In the old days, Hollywood tried to make thrillers that got under your skin—today it’s more about films that get you out of your skin.In a sign of the times, audiences are now within a wave of sci-fi films that take the concepts of “second life”—online avatars, virtual reality and video games—into dark corners of the digital age. Surrogates, a new Touchstone Pictures release starring Bruce Willis, presents a society where everyone essentially stays home but can live (and, it turns out, be killed) via glamorous, computer-controlled robot versions of themselves.

Surrogates director Jonathan Mostow said it’s no surprise that filmmakers are finding compelling material in the ghosts that live in the machine and our societal search for a human pulse amid the pixels. “I think it’s all in reference to this generalised anxiety about technology and its role in our lives.”

Surrogates comes on the heels of the blood-splattered Lionsgate film Gamer, which featured some similar themes but with a different tilt. Instead of robots, Gamer presented a tech-addicted nation where flesh-and-blood gladiators—among them Gerard Butler of 300 fame—and sex slaves give up control of their own bodies to leering customers who pull the puppet strings from computers in the privacy of their own homes.

In December, director James Cameron takes the out-of-body experience off planet with Avatar, in which lives are lost—and unexpected love is found—when humans place their consciousness inside the giant blue bodies of alien hybrids on a planet with the oh-so-revealing name of Pandora.

Those alien vistas are very different from the images presented in Second Skin, the well-reviewed documentary from Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza released last month after months on the festival circuit. More than 50 million people now play MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), and Second Skin delves into what some find in the endless hours at the keyboard.

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