The HACKERS Soundtrack

Next Tuesday (2/25) is our "Love Bytes" post-Valentine's Day sci-fi movie night meet up with THX 1138 (1971) and Hackers (1995), so let's take a minute to look at one of the more memorable parts of Hackers that continues to make it stick out in my mind and part of it was chosen as one of the entries for a movie night lineup: the soundtrack.

Back in the mid-90s, when the Internet was still mostly a mystery to the average person, Hollywood attempted to bankroll on the idea of this mystery and the kinds of people who were the vanguard of this new digital landscape (with, especially in hindsight, equal portions of ridiculousness). The Net, Johnny Mnemonic, and Hackers all came out in 1995 with somewhat mixed success at depicting the world of hacking, computer viruses, and the impact of internet revolution. While it was generally derided as all style, no substance, it remained the most memorable out of them in a large part due to the soundtrack.

Hackers did not sit well with critics but it remained a cult classic with viewers as a result of its over-the-top style, plethora of quotable lines (HACK THE PLANET!!!), and of course the electronica laden dreamlike tribal beats that aid all the spinning camerawork and floating math that made up the hacking scenes. Tracks from EDM artists like Prodigy, Orbital, and Underworld leave a lasting impact to the movie and make the soundtrack a memorable one. Looking back on the soundtrack now it is still a really solid musical time capsule of the mid-90s electronica.