SideFX
NOTE: Read SideFX as Side Effects, and the moral of this movie will fall
into focus.There's a new drug called AYCE on the University campus in Dallas, and
party animal Matt [Todd Swift] can't wait to slip it into his friends' drinks at his super
Halloween bash next Friday. Tuesday [Amanda Phillips], the girl with whom Matt is staying,
doesn't want the party to be held at her house, so Matt is going to hold it at
a secret location. If you want to go, you'll need to call him the morning of
the party to find out where.Like all good friends looking out for another friend's reputation, Erin [Christie Courville]
and Andy [Ryan Fraley] suggest to Matt that they try some AYCE ahead of time, just in case it
isn't all that great and Matt winds up looking like an idiot. So, that night
they do some, and when Tuesday isn't looking, Matt slips some AYCE into her
milk, too. The AYCE seems to make Erin super horny, so on the way home, she makes
Andy stop the car. While they're kissing, Andy hears a noise outside the car,
gets out to look around, and is attacked. [He is found later, his throat torn
open. Police say that Andy was attacked by dogs. The news media suggest it
might be a blood cult killing.] The AYCE gives Tuesday bad dreams. She awakens during the night,
rushes to the bathroom, throws up what looks like blood, and calls her friend
Shay [Amber Heard] to take her to the emergency room, where she throws up again. The doctor
suspects drugs, maybe ecstasy or acid, and has the vomitus analyzed to see if
it's really blood.The next day, Matt takes a call from Tuesday's friend Monica [Marta McGonagle]. Erin has
been taken to the hospital having some sort of nervous breakdown. Matt,
Tuesday, and Shay pay her a visit, but when Erin sees Tuesday, she begins
screaming until the doctor gives her something to knock her out.
Later that evening, as Tuesday is studying in the library, she notices an
old man watching her. A bit later, she sees him in the street, freaks out, and
starts to run. He follows her, catches up, and grabs her. He promises not to
hurt her if she'll just tell him where the AYCE is. She kicks him strategically
and gets away.The next morning, Tuesday wakes up to a telephone call from the doctor's
office. Her lab tests have come back. It WAS blood that she was throwing up,
only it wasn't her blood. She hears a noise outside the front door and opens it
to find a note taped to the door. It says: "It makes you drink blood. Destroy
it all before it's too late!! Meet me at Sunset Park." Suddenly, the old man is
standing on her front porch. Tuesday slams the door in his face, but now it's
all beginning to make sense. Tuesday wonders whether the blood she threw up
might have been from killing someone and drinking his/her blood and that it's
the AYCE that made her do it. That evening, Tuesday and Shay go to Sunset Park to look for the old man.
Turns out his name is Carson Wilson [Chad Allen Black]. As a chemistry student at Berkeley in the
1960s, he re-invented AYCE...actually, RE-invented because the drug has been around since
the Middle Ages and is the basis for the vampire legends in Romania and
Bulgaria. AYCE is fermented from a rare, fungus-infected yeast and results in
the ultimate high. It affects people in different ways. In some people, it
makes them crave blood. Vlad Tepes was a notorious abuser of AYCE, he says. The church
stamped it out, or so they thought.Suddenly, Tuesday remembers that tonight is Matt's Halloween party where
he intends to get everyone high on AYCE. The party is being held in an
abandoned farmhouse. Tuesday and Shay race over. Tuesday tries to get Matt
and his friends to listen to her, but they don't believe that AYCE is going to
make everyone turn into vampires, until Monica kills Kendall by biting his neck
and drinking his blood. They tie up Monica and intend to keep her that way for
the next 12 hours, until the drug wears off. But the drug is already starting
to affect others. One by one, they all become either vampires or victims. A
virtual bloodbath ensues.Epilogue: Another party, another time. Some guy is spiking drinks with AYCE as
others are discussing how that Tuesday girl hacked everyone up with an ax.
Tuesday, who is now confined to a padded cell, babbles over and over, "It
wasn't me! It was the drug! It wasn't me! It was the drug!!" [Original synopsis
by bj_kuehl]
pornographic, violence, murder