Belated Media: Hollywood Horror & Societal Scares

I'm up-to-my-eyes in deadlines right now and thus without enough time to really post anything of substance, but in one of my post-work veg-out sessions I've come across a fantastic video that I just have to share with you all. It's from Belated Media, who I've posted about before, and covers how horror movies discuss societal concerns through...

Wait! Wait! Don't go!

Seriously, even if you're not a fan -- hell, especially if you're not a fan -- of horror movies, I urge you to check out this video. It answers the "I don't get what people see in those movies" question brilliant, with the absolute least amount of gore necessary and precisely zero actual scares. Seriously, there are none of the things you (think you) don't like about horror movies in this video. It covers everything from the original War of the Worlds to the Saw movies, with stops along the way for Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, Scream, and others. It's an incredible canvassing of the genre that should not be missed, either by horror fans (though admittedly there's not much new here for you) or people who just don't get what all the fuss is about (yet).

Without further ado, check it out. After all, what better way to procrastinate than to learn something cool? *I'm looking at you fellow students in exams*

Has the true meaning of the ending to The Thing been revealed?

A post went up on io9 today about a reddit user who may have revealed the meaning of the ending of John Carpenter's classic The Thing. If you haven't seen the movie then you should probably reevaluate your choices in life, or at least stop reading now because I'm going to be spoiling its awesome ending. Seriously though, you haven't seen The Thing? Come on, you can do better than that.

If you're still reading then I'm assuming you've seen The Thing and recall how at the end Kurt Russell and Keith David are left sipping whiskey and contemplating their assured demise, but it's unclear whether both of them are still human or not. The film ends on a totally awesome and characteristically ambiguous note with the audience left wondering, "Was one of them the thing at the end?" It's the perfect ending for a perfect movie (you can expect a post on this at some point), and one that has resonated with viewers since the film was released in 1982.

UNTIL NOW (maybe) [probably not]

reddit user kleinbl00 posted a comment on a discussion of The Thing describing a conversation with a friend of his about the movie. His friend claims to have worked for and talked to John Carpenter about The Thing, and well... Just check this out:

A friend of mine, back when he was an assistant, spent a great deal of time with John Carpenter doing interviews and the like for video games and comic projects. I was discussing my conversation with Larry Turman with this friend and he said 

"You know, I asked John Carpenter about The Thing." 

"Oh yeah? What did he say?" I asked. 

"He said he never understood where all the confusion came from. The last frame of The Thing is Kurt Russel and Keith David staring each other down, harshly backlit. It's completely, glaringly obvious that Kurt Russel is breathing and Keith David is not." 

I looked at my friend for a minute, soaking it in. Straight from the horse's mouth. 

"That's a pretty subtle cue to expect the audience to absorb having seen severed heads grow spider legs and run around," I said. 

"That's the genius of The Thing," my friend said, and we moved on to other subjects.

Holy. Freaking. Hannah.

Admittedly it's totally a "friend of a friend of mine"-type unsubstantiated anecdote that could be totally fabricated, but even then it'd still be a really cool take. It just makes me want to go back and watch The Thing again and do a frame-by-frame when I get to the final scene. It's also way too cool a story for me not to have shared here.

(reddit via io9)

Reviews I Wish I Had Written: Adam Quigley's Hit Piece on Prometheus

Adam Quigley over at /Film has written a great review of Prometheus. You should avoid it like the plague if you have yet to see the film, but it says just about everything I felt coming out of Ridley Scott's latest... thing... 

I don't completely agree with Adam's read of the "big reveal" at the end of the movie, nor did I feel that the android David was the most interesting character in the film, but that said his overall take on the movie is 1:1 with my sentiments. As such, I'm ripping a few of his larger and more on-point quotes to help give my take on Prometheus. Spoilers and unbridled negativity abound from here on out.

Prometheus may seem like more sophisticated fare, with a promise of greater significance deeply entrenched in the oft-mentioned subject matter (i.e., uncovering the origin of human life), but the movie utterly fails at tying its ideas and its monstrous happenings together. Despite feigning interest in probing life’s most pertinent mysteries, the film has nothing to say. It asks — literally asks, aloud — weighty questions without any interest in exploring the answers. The film expects you to do the heavy lifting, as though it should be rewarded for even daring to ask the questions to begin with. 

...

Oh, what, you have a problem with the lack of meaningful plot resolution? You’ve completely missed the point! It’s about the desire to find answers, not the answers themselves! Why try to satisfy you with answers when life doesn’t have any satisfying answers to give? Check mate, motherfuckers!

Is this seriously the point of Prometheus? We’ve waited this long to have our questions about the Alien mythology answered, only to be told that expecting satisfying answers to those questions is actually reflective of the folly of mankind? That’s it? 

How profound. Nevermind that I only sought the answers to those questions to begin with because Ridley Scott chose to make a movie that asks those questions.

This might be the thing that bugged me the most about Prometheus: the movie pretends to ask big philosophical questions about life and creation and faith, etc. ad naseum, but then says literally nothing substantive about anything. Seriously, there's a line right at the end of the movie where David asks Noomi Rapace basically "Why do you want to know the answer to [insert big question here]?" and her response is, verbatim, "I can understand because I'm human but you can't because you're a robot."

For fucking real?!

The movie's big point is that we should be curious about the big questions or else we're just robots, and that's ostensibly bad now? Never mind that this message is thematically and literally incoherent since the entire movie has poised David as the most "human" character of the bunch in terms of his (flirtatiously hinted at) desires to be loved/accepted/not treated like part of the decore. He has one of Prometheus' rare great moment earlier in the film when he confronts a human scientist who's frustrated about not being able to meet and speak with his creator (it makes sense in context). When the man tells David that humanity made androids "Because we could," David retorts by asking "Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same answer from your creators?” It's a moment of sheer brilliance and seems to point towards a thematic structure that interrogates both the reasons for human existence and our vain desires for lofty rationales BUT NOPE. We get nothing of the sort and none of that matters by the movie's end! Instead the big conclusion is that it's bad and inhuman that David doesn't have a higher level dissatisfaction with unanswered questions about existence, which is ironically my major takeaway from Prometheus!

But I digress. My apologies, Prometheus is an all-over-the-place kind of affair and so I'm sure this review must read that way too. Back to Adam:

Stripped from its Alien roots, Prometheus barely has a story to call its own. A lot happens in it, but the events play out with so little thought or urgency that almost nothing seems to happen at all. By the time it hits its third act, the film has completely devolved into generic sci-fi drivel, rushing through each incongrous payoff without bothering to properly root them in any sort of intellectually or emotionally substantiated context. Scene after scene, the film subjects its expert team of stock horror dummies to inactivity and death, completely devaluing the inherent thoughtfulness of the themes at hand, and in doing so removing any trace of intelligent design in a story that’s all about tracing back the roots of intelligent design. But then, maybe that irony is not lost on the writers, who treat the film’s actual gods like dummies, too.

And finally, the don't-call-it-a-money-shot summation:

To call Prometheus inconsequential would be a severe understatement. This movie is a trifling blip of narrative disarray, so lacking in anything resembling an intelligible throughline or purpose that I can’t help but wonder why there was any incentive to tell this story at all. Prometheus isn’t just bad; it actively detracts from the very mythology it’s trying to enhance, reducing the Alien legacy to little more than an accidental byproduct of a mind-numbingly stupid expedition.

Yep. That's pretty much the gist of it. When asked what I thought of the movie, I've summed up my thoughts as "What the fuck did I just watch?" and "I'm frustrated." Because really that's how Prometheus left me: frustrated that a movie with so much going for it (strong cast, strong crew, strong franchise roots, a legitimately interesting premise) does so little and purports to say so much. It's thematically scattered, it's plot is nigh incoherent, it expressly refuses to address its most interesting facets, and worst of all it has a self-righteous attitude about the whole thing. It's very tone poises Prometheus as a critic-proof endeavour along the lines of Tree of Life, though even mentioning the two films in the same breath has me mentally gagging. 

People often ask me why I'm so down on so many movies here on this blog, and I think it's a fair question. I'm critical of movies because I love them, and I expect a lot from them. I don't want everything to be high art, but when I sit down to give a film a few hours of my life I expect more than just a way to pass the time. I expect it to give me something interesting, something thoughtful, something that knows what it wants to do/say and does so competently.

I expected Prometheus to do what every piece of its advertising promised it would: tell me an interesting, intelligent, high-brow sci-fi horror story about the origins of mankind and somehow tie it into the Alien franchise. The movie we got wasn't intelligent or high-brow, and I'd barely call it interesting. The first words that come to mind are "stupefying," "infuriating," "insulting" (although that might be the Alien fanboy in me lashing out), and above all else "frustrating." After all the hype, all the "it shares some DNA with Alien" nonsense, all the spoiler-filled trailers and incredible viral marketing, and all the sublime mystique that fans have enjoyed since 1979, Prometheus is mess of a film that's less than the sum of its parts.

I expected more. Silly me.

A Short Love Note to Cabin in the Woods

Just five college kids in an old abandoned cabin in the woods... Oh yeah!

I've been on a bit of a Joss Whedon tear of late, so you'll have to excuse me as I continue the trend with a glowing (albeit short) review of Cabin in the Woods. Written by Whedon and Drew Goddard (of Cloverfield fame) and directed by Goddard, Cabin in the Woods is a loving "spoof" of the horror genre. It begins with the typical horror movie set-up of five college students heading off to a cabin in the woods for a fun filled weekend of youthful shenanigans (I feel so old typing that), but what unfolds is anything but ordinary.

I'm going to be strict with myself about avoiding spoilers here because the less you know going in the more you'll enjoy Cabin in the Woods. I won't even post the trailer or the film's poster here because frankly they give away too much. All I'll say is that this film is a loving send up of the entire horror genre that engages in an intelligent, creative, and hilarious analysis of the acts of both making and watching horror movies. It's incredible, see it.

Beyond that it's hard to know what to say without spoiling things. In terms of the cast, numerous Whedon regulars are featured here including Kristen Connolly and the always amazing Fran Kranz (Topher!), as well as Chris Hemsworth (who continues to impress me with every role he takes on). There are also some additional roles that I won't mention here but are played by some fantastic actors, and once you see the film you'll know exactly who I mean. Everyone involved does a great job and understands their roles, which all include elements of horror and humour alike. It's a delicate balance but everyone pulls it off elegantly.

I should also clear up the whole "horror movie" thing. Cabin in the Woods is a horror movie more in spirit than effect, which is to say that it has a horror movie premise (kids go into woods, people die, there's blood, etc) but it isn't really horrific per se. There's only one shot that I would qualify as "gory" and it's really pretty tame. More than that the movie just doesn't focus on/feature the horrific elements: terrifying things occurs, granted, but they're more often played for laughs. Also the movie isn't shy about critiquing itself, both for depicting horrific events and for enjoying them, explicitly or otherwise. As I said, it's a delicate balance and I'll leave it for you to see it to understand it, but trust me: it works.

I think that's just about all I can say about Cabin in the Woods without giving anything away. It's an intelligent, hilarious, and endearing ode to the horror genre and film making/watching in general. It's definitely my favourite film of 2012 so far, and I can't wait to see it again. It's just an amazing movie. Don't go in expecting a slasher, it's so much more than that, and don't look into it because the les you know going-in the better. But definitely see it, because Cabin in the Woods is brilliant.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011 is long since behind us and the Academy Awards have come and gone, so I guess now is as good a time as any to say that Martha Marcy May Marlene was my favourite movie of last year.

Let me take a moment to contextualize that statement: despite my best efforts I still have yet to see Oscar nominees Hugo and Midnight in Paris (both of which I expect will be phenomenal), and I missed out on Tree of Life simply for lack of enthusiasm. I also never bothered to see The Iron Lady, Albert Nobbs, or War Horse because, quite frankly, I thought they looked like shit films and the word from critics was that my instincts were right. Finally, I also missed out on some allegedly great smaller flicks like A Separation, though I intend to rectify that shortly.

Now, with those caveats out of the way, let me tell you about why I thought Martha Marcy May Marlene was a sublime achievement in cinema.

Martha Marcy May Marlene takes place immediately after a young girl (predictably) named Martha -- played by the incredible Elizabeth Olsen -- escapes from a cult after two years of isolation from the rest of the world. The movie tells the story of her struggles to reintegrate herself into society while living with her sister Lucy. Throughout the film we see moments from Martha's time with the cult that explain what she went through and give a sense of why she ran away. These memories are so seamlessly integrated with the depiction of Martha's new life that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether what's on screen is a vision from the past or an event Martha is currently living through. And that's exactly the point.

The central conceit of Martha Marcy May Marlene is the psychological trauma that Martha suffers from as a result of her time with the cult. When the movie starts we see Martha at her weakest: she is terrified and alienated from society to the point of being completely unable to explain what's happened to her, even to her own sister. After a few minutes we see a memory from a few years earlier when she first encountered the cult, and it shows how normal and strong she was before. As the film progresses we both see Martha struggle to readjust to normal life and also her memories of the horrifying experience that broke down her personality. While Martha's mental scars become more apparent to her family, we the viewer become privy to the memories underneath. The result is that we not only begin to understand  her way of thinking, we also begin to share her fears.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a psychological masterpiece that doesn't simply portray its main character's feelings of paranoia, it makes the viewer share them right along with her. As the cult's true nature becomes clear from Martha's memories, her outbursts around her sister seem less and less irrational and more poignantly understandable. By the end of the movie we are literally sharing her delusional hallucinations, or are we? Part of the film's brilliance is that we're never quite sure, just like Martha.

I've made it clear before that I'm a fan of horror movies, and that sentiment plays a major role in my affection for Martha Marcy May Marlene. It skirts the genre divide between psychological thriller and horror only insofar as the violence takes place almost entirely in Martha's mind. With that established, it should be clear that Martha Marcy May Marlene is not for the faint of heart: by the end of the movie I was literally sweating and ready to jump at the slightest movement in my peripheral vision. But that's just a testament how powerfully the film makes you understand Martha's battered and terrified perspective.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is not a film for everybody but it was without a doubt my favourite film of 2011. It affected me more than anything else I saw last year and so if you're prepared for a powerful and horrifying psychological thriller then I strongly recommend you check it out.

Zombies and the Dead Island Trailer; or, Holy Shit Effective Marketing Batman!

I've made no secret of the fact that I like zombies. There's something about them that just appeals to me on a (ahem) visceral level. Maybe it's the confluence of post-apocalyptic social dynamics with the pure uncanny terror of seeing the dead come back to life (especially the reanimated corpses of your friends and family). Admittedly that sounds a little weird when I type it out like that, but when the zombie genre is done right it explores themes of desperation, loyalty, resilience, theology, and triumph and tragedy alike. It's just such fertile grounds for examining the human condition. Moreover the idea of great masses of people suddenly becoming mindless killers is a concept that seems to gain more figurative weight with each passing day.

All that said, the zombie genre is one that has also frustrated me in recent years. The market is, without a doubt, over-saturated with the undead (that's almost ironic), and as a result there's just so much cash-grab crap to sift through that the good stuff seems increasingly few and far between. The Walking Dead TV series, for example, was among the great disappointments in the fall. Despite the involvement of Frank Darabont and the potential displayed in the pilot, the show's narrative meandered about without really accomplishing anything until the finale. At that point it pulled a thematic 180 that left me cold, and frankly I don't much care if or when it comes back. A new series in one of my favourite genres made by a film maker who I hugely respect, and they managed to lose me within six episodes. Not a good sign.

Sidebar: I really should do a piece on how great The Mist is...

I don't want to sound completely negative, there have been some great zombie flicks in the last few years. As I wrote in 2009, Zombieland was great fun, and took a new spin on the satirical side of zombies. Also the British mini-series Dead Set, while not necessarily bringing anything new to the table, proved that the genre still has some legs in terms of social metaphor. The series depicted a zombie apocalypse from the perspective of the cast and crew on a season of Big Brother. Turning the lens on reality TV made for some great fun, but the true appeal of Dead Set was in its high production values and fearless approach to narrative. Seriously, for a good old scary time watch the entire series in one go, it's not much longer than a feature film and definitely worth the time.

But all of this is just to get to the reason for the post: the trailer released today for the upcoming game, Dead Island. It feels slightly, well, icky to dedicate an entire post to a marketing promotion, but this trailer is worth it. I found it over at Kotaku, and they called it "The Most Heartbreaking Zombie Vieo Game Trailer You'll Ever See." By no means an understatement, but I think Joystiq does it better when they say that with this trailer the game goes from "completely off our radar" to "has complete dominion over our minds." That does sum up the effect nicely. But don't take my word for it, give it a look yourself:

Now that's how you market something about zombies. Gore, pathos, tragedy, desperation, it's all there! They even go so far as to show the violent death of a child in a marketing tool! Twice, technically. Dead Island now has my full attention by virtue of its excellent trailer alone. This video is the best thing to happen to the zombie genre in years, and if the game can live up to even half the potential seen here then we'll all be in for a real treat this fall.

Customizable Button Mapping for Disabled Gamers

Update: Added a title to the post. Whoops :S

A few weeks ago I posted about how Sony San Diego's upcoming MLB '11: The Show will include an "Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes" mode. Basically the game will be playable using only one button, making it accessible to disabled players. Anyway, this morning I read on Joystiq that developer Visceral Games plans to patch customizable controls into the PC version of their recent Dead Space 2.

The patch comes in response to an online petition and a forum post by Gareth Garratt, a player living with cerebral palsy. Garratt has been playing through Dead Space 2 on his PC using a mouse as his primary input device. Frustrated at the inability to program a "walk forward" command to one of the mouse buttons, Garratt posted on publisher EA Games' forums. There he complained about his difficulties with Dead Space 2 and asked the developers to acknowledge the needs of disabled gamers.

Garratt playing Fallout 3 by using his chin to manipulate the mouse

Garratt's post directed readers towards an already existing online petition that asks game developers and publishers to include custom button mapping in their games. At publishing the petition has received almost 25 thousand signatures, and evidently it took less than that to convince Visceral Games to support the cause. Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis has told Joystiq that the PC version of Dead Space 2 will be receiving a patch that will allow players to re-map the games controls to the mouse. For the full release head over to the original post over at Joystiq.

I don't know if it's just that I only recently started paying attention, but it seems like 2011 is proving to be a great year for disabled gamer accessibility. The original Dead Space was hugely enjoyable, and so I've really been looking forward to Dead Space 2. The sequel garnered excellent reviews, so I was already thinking about picking it up (eventually). This news gives me one more (altruistic-ish) reason to buy the game and support developer Visceral Games.

"Who doesn't want to be debased every now and again?" - Watching Splice

I wrote previously that I was looking forward to seeing Vincenzo Natali's Splice, but had some significant apprehensions about the film. I really enjoyed Natali's Cube and I'm curious about his upcoming adaptation of William Gibson's Neuromancer, but the marketing for Splice made me concerned it would take a frustratingly conservative stance on scientific experimentation. Having seen the movie I'm happy to report that those fears were completely unfounded, Splice was not a terrible, anti-science propaganda piece.

Instead it was just an astoundingly stupid and uncomfortable mess of a horror film.

Spoilers ahead.

Splice is ostensibly a sci-fi film, but I'm hesitant to call it that since the scientific aspects of the plot peter out about a third of the way through. The story is about two hot-shot geneticists (Adrien Brody's Clive and Sarah Polley's Elsa) who use a mixture of human and animal DNA to create a new life form they name Dren. Throughout the initial stages of their experiment the relative morality of human cloning is discussed, or at least mentioned in passing. One could argue that Splice effectively represents multiple sides on the issue by having Clive and Elsa debate it amongst themselves and with an evil corporate big-wig. Honestly though, the science and politics just aren't a real focus beyond their immediate roles in the plot. The movie is more about parenthood, if anything, and once Dren is born the focus becomes Clive and Elsa's relationship with it rather than cloning. That and creeping the fuck out of the audience.

Splice pointedly eschews rhyme or reason in a sustained effort to make the audience as uncomfortable as possible. There are numerous bizarre plot points with flimsy justifications at best. For example, Clive lets Dren curiously watch as he and Elsa have terrible, awkward sex. Apparently he's attracted to the creature because it's made using Elsa's DNA, or something? There’s also nothing in the way of character development or consistency. Elsa actually does a complete 180 personality-wise, changing from a strong, independent woman to a possessive crazy-mommy cliché. All of this results in an amorphous narrative in which the filmmakers depict weird, horrible things just to make the audience squirm. Clive decides he doesn't want to murder Dren anymore and sleeps with it instead. Sequences like this are ridiculous and don't make much sense but are extremely uncomfortable to watch, and that seems to be their primary goal.

So much of what happens in Splice is infuriatingly stupid and illogical, but it might actually be funny if the movie didn't take itself so damn seriously most of the time. The atmosphere is generally dour and tense but every now and again there are sudden winks at the camera that underscore how ludicrous the plot actually is. For example, after Clive gets caught having sex with Dren there's a priceless deadpan shot of Elsa running away from her deranged boyfriend. Such moments are clearly meant to amuse, but Splice is so generally insane that these sequences aren't always immediately discernible from ones that are just inherently ridiculous. It becomes hard to tell whether you're laughing with Splice or at it. The movie feels indecisively split between being truly horrific and comically absurd, and the result is a disconcerting viewing experience that invites far too much eye rolling.

Speaking of things that are irritating, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Splice's convoluted and misogynistic gender politics. As I mentioned earlier, Elsa is introduced as a highly-intelligent, well-balanced person who is unapologetic in her resistance to conform to gender stereotypes. But as soon as she sees Dren she becomes an increasingly unhinged control-freak, and the switch is so sudden and all-encompassing that it completely undermines her initial characterization. Splice portrays the maternal instinct like it's an inevitable mental disorder that uniformly overrides personality and logic. No matter how brilliant and ambitious they might be, each and every woman is a baby-making time-bomb just waiting to go off.  

Additionally you may have noticed that I keep referring to Dren as an 'it' instead of identifying the creature's sex. This is because one of the film's major plot points is that cloned animals are apparently prone to sudden gender reversing rebirths (wow). While this premise opens the door for a progressive depiction of fluid gender subjectivity, Splice instead resorts to traditional differentiators in its polarized portrayal(s) of Dren. As a female the creature is seductively demure but vaguely threatening, and looks like it'll kill Clive praying-mantis style at the climax of their intercourse until Elsa interrupts. After its transformation into a male Dren becomes a predictably aggressive monster, killing everything in sight and raping Elsa. Yeesh. Splice's treatment of gender stands as its greatest failure, as the promising concept is wasted on cliché depictions of a male-female binary.

Splice is not a good movie. It's got an interesting concept and is at times amusing, but more often than not it's frustrating and uncomfortable to watch. If you insist on seeing it then don't go in expecting any sort of intelligent thought on gender or scientific advancement. This film is campy horror, and not even good campy horror at that. You're better off seeing Drag Me To Hell. Or Alien. Or Species. Or anything. 


For further evidence check out some great reviews over at The Daily Protagitron or Danny Isn't Here, Mrs. Torrence. 

Splice: Expectation and Apprehension

Splice opened in theatres last Friday and I'm going to see it later today. I first heard about the movie back in January when the /Film.com guys were covering the Sundance film festival. I was immediately intrigued since the movie got great reviews and was essentially billed as a contemporary re-envisioning of Frankenstein, one of my favourite novels. Since then I've been patiently waiting for Splice's release, but in the last few months the marketing push for the film has started to worry me:

The trailer above shows that Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley use human DNA to create a new life form that eventually gets out of control. All that is fine and dandy and sounds like it could make for a solid horror film, but I'm concerned about the angle the film seems to be taking on this type of experiment. The trailer openly discusses contemporary legislation and debate about the use of human DNA, and shows that the scientific protagonists are blazing a trail regardless of whether or not the powers that be allow it. Despite that setup Brody's character appears to be a mouthpiece for the conservative right who tries to kill the new creature and melodramatically calls it "a mistake." When things take a turn for the horrible the trailer seems to vindicate this perspective and broadcast the "moral" to the audience that "science is bad!"

I've mentioned recently that I'm getting really sick of primitivism and conservatism in my mainstream movies. Yes they're popcorn flicks but dammit I want to empathize with the characters and feel that my upper-middle class perspective is represented! I want my popular entertainment to promote a culture of liberalism and open-mindedness, not regressive conservative doctrine. Admittedly a contemporary Frankenstein isn't exactly the best site for progressive politics (modern Prometheus much?), but it's possible for movies to show experiments going horrifically awry without implying that it's intrinsically wrong to explore new scientific territory.

I don't know that Splice berates the use of cloning technologies or experimentation with human DNA, but judging by the trailers it certainly looks that way. I'm still going to see the film because it looks like an interesting cross between Alien and Species, but I'm going in with my guard up. I'll do a follow-up post saying whether or not Splice is more intelligent than it looks, but right now I'm not hopeful. Fingers crossed that I'm wrong.

Thoughts on Dead Space and Horror

Fair warning: this post is particularly rambly, even for me.

I recently finished EA's 2008 survival-horror game Dead Space. The game's basic premise is "zombies in space," and in a lot of ways it resembles a futuristic Resident Evil.  It's also hugely influenced by films like Alien, Event Horizon, and The Thing. Seeing as how I adore all of those things it was no wonder that Dead Space would spark my interest, and having played through it I am happy to say that the game is awesome. It manages to keep you in constant suspense by cleverly utilizing horror tropes to create an unpredictable and terrifying atmosphere. On top of that the innovative strategic dismemberment gameplay mechanic demands that you approach each regular enemy differently, and the results are always ridiculously gruesome.

Dead Space has been out since 2008 and so it has already received massive amounts of coverage and a prequel, and next year it will be followed by Dead Space 2. I'm really excited for the sequel because it sounds like the developers are going to fix the only major problem with the original game: the story. Dead Space fails to emphasize its underlying story through gameplay and instead tasks the player with a series of contextually necessary objectives. In the end the only real accomplishment in the game is sheer survival, which is great but not substantial enough to really excite. There's also the fact that the protagonist, Issac Clarke, is a silent protagonist, an archaic gaming trope that invites the player to project onto the hero so as to give them a character; it's a bit of a cop-out writing-wise but nevertheless can be effective under the right circumstances (see Half-Life or Zelda). But Dead Space foregrounds Issac's development, particularly his declining mental stability, and given this focus it's counter-intuitive to make him silent and devoid of personality throughout most of the game.

I'm pretty late to the Dead Space party but I don't seem to be the only one: Scott Juster at Experience Points put up an excellent review of the game literally the day after I finished playing it. His post is well worth a read and he's now written a follow-up piece detailing how the game effects a horrific transformation in both Issac and the player. It's based upon a theory that Gerard Delaney posted at Binary Swan to describe how the real monsters in zombie movies are the human protagonists.

Even if you're not interested in Dead Space, Delaney's post makes some good points about the zombie genre, something I haven't thought about in a long time. It got me thinking about some of my favourite horror tales, including zombie movies, the sci-fi films mentioned above, and even a few classic novels and short stories. Far from being unique to the zombie subgenre, a lot of the most horrifying stories show monstrous transformations in their protagonists. The Thing, for example, focuses on the effects of paranoia by introducing a hostile, shape-shifting alien into a group of men. The Descent likewise examines how interpersonal relations and social niceties break down when a group of friends gets lost in an unexplored cave system.

Monsters and villains can be terrifying, but it's truly horrifying when protagonists are compromised. These are the characters we most easily identify with and so we can understand and even relate to their transformations, which in turn invites us to examine our values and limitations. Juster makes a compelling argument for Dead Space achieving this, but I think he's mostly projecting his own reaction to the sheer amount of gore that results from severing enemy limbs. Issac isn't defined well enough as a character to have a real transformation, he remains at all times a silent protagonist that stands as a placeholder for the player. He is what we put into him, no more, no less.

Dead Space succeeds in creating a terrifying atmosphere and repulsive gore, but there's just not enough to the game's characters or objectives. Hopefully the next one will fix this by giving Issac a voice, although it'll take more than that to make the story both horrifying and compelling.

Thirst

I recently watched a movie called Thirst and I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes horror movies or vampires. It was made by Korean director Park Chan-wook, and it tells the story of a priest who becomes a vampire through an emergency blood transfusion. This development predictably impacts his faith-based lifestyle in a rather significant way, though he tries to retain his moral principles. He then encounters a woman he knew in his childhood and becomes infatuated with her, and after that shit gets all sorts of weird and horrible.

Enjoyable Things: Zombieland Review

Throughout Zombieland, we are repeatedly told that there are rules to surviving in a world overrun by the undead. Of all of them, the final rule, No. 32: Enjoy The Little Things, is without a doubt the most important one. This light-hearted moral is emblematic of Zombieland since that is exactly what the film asks, nay demands of its audience.

Zombieland comes in the midst of a proliferation of zombies in mass culture, and yet manages to separate itself from the horde, er, crowd. Unlike almost every other zombie narrative out there, Zombieland features characters that take as much pleasure in dispatching the undead as we do in watching them do it. This slight change to the formula dramatically alters the atmosphere of the film, and more importantly its relation to all other zombie films.

(Evil) Dead Snow: Ein Zwei Die!

So I saw Dead Snow last Friday when it finally opened here in Toronto. I'd been semi-looking forward to the film for months since I'd first heard about it on AintItCool News, and it mostly lived up to my expectations.

The movie is the zombie equivalent of a Michael Bay flick, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The film barely implies a plot to tie its events together "coherently," and all the gags appeal to the lowest common denominator of humour. Unlike the Evil Dead series, which very clearly inspired this Norwegian zombie-romp, Dead Snow fails to push any new ground. It is instead a euphoric celebration of b-grade zombie, cabin-in-the-woods horror comedy, and it is very successful at accomplishing its goals.

Below is the trailer for Lars von Trier's new movie, Anti-Christ. I still haven't seen anything by him, but on Julie's recommendation I REALLY want to see The Kingdom soon, hopefully while still living with Jo. There are so many movies her and I need to watch together before I move out, Rec, Transformers, Inside, most of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc... Hard to believe it's so close to being over...

Don't have time to write much, again, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel... Not much more...



Lars von Trier's Antichrist - Official Trailer from Zentropa on Vimeo