The movie was made sometime in the 1990’s but before 2004.
A female software programmer starts her first day at work for a massive software company. The movie begins with her starting her first day and walking though this enormous campus. Many white buildings, very well tended grounds. But not a lot of people.
We goes into her work area, and meets other people like her. All software people. And they begin to work together. I think there was maybe five or so others.
All of them are geniuses in their respective software fields.
But they notice something is wrong. And they start to investigate, and they discover that they are living in some kind of huge computer simulation, and that they are software routines. They are a software version of the very people who made the program. They were set inside the program to work for free over and over and over.
The software program is really a kind of Hell. They live for three days, and then the routine starts up all over again.
They become determined to stop the forgetting aspect of their existence.
So they hack into the system.
They go over the campus finding a “backdoor” to get into the main system, and when they find it, it looks like a huge human-sized drain-plug set in the grounds of the campus.
So they open it up, and it is a ladder that goes down deep into the bowels of the campus. So they go in and find out what is going on.
They then discover that they have been reliving this software role thousands of times, and then they discover a file of “notes”. A print out is reams and reams of notes. It was surprising (and shocking as a viewer) just how many times they were “recycled”. Then, they set down and they read it, they learn all about what they are, and what they are doing.
So the rest of the movie is spent trying to outsmart the people who made them, and prevent their memory erasure. The over all theme was to stop the “recycle” process, and stop the memory eraser. If I recall, they did manage to do just that, and the end of the movie has the girl saying something to the effect “just wait until we start making the rules”, or something along those lines.
The movie was so-so at the time, but now in light of other issues, I think that is is profound.
I believe that this movie predates “The Matrix”. Or, if contemporaneous, is a movie trying to “ride” the popularity of that science fiction theme. I also think that it is a made-for-TV, or otherwise “low budget” production. The sets were all simple, and not complex at all. The beauty of the movie was the story line.
The movie is American. Not British or Australian. And seems to take place in Silicon Valley.
What is the name of this movie? Can anyone at all help me in this?