The Twilight Zone (TV Series) The Pool Guy (2002) User Reviews

Pleasant dreams!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 13 February 2022]

Lou Diamond Phillips plays a pool guywho keeps having some VERY weird dreams...sometimes dreams within dreams. But the constant in them is a guy who shoots him...and he wakes up screaming and, oddly, with a scar as if he'd been shot some time ago. Soon he learns about a company that does dream therapy...and perhaps this is behind all this weirdness. Well, he certainly needs answers as after a while he has a hard time figuring out what's real and what isn't.

This ended up being a very creepy and interesting episode, as the secret to all this is pretty amazing. Well worth seeing.

Unimaginable Horror

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 7 July 2017]

This is such a bleak episode. It involves a man having to experience being shot over and over again in his dreams. It's always the same man in some different clothing or job or whatever. He always wakes up with his roommate standing at the foot of the bed. He is hysterical. When we get to the conclusion, we can see a society that would inflict the horrors of this as a means of punishment. If the person has a life sentence he will live it again and again and again. This is so disturbing.

"There's no end to this!"

[classicsoncall · 8/10 · 28 February 2023]

This episode could very well and rightly be considered a metaphor for the concept of hell - an eternal suffering from which there is no escape or hope for relief. It's very well done in the way it keeps the viewer guessing about what's really going on with pool man Ritchie Almares (Lou Diamond Phillips). The dream therapy experiment he was subjected to by Virtuacorp was in fact a prison sentence for a heinous crime he committed, and now all bets are off as he's made to pay the price by lying on a slab and reliving a nightmare existence as opposed to spending a life sentence in a cell. The concept here was quite original and if ever pursued, might in fact wind up being a deterrent to all manner of vicious crimes. But seeing as how this program aired twenty years ago, the idea apparently hasn't caught on.

Inspiration for Black Mirror?

[safenoe · 6/10 · 27 January 2022]

Jana Mitsoula sizzles in this episode that I wonder if it inspired Black Mirror. Maybe. But still, the episode is kind of predictable, but quite chilling and really reminded me of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror.

The 2002 revival of The Twilight Zone had its decent episodes and not so decent ones. The Pool Guy was kind of in the middle.

Wake Up!

[kapelusznik18 · 6/10 · 27 February 2015]

****SPOILERS**** Cleaning out swimming pools in an upscale L.A suburb isn't the most exciting or rewarding work for pool man, as he's known in the neighborhood, Ritchie Almares, Lou Diamond Phillip, but it pays the bills and keeps him busy. It's when Ritchie starts getting this reoccurring dream of him being shot by this guy who seems to pop up out of nowhere and have different identities that he starts to feel that he's losing it and will end up either in a padded cell or straight jacket.

Things really get out of hand when one of Ritchie's customers the sexy and scantly clad looking Mrs, Hunt,Jana Mitoslua, while watching Ritchie doing his work cleaning her pool makes a play for him only to have her outraged husband Mr. Hunt, Mackenzie Gray, pop up and beat the living hell out of Ritchie. As it turned out Mr. Hunt is the very creepy looking man in Ritchie's dreams who's being telling him to stay awake and shooting him for not doing it!

***SPOILERS**** Confused and terrified it's when Ritchie gets a bill through the US mail from this dream institute for the treatment he's been receiving, that he has no idea about, for some $12.000.00 he realizes that his brain is being programed to go through this nightmare every night. And in the end with Mr. Hunt showing up as a policeman, and again shooting him, the sad and terrifying truth about Ritchie's confused mind begin to become crystal clear to him. And even more shocking the reason why he's being made to go through all this suffering!