After the episode first aired in 2010, CBS didn’t outright ban it; instead, the network quietly pulled it from the regular rotation, but it’s available today wherever CSI is streaming.
A Killer From A Different Series
“Sqweegel” felt like an episode from another series dropped into CSI. That’s essentially what it was. Series creator Anthony E. Zuiker wrote a series of novels alongside Duane Swierczynki called Level 26, which featured Sqweegel as the villain. The episode’s release date coincided with the release of Level 26: Dark Prophecy. Disturbingly, Sqweegel in the book was even darker and more disturbing than what was shown on network television.
The character was brought to life by Daniel Browning Smith, a talented contortionist, who also co-hosted Stan Lee’s Superhumans. Smith has hypermobile Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, which allows him a superhuman degree of flexibility. On the one hand, knowing that a real human was performing Sqweegel’s stunts and they weren’t special effects may make them worse, but on the other hand, Daniel Browning Smith also performs comedy and hasn’t killed anyone.
Corporate synergy is the real horror of CSI’s most disturbing episode. Because Sqweegel wasn’t created for the series, there was never going to be a resolution. Instead, he managed to kill, traumatize a child, and get away into the night, not because he was a criminal mastermind, but because of corporate licensing. Millions of fans were left wondering when he’d return, never realizing that they’d only learn his fate if they took a look, because it’s in a book.
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