User Reviews

Having glanced over this movie's casing at the videostore several times I finally decided to rent it. Who knows, it could be an undiscovered cult classic with a great story line despite not having any apparent budget to appeal to most moviegoers.

This movie started off interesting, and continued to address, albeit in an unconvincing style, some issues of altered cognition, issues that take place when our minds operate in an environment completely different from our earthly environment. The movie could appeal to certain individuals, to me it was a failure. The story elements could have been interesting, the overall end-result was badly directed, a little more harmony in the sequencing of scenes to better coincide with the viewing experience, combined with somewhat better lighting and photography could have positioned this movie in a much better category.

One of the most failed issues of this movie, which is noticeable from watching it, and distinguishable if you use the slow-motion on your VCR is the following: During an alien attack, the aliens are jamming communication signals and we see a representation of the jamming signal on one of the computer consoles. While watching the movie I thought hey, that alien jamming signal looks familiar. Let's rewind a bit and see a slow-motion replay and yes, my suspicion was correct. The jamming signal scrolls over the computer console and when you pay attention to the screen you can clearly see that the alien jamming signal is a directory listing of a Windows 95 installation. I clearly saw the Hyperterminal directory. Apparently someone just ran a 'dirtree' when they taped the scene of the alien jamming signal.

Two possible explanations for this come to mind:

1. The budget was so tight that nobody could afford the time or cost to write a one line program to spew random jibberish on the screen which could represent a 'jamming' signal.

2. This is a director's joke where (s)he represents anything alien that's jamming as Windows 95.

I suspect the latter motivation to be the reason behind this decision, but judging from the directing, it could easily have been the former.

Not entertaining, not informative, not really thought provoking, but the Windows 95 directory listing as an alien jamming signal will be remembered whenever anyone mentions Telepresence.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, when popping this unknown movie into my VHS player. "Telepresence" has a bunch of people on a military space outpost who must fight off attacks of hostile alien bugs. The humans stay safely indoors while their mind controls robots that do all the fighting. Some of the humans start creating cancer-like parasites inside their bodies, created by computer viruses that the aliens send into their system when the humans are linked-up with their robots. This may sound cool, but the movie really is very lame and we never get a good look at those parasites. The film doesn't really go beyond the point of merely having a cool concept. At first it looks like you're watching a video-game with crappy graphics, then a crappy movie with so-so acting, then a video-game, then a crappy movie, then... well this goes on like that for the rest of the movie. The military outpost is only shown through cheap indoor sets. The robots fighting outside, that's all really bad CGI. It's so dark and edited in flashes that you don't even see what the alien bugs look like. And between those hectic CGI sequences there are very boring drama-parts between the actors. The first scenes had me a bit fascinated with the whole uncommon look of the film, but the rest really isn't worth sitting through. Still 3 points for the effort the film-makers and the actors made and for the okay skin-effects (involving the parasites), but I guess no-one would want to see this. Then again, I voluntarily watched this. So there must be others out there.

A friend of mine rented this movie, don't ask why, so I decided to take a look. The movie is about people who are on a military outpost fighting some kind of evil aliens, referred to as "bugs". They fight them with robots, controlled by the mind of a human fighter. It started out quite OK, but after a while it became very stupid. The acting is not even that bad, but the special effects and the story are a laugh. The plot is full of holes. I wasn't surprised that this movie was not on IMDB already, because I really wonder who would ever want to remember seeing this movie. I'm not a big fan of SF/action movies, but this has to be the worst of it's kind. 2/10 for the actors who try, and for the trouble making a movie you know no-one wants to watch.