The 15 most cringe-worthy tech movies ever made

Firewall

In this movie, Harrison Ford goes MacGyver and uses a detached fax machine scanner connected to an iPod to lift account numbers off a computer monitor. It doesn't get any better from there.

Warner Bros.

Johnny Mnemonic

Pre-Matrix, Keanu Reeves played a courier of sorts with a data storage device implanted in his head. Conflict surrounds his character carrying too much data (more than his 80 GB capacity). He has to stay alive and he has to get it out before it causes brain damage. Or something.

TriStar Pictures

Eagle Eye

In this 2008 thriller, an intelligence-gathering supercomputer at the Department of Defense controls everything from traffic lights to power lines. When it goes rogue, Shia LeBeouf is forced -- by the computer, mind you -- into an absurd plot to blow up the State of the Union address.

According to Roger Ebert, "this film contains not a single plausible moment after the opening sequence."

DreamWorks Pictures

Antitrust

Ryan Phillippe stars as a programmer who goes to work for Tim Robbins' software company. Robbins turns out to be a bad guy. Evil plots ensue involving a satellite network.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Hackers

Initially panned, in part, for lots of rapid typing and crazy visuals (because that's how hacking works, right?), this 1995 movie has since gained a certain cult following.

United Artists

Swordfish

International terrorism. Super encryption. John Travolta. In this 2001 movie, Hugh Jackman plays a hacker whose best-known hacking scene is equal parts preposterous and NSFW.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Sex Tape

This movie hinges on the joke that no one knows what the cloud is, and thereby it's possible to upload a file -- say, a rather compromising video -- and have it go viral instantly.

Claire Folger

The Fifth Estate

"The Fifth Estate gives us an obsessive-compulsive messiah with a taste of martyrdom, and full-screen cascades of computer code in place of a coherent plot," wrote Joe Morgenstern in his review for the Wall Street Journal.

There's no shortage of lazy tech cliches in this oft-patronizing movie.

Frank Connor

Runaway

In this truly terrible 1984 Michael Crichton thriller, Tom Selleck plays a cop from the near future investigating a plot to create an army of killer robots. Clues quickly point to a mad scientist, played by rocker Gene Simmons.

TriStar

Jobs

USA Today's Claudia Puig slammed this Steve Jobs biopic as "a blandly superficial treatment of a deeply complex man."

Even the ever-positive Steve Wozniak hated the movie.

Open Road Films

Independence Day

While not a full on tech movie, per se, Independence Day earns its spot on the list for Jeff Goldblum's performance hacking into an alien spacecraft's computer system and downloading a virus in a matter of seconds. Since it was 1996, it's a lucky thing Goldblum didn't have to open a Word file on that Mac. Humans might have been doomed otherwise.

20th Century Fox

Disclosure

When a co-worker tries to frame him for problems at a CD-ROM factory, Tom (Michael Douglas) uses a virtual reality machine to access the files containing the truth... just as one would do in 1994.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Feardotcom

In this truly terrible 2002 ripoff of The Ring, all those who log on to the movie's titular website suffer a mysterious death within 48 hours. That's because the website is haunted by a revenge-seeking ghost.

USA Today's Claudia Puig called it "the cinematic equivalent of spam in your e-mail inbox."

Warner Bros.

The Lawnmower Man

Prolonged exposure to virtual reality (and, well, drugs) results in telepathic abilities and high levels of aggression in this 1992 movie about a scientist who experiments on a mentally disabled gardener. Stephen King, whose short story the movie was based on, actually sued to have his name taken off the project.

New Line Cinema