Columbia/Kobal/ShutterstockFrom the moment that spy-craft could conceivably be done through a keyboard, thrillers and science fiction changed forever. You have the entire cyberpunk genre, of course, which includes everything from William Gibson’s classic 1984 novel Neuromancer to the less-than-stellar 1996 film Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace. But squarely in the middle of the dial-up age of thrillers sits The Net, which hit theaters 30 years ago today.If you’re old enough to remember seeing the VHS at Blockbuster, you probably perceived The Net as simply another Sandra Bullock vehicle, one capitalizing on her co-starring role in 1994’s Speed. And at the time, you would have been right: The Net was an instantly anachronistic thriller with narrative and cinematic shortcomings saved by Bullock’s charm.But what a difference 30 years makes. What seemed like a forgettable thriller in 1995 comes across as creepily prescient today, like watching a decent Black Mirror installment set in a slightly alternate past. Through this lens, the film’s goal isn’t to fearmonger about identity theft, but to present a thoughtful meditation on the nature of memory and what we, as a society, have decided to forget thanks to our reliance on technology. The Net is still a very cheesy movie, but it might be deploying its cheesiness on purpose. The Net is about debbuger Angela Bennett, who accidentally finds herself embroiled in a global conspiracy involving villainous hackers who control large swathes of the internet. They’ve pulled this with an Emperor Palpatine-like move; they’ve caused the need for good cybersecurity software, but the security program they sell is corrupt. When Angela figures this out, her identity is altered to discredit her and destroy her life. The idea that someone’s life could be ruined through a record-altering conspiracy has been a long-time genre theme from The Fugitive to The Prisoner, but what The Net did was weaponize the then-new anonymity of the internet into a somewhat feasible, ripped-from-the-headlines, bleeding-edge narrative. It was the Mr. Robot of its time, but more amused with itself about how Angela uses technology for everything.Angela (Sandra Bullock) is in big cyber-trouble. | Joyce Rudolph/Columbia/Kobal/ShutterstockThe film opens with Angela ordering pizza online, which is meant to make us think that she’s a weird techie shut-in, but this now scans as normal in a way that The Net both predicts and mocks. Angela’s reliance on keystrokes for everyday tasks (eating, human interaction) are presented as subtle digs against her character, and, as the narrative unfolds, her casual connection to all things internet becomes her undoing. As she says while trying to convince a state-appointed attorney of the conspiracy, “Our whole lives are on the computer... there’s this little electronic shadow just begging for someone to screw with it!”But if the movie was just a thriller about uncovering a cyber conspiracy, it would be a bit dull. Instead, its best moments not-so-subtly ask the question of how we prove that we exist. Early in the film, we learn that Angela’s mother has Alzheimer's and doesn’t know who she is. Later, in a heartbreaking scene, Angela begs her mother over the phone to tell the police that she is who she says she is, but of course, the mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Again, this has big Black Mirror vibes, as The Net presents us with the idea that we’ve given the most crucial memories in our lives to technology, while being unable to place any value on real-world memories.In another sort of surprising twist, the only person who believes Angela is her former shrink, Dr. Alan Champion, played by comedian Dennis Miller. We learn that Angela and Alan had an affair when she was his patient, creating a messiness to their relationship, but also another layer of bewilderment and near-realism. How can the only person who truly knows Angela also be a sleazy adulterer who’s also her shrink? Fascinatingly, Miller’s performance here is great, like what might happen if you dropped 1980s Billy Crystal into a Mission: Impossible movie. And when the fun comic relief is taken out, you know the movie is for real.Dennis Miller as the skeezy Dr. Alan Champion. | Joyce Rudolph/Columbia/Kobal/ShutterstockOr is it? Sometimes you have to wonder if director Irwin Winkler was kidding around. The dialogue is often odd enough to be laughable, like when Angela and the evil agent Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) talk about their love of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Is this layering on purpose? Breakfast at Tiffany’s, after all, is also about people pretending to be what they’re not.The best example of this ambiguity is in The Net’s most random and nerdy Easter egg. At the beginning of the film, as Angela is working on her Power Mac, we see she’s drinking from a 1984 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock collectible glass from Taco Bell. The glass is from the Fal-tor-pan scene, where Spock’s body was rejoined with his soul, resulting in a dubious reconciliation of memory. In a sense, the idea of Fal-tor-pan is the entire ethos of Angela’s plight; she struggles with who she is, has to break some laws, and emerges with a different perception of herself and her memories.Did Winkler think about this when he shot that scene? Is The Net profound now by design, or is it all an accident? Ultimately, The Net suggests it's better if we can’t answer every single question. And watching it today will make you nostalgic for how easy it once was to simply disconnect.The Net is streaming on Pluto TV.