A serial killer named
Karl Hochman (Ted Marcoux) is known as the "address book
killer", due to his habit of stealing the address books of various
people,
from which he chooses his potential victims. While he is working at a
computer
store, he obtains the address book of Terry Munroe (Karen Allen),
after another employee demonstrates
how a scanner works by scanning a page of her address book into the
computer.
After this, Karl leaves work, however he is nearly killed by a head-on
collision with a truck. At the emergency room, he is placed in a MRI
machine, when a surge, caused by an electrical storm, transfers
his mind into a
computer. As a network-based entity he plots to continue his killing
spree,
using the electrical grid,
appliances, and the computer network.
Because a page of Terry's address
book was scanned into the computer, Karl
manages to obtain the page and begins to go through the list to kill off
her
friends. Her co-worker, Frank Mallory (Richard McKenzie), becomes his
first
victim by making it look like he died in an electrical fire. Elliot
Kastner
(Jack Laufer), her friend that works at the DMV, gets burned to death
after a
hand dryer becomes a flamethrower. His third
victim is a babysitter, Carol Maibaum, who dies after both a television
and
dishwasher explode in a kitchen. When the police do not believe the
story about
Karl continuing his killing spree even though he is dead, Terry's son,
Josh (Wil Horneff), realizes that there is an
order to
the list of victims. Terry's mother visits, and it is during this time
that
Terry and computer hacker
Bram Walker (Chris Mulkey) unplug
anything electrical in the house.
The police receive anonymous reports
of an armed robbery, a hostage
situation, domestic violence, and a murder pointing to Terry's house.
They open
fire on the house after mistaking an exploding generator for a gunshot.
Noticing what they have done, they cease fire. Terry's mother gets shot
in the
process, putting her in the hospital. Aided by Bram, however, they
manage to
fight back and defeat Karl by introducing a computer virus that traps
him at a physics
laboratory. Karl is then forced to escape. They then proceed to activate
an
atom smasher which draws Karl in and destroys him after Terry uses a
revolver
on him. The film ends with Bram telling Terry to turn off a heart
monitor in an
ambulance.
