Evolver
Low-budget sci-fi B-movie shot in 1994 and released to very little commercial success.
The virtual-reality arcade combat game Evolver is all the rage, and Kyle's score is on top of the country charts. So, logically, he's the one chosen to test a real-life version of the game that the company just came up with. They deliver him a small robot, the titular Evolver, and a few innocuous laser-pointer guns to fight it with.
At first everything goes fine and everyone has a ton of fun, but after a while Evolver reverts to deeper, far more dangerous programming: he upgrades his weapons and goes on a rampage, killing several people and almost succeeding in killing Kyle's sister until he's disabled by Kyle. The robot is carried away and everyone resumes their normal lives, but only briefly: during transit Evolver reactivates, and refusing to acknowledge defeat he switches into combat mode and looks for revenge...
- Abnormal Ammo: when Evolver figures out plastic balls and foam missiles can't actually kill his targets, he replaces them with metal ball bearings and kitchen knives.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: well, duh.
- Back from the Dead: Evolver does this twice. First time he gets thrown into a pool, but reactivates later. Then he's beaten into shutdown with a baseball bat, but then reactivates again - partially disabled, but still very much out for blood.
- Energy Weapons: Evolver has a high-powered laser hidden in his chassis. He's also able to somehow overdrive harmless laser pointers into dangerous instant-barbecue weapons.
- Failsafe Failure: The verbal shutdown code that is originally used to stop the out-of-control robot during the trial run is rejected by the Evolver when its creator tries to use it at the end of the film. Cue Oh Crap.
- Fridge Logic: loading a ball gun and foam missile shooter to fire dangerous items is believable enough - anyone who tried turning rubber toy-gun pellets into darts by using sharp pins can attest to that. But under what possible justification was a toy robot fitted with a hidden high-power laser?
- Unless it was adaptable enough to change its own hardware makeup. Then, who knows?
- Hey, It's That Voice!: Would you believe that's Oscar-nominated indie film darling William H. Macy voicing the killer robot?
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Evolver gets progressively more evil as he witnesses evil. Granted, in the end he's attacked simply for survival, but he starts his rampage when the jock kicks him, and gets more dangerous later on when Kyle's friend kidnaps him and tries to forcibly eject his memory disc. Also, violent television and drugs seem to cause his personality to degrade even further.
- Idiot Ball: So many people have a turn at this the movie resembles a football skirmish. First there are the creators of Evolver that used a military program to create a toy for the civilian market, the people that didn't think to ensure Evolver couldn't make use of anything other than foam balls for ammunition, the kid that tried to use Evolver for spying on the girl's shower room, etc. Kyle at least had enough sense to remove Evolver's battery when things started getting weird, but not enough sense to make sure his kid sister didn't find it and plug it back in to a homicidal robot.
- My Little Panzer: the Evolver AI was originally a military prototype for a combat robot, which was cancelled when field trials showed it to be too dangerous to use. The programming was then adapted to non-lethal gameplay. It did not go well.
- Paranoia Fuel: The fact that we currently have a boon of unaided wartime tech in development, a massive FPS market, hardware and software that can achieve the level of ingenuity displayed, and Porting Disaster and Dummied Out code reasserting itself is precedented behavior for badly written code, means that something like this could very well happen. Granted, probably not as a commercial product, but there's been way more UAV scares than anyone, anywhere should be comfortable with.
- Sequel Hook: in the end, after Evolver's been blown up, he doesn't quite seem to be completely dead: through his shattered vision we see a "TARGET NOT TERMINATED" message, then the screen fades to snow... no sequel ever materialized, though.
- Shown Their Work: A lot of the computer terminology and usage is up there with WarGames. Provided you disregard Evolver's Villainous Breakdown.