Sometimes you try to figure out what to watch next and fall down a rabbit hole so deep that you think it’s a good idea to watch The Net.

The net in 1995

We open on a VIP government official receiving distressing news by phone. He asks his driver to take him to the park and then promptly shoots himself in the head. Long after we have totally forgotten about this, we will find out why he killed himself! It’s almost like this opener was totally pointless!

Next, Angela (Sandra Bullock) is playing a “bloody” computer game that has some kind of a bug. This is hilarious because it’s Tetris-level graphics she is playing off a 3.5″ floppy disk. Turns out our dear Angela is a hacker! A woman hacker! GASP!

So after she says she can debug this guy’s shitty game, she must fend off his super inappropriate attempts to hit on her! Because obviously when she said “I can de-bug this” what she really meant was “I only took this job as a way to catch dicks!” She politely tells him to fuck off because she has a standing arrangement to eat pizza while divulging her innermost secrets to more even grosser dudes on the ‘net.

She orders a large pizza with anchovies, garlic, and extra cheese to go with her bowl of M&Ms. This is the most disgusting combination of pizza toppings ever, so it is better she eats alone.

However, this gives us a classic TV/movie trope. Very thin women eating massive amounts of food. What is men’s obsession with super petite women eating a lot? Teehee I’m so super dainty but I eat a LARGE garlic and anchovy pizza ALL MYSELF!! And I definitely don’t fart or poop or have stinky breath afterward! Isn’t that so hot?! Does that make you horny?!

On the flip side, being home alone, only talking to people on the internet, and ordering a large pizza to eat all on your own might be the most relatable bit of cinema I have seen this year.

Meanwhile, her coworker sends her a disk with a mysterious program. He says they must talk about it in person so he’ll fly down to meet her before her vacation. He then crashes into a building.

Angela learns of his death and is momentarily bummed. Yet, she is zero percent concerned that he was coming to discuss something he was too freaked out to talk about over the phone and then immediately explodes. Instead, she grabs her bikini and gets on a plane like – where my margaritas at, bitches?

Prince More-creepy-than-charming

There she is just enjoying the beach with a 10-pound 6″ thick laptop in her lap when a dashing gent comes over. They have drinks, find out they have so much in common, and take a moonlit walk on the beach. Everything is going well enough when a guy runs out of the jungle and snatches her purse! The dashing Jack Devlin goes running after him and…

*Plot twist* – Jack is a skeezy piece of shit! Record SCRATCH! I mean… MODEM SCREECH!!

Turns out Jack hired this purse-stealer to steal the disk! Then Jack kills him! And he wants to kill Angela too!

But, right as he is working up to shooting her, Angela kisses him. Ooh I never do this, but I’m on vacation so let’s bone. A little thought bubble pops up over Jack’s head: Yeah, I suppose I could sex her and then kill her, that works.

403 Forbidden

For a moment after they have intercoursed under false pretenses, you think maybe he won’t kill her after all. But unfortunately, Angela turns out to be a major boner killer. She is apparently a real human woman. She starts talking about her life! And her life really bums him out!! Sad!

She says she’s never been in a relationship except for the TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE one with her married therapist. Yikes, Angela, that is legitimately a solidly bad choice! Then, she mentions her mother with Alzheimer’s. Jack wonders whether the sex was worth having to listen to her talk about her life and concludes it is time to kill her. He cannot risk getting any more bummed out.

He gets them some drinks, which is I suppose the courteous thing to do before you kill someone. When he comes back, she has found his gun and confronts him. This leads to an odd scene starring Jeremy Northam’s eyebrows and teeth. Teeth/brows ruthlessly make fun of her (or maybe get mad at her?) for having an “ideal man” that is not Jack Devlin. Teeth/brows later go on to start the incel movement.

Angela and Jack fight and she escapes only to immediately crash her raft into a rock in the wide-open sea. When she returns to her hotel after being hospitalized for three days and tries to get back into her room, the front desk guy tells her to fuck off because she’s already checked out. Angela creates Yelp just so she can give this resort a 1-star review for this guy being an unhelpful asshole.

404 Not Found

Since her IDs were stolen, she gets a temporary passport and finds out she is now in the system as Ruth Marx. She returns to the US to find her house is empty and for sale!

She tries to get her neighbor and job to confirm her identity, but they are like – sorry, we already have a white brunette lady who says she is Angela Bennett. Life fully stolen!

So she calls the last person who could help her – the therapist she had a 100% COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE relationship with! A guy who seems a bit too happy that she is desperate and needs him to take her to a hotel room.

And, guess what? Her therapist is Dennis Miller! Do you remember Dennis Miller?! When you picture a psychiatrist who would have a totally inappropriate relationship with a patient and have zero acknowledgment about how massively fucking creepy and out of bounds that is, you are basically picturing a guy who looks like Dennis Miller!

Anyway, she asks him for help, which is pointless because the whole time he acts like a creepy fuck and tells her she’s delusional. At least he brings her a laptop so she can try to figure out what the big deal is about this disk.

500 Internal server error

Trying to find someone to help her, she looks up her old ‘net chat buddies and finds out one of them is a 12-year-old kid (that was definitely flirting with her before! Barf!! But A+ for another accurate portrayal of the internet. F- for normalizing another example of males being disgusting to females).

Luckily, her chat buddy Cyberbob can help her, but they have to meet in real life…. so obvs Cyberbob gets immediately killed. You’d think Angela would have gotten wise to this shit by now.

She goes to meet Cyberbob at the Santa Monica Pier and runs into none other than Jack Devlin. She says she figured out that they changed Mr. government official man’s medical records to say that he had AIDS when he really didn’t. Jack says they know how to push people’s buttons and government official man’s was homophobia. Which is so much more than I can unpack in this post, but … WHAT…??

Angela asks him why he is ruining her life for something she doesn’t know shit about. To be fair, this is a legitimate question because she knew fuck all when they decided to steal her life. But Jack is like – no, you don’t understand how hard this is for me, ok?! I’m genuinely attracted to you (and this is making it slightly harder for me to kill you)! Like, oh ok, I very much took offense to you wanting to kill me, but if it’s slightly harder for you because you want to get into my pants, I guess that makes it alright!

It takes a long time to get to this point in the movie and yet somehow it goes on for so much longer….

Angela gets caught, escapes, someone dies (her therapist). She gets caught, escapes, someone dies (a guy pretending (?) to be an FBI agent). During which time, Jack drives around with a polaroid of them his car visor for that extra level of stalkeriness. Then, she gets caught, escapes, someone dies (the doppelganger Angela). Lastly, Angela does some computer shit that saves the day (outs some guy for doing a bunch of bad shit just to sell security software) and erases all the bad stuff Jack Devlin did. Then she kills Jack Devlin.

She gets her stuff back and goes to plant flowers with her mom. THE END

I remember this movie being bad, but sweet Jesus every male/female relationship in this movie is disturbing and atrocious. I do not currently have a rating system, but I think this covers it: ?