Fans blame murders on The Matrix

ON THE day the much-hyped sci-fi thriller, The Matrix Reloaded, became the most lucrative film in United States history, its makers were forced yesterday to confront the less palatable news that their creation has been linked to a series of murders by obsessive fans.

The film’s stars, including Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Joel Silver, its producer, who flew from Cannes to London to promote the blockbuster, looked shocked when asked about the reports.

"I haven’t heard of that," said Silver, at a press conference in the East End of London. "I don’t know what links those are. Fifteen million people have seen the movie. It’s a wonderful fantasy story linked to the real world, and I can’t comment on what makes people do what they do."

The second part of The Matrix trilogy, The Matrix Reloaded, which opened in the US last week, has received mixed reviews, some of them critical, about its extreme, sanitised aggression.

A violent tale of epic battles between men and machines, which traps humans in a computer-simulated world, the movie is famous for blurring the line between fantasy and reality. But in the US, a series of murders carried out by fans of the film suggests that some of them have severe difficulties understanding the difference.

Josh Cooke, 19, who lived in Oakton, Virginia, kept a The Matrix poster hanging on his bedroom wall and had a trench-coat like the one worn by Neo, Reeves’s character. The teenager bought a 12-gauge shotgun, similar to one of those used by Neo to shoot "agents", and gunned down his mother, Margaret, 56, and father, Paul, 51, in the basement of his home in February. He then called the police to report the killings.

Cooke’s lawyer says he believed he was living inside the "matrix" - the computer-generated virtual world of the film - like Reeves is forced to do in the trilogy. "He’s just obsessed with it," his lawyer, Rachel Fierro, told the Washington Post.

In court papers issued to the Fairfax Circuit Court last month, Ms Fierro said that her client "harboured a bone-fide belief that he was living in the virtual reality of the Matrix at the time of the alleged offences".

Robert Horan, a local prosecutor, said he did not think the film caused violence. "Millions of people have seen it and not killed anybody," he said.

However, The Matrix, written by the Wachowski brothers and inspired by William Gibson, the sci-fi writer, and Geof Darrow, the cult comic-book artist, has emerged as a key influence in several similarly violent crimes.

Last week, an woman in Ohio who told police that she lived in the Matrix was found not guilty of killing her landlord on reasons of insanity.

Tonda Ansley, 37, said she believed her dreams were not really dreams, but places where "they drug you and take you somewhere else".

In a similar case in San Francisco in 2000, a man who said he believed he was inside the Matrix was also found not guilty on reasons of insanity when he killed his landlady.

Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, one of the two men accused of taking part in the Washington sniper attacks last year, wrote: "You are a slave to Matrix control", in his jail cell.

While expressing their condolences to the victims, Warner Bros Pictures argue there is no connection between the film and the killings.

The second instalment of the trilogy, which opens in Britain on Friday, broke US box-office records after taking 83 million in its opening week.

It also smashed the opening weekend record for an R-rated film, in which under-17s must be accompanied by an adult.

While its dazzling special effects have impressed many, its pseudo-philosophising tone and bewildering plot have left others baffled.

When asked by one frustrated journalist the question on everyone’s lips - what are the film’s central themes? - Fishburne, who plays Captain Morpheus, answered: "Who am I, why am I here and what is my purpose?

"It’s up to you to go and see the film again and go figure all that s*** out."

Films claimed to influence crimes

WHILE psychologists insist it is violence on screen rather than a film per se that can cause aggression, a number of films have been associated with violent crimes.

Stanley Kubrick withdrew his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange from circulation in the UK after public outcry. Several rapes in the early 70s were linked to the film by the rapists’ rendition of Singing In the Rain - a scene from the movie.

Child’s Play 3, about a doll called Chucky, was linked to the 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger, when a video of the film was found in the home of one of the perpetrators. It has since been linked to other murders.

The Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers has also been accused of prompting copy-cat killings.