Is The Lawnmower Man (1992) still a wild sci-fi horror warning about virtual reality, or is it just 90s tech nostalgia in a headset?

Before VR became living-room hardware, The Lawnmower Man imagined nootropic drugs, immersive simulations, corporate science, and ego turning a gentle gardener into something terrifying. Directed by Brett Leonard and starring Jeff Fahey as Jobe Smith and Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Lawrence Angelo, it gave early-90s audiences cyberdelic visuals, mad-science melodrama, and computer graphics that once looked like the future.

The legacy is even stranger. The movie made money, spawned a sequel, and became one of the biggest Stephen King footnotes in film history after King successfully sued to have his name removed because the finished film barely resembled his 1975 short story. Thirty years later, t ...