Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg) is your typical high school athlete, who is out trying to impress his girlfriend, Alison (Camille Cooper). But for some reason he can't seem to keep things straight whenever she's around, and one day he slams into the goal post, and it looks like he gives himself a concussion. That's not the worst part, though, because that night he has a nightmare where he sees his brother, sister and mother killed by a serial killer who is stalking the city.
When he tries to convince his father (the police chief) about what he saw, his dad doesn't want to hear about it. But when his family turns up dead, and he somehow knows the details, suddenly they are very interested - but not in a casual sense. They want to know just how he came to know what he does. That's when things get a little more interesting. Unfortunately, Jonathan isn't interested in just telling them. He wants to help catch this guy.
Naturally, they let him go on a raid to bring the psycho in, but it doesn't work out all that well. Despite the fact that several police officers are killed in the process, and a large man with a limp can somehow get away, Jonathan and his dad get out alive. But then he's really supposed to stay out of things. Only by then the killer knows that he's inside his head, and now he can't get out, because the killer knows it was him, and he leaves him a calling card in the form of killing Alison.
Jonathan is determined to get the guy, so he gets one of his teammates to help him go into his lunatic trance and they track him down to a building downtown and manage to thwart a killing, but just before they can get him, Jonathan's dad and some more police show up. The chase is on! Across buildings (that guy with a bum leg can really move!) and everything, somehow this high school kid can put up a fight and they manage to corral the killer. Before you know it, he's being put to death. Movie justice is fast.
Jonathan argues that he deserves to be at the execution, and somehow convinces his dad that he's right, so they go. But before this can happen, Horace Pinker (that's the killer, played by Mitch Pileggi) hooks up a television and gives himself some sort of strange electrical powers.
That means that once he's dead he can take over other people by jumping into them with his shocker-power. So the next three hours (it seems) are spent with him staying one step ahead of Jonathan and the authorities beginning to think that Jonathan is the actual killer. In the end, Pinker transfers himself to a television antenna and into an actual set, and somehow Jonathan uses his dead girlfriend's necklace to get into the set too, and he grabs a remote to switch channels (similar to Stay Tuned), and he finally traps Pinker in his family's house just as his football buddies cut the power to the town.
All in all a very strange ending indeed, but I guess we won't be seeing a sequel to this low-budget film anytime soon. At least, I hope not. It really got painful towards the end.
Rated R for language and violence.
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