Why the ending is great
I see that a lot of people didn't like the ending. It's true that "...and then he awoke and it had all been just a dream" is usually a cop-out, but in this case it's in fact quite subversive.
For most of its duration, the film seems to play into a common hysteria about video games: they corrupt the young, they lead to violence, they help maladjusted boys (also girls but the focus is usually on boys when it comes to games) maintain and increase their isolation, they keep them away from "wholesome" social activities, make them into stalkers, murderers, gore enthusiasts. Whether this line of argument was more or less common in 94 is hard to say: video games were more unknown and new then, which would have increased fear of them, but they were probably also perceived to be less of an acute problem for the same reason. The Trickster appears as an embodiment of the amoral, self-serving evil they bring, his black-and-red appearance and his smoke-and-brimstone means of arriving in Michael's room seem to call to mind the devil himself. The film seems to be a warning about the dangers of video games, in fact it hardly leaves out a conservative talking point: The main character gets involved with the devil and his corrupting creation, murders his friend and other people, nearly murders the girl he likes, and gets killed by the police.
But then, when the film has elaborated on this message for over an hour, Michael "wakes up" from the game and discovers that his attitude toward life has in fact improved. He appreciates his friend more, he immediately summons up the courage to speak to Kimberly. Having been through much worse, more intense and trying experiences, these little challenges of life are nothing to him now. This reminded me of an article I read about the difference between how gamers and non-gamers dream which states:
But Gackenbach also wondered if video games affected nightmares, based on the “threat simulation” theory proposed by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo.
Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life, except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their avoidance skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation.
To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall.
In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something “fun” for a gamer.
“What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens,” Gackenbach explained. “They don’t run away, they turn and fight back. They’re more aggressive than the norms.”
Levels of aggression in gamer dreams also included hyper-violence not unlike that of an R-rated movie, as opposed to a non-gamer PG-13 dream.
“If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams,” Gackenbach said. “But when they’re aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top.”
http://www.livescience.com/6521-video-gamers-control-dreams-study-suggests.html
I'm not going to go into discussion of other positive or negative effects of video games, only this: the simulation made Michael more assertive but didn’t change his morals. When Kimberly turns him down, he accepts it. The game has made him neither a better nor a worse person morally, but it seems to have made him stronger. I think that we are supposed to see this, after all, the Trickster talks at one point during the simulation about how Michael is "scared of everything", implying that he, Trickster, is there to help him overcome his fears through confrontation. And that's what the game does, which turns the familiar premise that violent video games are a slippery slope leading to mass murder on its head. share