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Review: The Babadook

December 28, 2014 1 Comment

The Babadook is one of those movies that you expect to be disappointed in. A creepy, atmospheric trailer seems to be a recipe for disaster, as proved by movies like The Conjuring, Sinister, Insidious 2, Mama and so on. Your mileage may vary on those flicks, but I was ultimately disappointed in all of them, even if I didn’t outright dislike them.

I’m happy to say Babadook breaks the mold. It’s not a perfect movie, but at least it delivers on what the trailer and the marketing promises. It can be a pretty scary flick at times, but it doesn’t overplay its hand. Even at a crescendo you don’t get a really good look at the boogeyman and it avoids the usual exorcism/easy solution trick that plagues the genre.

Amelia, a widowed orderly, has raised her son Samuel alone following her husband’s tragic death. Sam begins displaying erratic behavior: he rarely sleeps through the night, and is constantly preoccupied with an imaginary monster, which he has built weapons to fight. One night, Sam asks his mother to read from a mysterious pop-up storybook he found on his shelf. The story, titled “Mister Babadook”, is about a supernatural creature that, once someone is made aware of its existence, torments that person indefinitely.

It’s a pretty great setup. Even the book is pretty scary on it’s own.

While the son is pretty irritating and irritating kids are one of my top pet peeves in horror flicks, I have to say he comes around before the halfway point and is generally very believable in his role. The mother’s slow descent into madness and violence seems a bit improbable, but I’m willing to chalk it up to actual mental illness and/or the Babadook’s influence.

The movie is essentially the tale of how mother and son become increasingly cut off from the world as they fall victims to the attention of the Babadook. She loses her job, he gets kicked out of school, her (terrible) sister doesn’t want to see her and so on and so forth. Inside the house, the mother is becoming increasingly erratic and paranoid, at times attacking her own son and at times protecting her from the monster.

The few times we get to see it, it’s fairly terrifying and the sound design is particularly creepy. Bonus points for the movie being light on jump scares. Read on after the jump for my take on the ending.

4 out of 5 ba BA ba DOOK DOOKs

Spoilers abound!

I am a lazy man. My take on the movie as a whole and on the ending in particular is fairly simple: It’s a metaphor for mental illness. That’s not to say everything that happens in the movie is explained this way, I’m sure you can nitpick a few scenes that ”prove” that Babadook is real, but that’s not the point. Both mother and son are unreliable narrators and anyway, everything that happens is a metaphor as well. Amelia ignores the signs of her depression and whatever mental illness seems to be circling her and sinks deeper into it. She cuts herself off from everyone that can see what’s happening either by her actions or on purpose (pulling her kid from school). I don’t want to get too into it, but you could also argue that Sam just goes along for the ride, as kids usually do. Their parents are their compass. If mom says there’s a monster trying to kill them, who is he to argue? Especially since he has been insisting the same thing since before Amelia believed in it.

As for the ending, I take it as a (a bit on the nose) metaphor for acknowledging your problems and choosing to manage them, instead of ignoring them and letting them control you, as symbolized by her ”feeding” the Babadook, the monster (sickness) you can never get rid of.

Dark Days RPG

November 23, 2014 4 Comments

Probably around oh…five years ago, I started working on a roleplaying game. As most misguided projects go, it ended up changing a lot from then until now. Initially it was pretty much a heartbreaker, a kitchen-sink collection of things I liked from games, cobbled together into a Frankenstein. The core was always the same though: It’s about a group of characters investigating the supernatural.

I foolishly commissioned some artwork when I was first starting out. You can see some of it below. It was called Van Dread at the time and was mostly a pulp clone of Hunter: The Reckoning, by way of Call of Cthulhu and Unknown Armies. The most damning evidence of my failures in game design were the many permutations of this game, from concept, to mechanics, to system. I’ve used the Storyteller system, Fate 2.0, and Apocalypse World, with various success. There’s been skills lists, skills and stats, just stats and so on.

At this point, I just want to dump all the work I’ve done so far in this blog post, as a way of clearing the slate. I do intend to finish Dark Days at some point, hopefully soon. I’m still not sure what system I should use for it. The mechanics can be bolted on to most systems.

Here’s bits and pieces of the game. If you’re lost, keep in mind that it’s based on Apocalypse World and the Aspects from Fate.

All artwork is copyrighted to the respective artists and has been licensed for use with the Dark Days roleplaying game.

Premise I think the best way to explain the game is to explain what the original idea was. If you’ve played Call of Cthulhu, or any horror investigation game, you’ve probably experienced the mayhem associated with mortals experiencing the supernatural. People go crazy, get injured, scarred, lose limbs, lose families.

Too bad those guys can’t keep doing that forever though. They already know it’s best to burn the haunted house down and shoot the neighbors in the face after the first few investigations. Everyone is out to get them. But what if they could?

…and that’s Dark Days in a nutshell.

The characters are ex-members of an organization dedicated to destroying the supernatural threat. They got maimed, fired, disgraced or quit. But they get called back to serve the organization the left behind, as part of a special operations team.

There’s a catch though. To be part of the program, you have to let them shoot some really weird shit into your bloodstream. To make you tougher, faster, smarter, weirder. Just like the monsters you’re going to kill.

What do you do in this game? It’s a horror investigation game, with a focus on action. The investigation part isn’t about looking for clues, it’s mostly about trying to figure out what the hell is going on and what’s the best way to end it. A shortcut to the usual investigative games, if you will.

In a run of the mill scenario, you’d be sent to a town or a city to investigate something weird that’s happening. After a few days of interviewing witnesses and snooping around, the shit will inevitably hit the fan and at that point you’re gonna want to neutralize the threat and get out alive.

Setting

The setting makes a few assumptions. Monsters are real. The general public is unaware. There’s no grand conspiracy, just a bunch of smaller ones. When the mailman eats a lady’s face and then jumps 30 feet up into a tree in a small town, what cop is gonna say that to the news crew?

Monsters all come from the same place. The Dark. The Abyss. Hell. Whatever you want to call it, it’s another place, a different dimension. Things slip through, or are called here. When that happens, weird shit goes down and people die.

The Dark is a corrupting force. Most monsters used to be human before they were corrupted into something else.

The characters have a piece of the Dark inside of them. That’s what the project is. They have weird powers, just like their monster counterparts, but the human part is still in control. They’re the perfect weapon against monsters.

The organization is set up like the military. There are multiple player-chosen branches. Some deal with intel, some are R&D (Research and Development), some carry flamethrowers around.

Themes

● Humans can be monsters and monsters can be human. I know this goes against the general theme of the game (kill monsters), but it fits into the character’s monstrous nature. The characters will encounter plenty of seemingly monstrous beings that end up being harmless or smart enough to use diplomacy to stay alive. That’s why there’s a Covenant move that allows you to strike deals.

● The Abyss is an alien thing, and true creatures of the Abyss are too. There is no way to understand it or pacify it. Kill it or be killed.

● The world is a fragile thing. Any one of the things that escape the Abyss can mean the downfall of our way of life.

● You kill monsters to protect the innocents, but what about you? You’re a ticking time bomb and you’re already half a monster. What the fuck are you gonna do with yourself when you find yourself becoming less human day by day?

Inspirations

Hellboy’s B.P.R.D

For the way the BPRD is set up, for the interplay between human and supernatural agents, for the way they deal with the supernatural (figure out if it’s dangerous, kill it with impunity if it is). For the dozens of nameless agents that get killed in the first hours of every mission. For the way the world is threatened in the later issues.

Supernatural TV Series

For the casual nature of hunting monsters, for the occult tomes and symbols, for it’s concepts of hell.

Event Horizon

For it’s depiction of the other place, Hell, the Abyss.

Agenda Make the world dark and real. Make the characters’ lives interesting. Play to find out how you die.

The Principles

Blanket the world in Darkness. Figuratively and literally. Dark Days takes place in perpetual darkness, artificial or not. The weather is shitty, rain and cloudy days. Characters live in the dark and often investigate dark places. The Dark also represents the corruption of the Abyss. Not everything touched by the Dark turns into a monster; your neighbor might harbor some pretty horrible secrets and thus be somewhat changed. Besides, with the murder rate of most metropolitan cities being what it is, the chances of you living in or near a murder house are pretty high.

Make the human monstrous; make the monstrous sympathetic. Evil isn’t always an effect of the Dark. Sometimes it’s plain old human evil. On the other hand, a monster might be capable of more compassion than you. The characters stand on the threshold. Which side are they gonna end up on?

Introduce the weird, the magical, the horrific, the unfair at every opportunity. Nothing is sacred. Kill NPCs, destroy structures, burn everything. Address yourself to the characters, not the players. Make your move, but misdirect. Make your move, but never speak its name. Ask provocative questions and build on the answers. Be a fan of the players’ characters. Name everyone. Make them important.

The Stats

The Stats are:

Cold …means you are cool, calm, numb, graceful under pressure. You add this to your dice roll when you Act under pressure.

War …means you are violent, skilled in combat, aggressive, mean. You add this to your dice roll when you Shed Blood.

Majesty …means you are sexy, seductive, convincing, attractive. You add this to your dice roll when you Influence/Seduce, when you Threaten Violence.

Edge …means you are sharp, witty, quick, skilled, perceptive. You add this to your dice roll when you Read a person.

Esoterica …means you are creepy, scary, dark, strange. You add this to your dice roll when you Invoke Darkness.

Stats go from -1 to +3. Higher is better. A stat can be set to 0.

Moves

Every character gets the following Moves:

Basic Moves Act under pressure Invoke the Darkness Assess Situation Shed Blood Threaten Violence Read person Help/Interfere Influence Investigate Covenant Peripheral Moves Suffer Trauma When Darkness reaches 0 Intake darkness

Act under pressure When you act under pressure, roll +cold. On a 10 you do what you want. On a 7-9, you hesitate, you get scared, you stall. The MC will offer you a difficult choice or a hard bargain. On a miss, you fuck up.

Invoke Darkness When you invoke the Darkness, roll +Esoterica and state your subject. On a hit, the MC will tell you something you didn’t know about. On a 10, you may ask one clarifying question. On a 7-9, the MC will state something. On a miss, the Darkness reveals something dark about you.

Assess Situation When you asses the situation, roll +Edge. On a hit, you can ask questions. If you act upon them, get +1 going forward. On a 10, pick 3. On a 7-9, pick1. which enemy is the most dangerous? which enemy is the weakest? who’s in control here? how do I get out of this? what’s my best escape route /way in / way past?

Threaten Violence When you threaten violence, roll +War. On a 10+, they comply and you Shed Blood.

On a 7-9 they can choose to:

trade harm for harm

comply with your desires

evacuate

Shed blood When you shed blood, roll +War. On a 10+, choose one extra effect:

take +1 forward.

You inflict terrible harm

You suffer less harm.

On a 7-9, trade harm for harm.

Read Person

When you read a person, roll +edge. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7–9, hold 1. While you’re interacting with them, spend your hold to ask their player questions, 1 for 1: is your character telling the truth? what does your character intend to do? how could I get your character to _?

Help/Interfere

When you help or interfere with someone, roll +Edge. On a 10+, they get +2 forward On a 7-9, they get +1 forward but you expose yourself to danger.

Influence/Manipulate Someone

When you manipulate someone, roll +Majesty. For NPCs: On a 10+, they do it. On a 7-9, they ask for reassurances/they ask you to promise them something before they do what you ask. For PCs: On a 10+, both. On a 7-9, choose 1: If they do it, they mark improvement if they refuse, they mark improvement.

Investigate Scene

When you investigate the scene, roll +Edge. On a 10+, hold 2. On a 7-9, hold 1.

Spend hold 1 to 1 to ask the MC questions: What happened here? How many of them were there? Where did they go? What has been concealed here? On a miss,

Covenant

When you enter a covenant, roll +Esoterica On a 10+ pick 2. On a 7-9 pick 1. You include a clause or loophole for yourself. There are no loopholes the other party can abuse. The deal is fair.

Intake Darkness

When you intake Darkness, roll Esoterica. On a 10, get equal to the dose +1 Darkness On a 7-9, you do it.

When Darkness hits 0

Treat Wounds

When you treat wounds, roll +War. On a 10, heal 2. On 7-9, heal 1.

Suffer Trauma

On a 10+, your flesh withstands. On a 7-9, suffer Trauma.

MC Moves

Separate them.

Capture someone.

Trade harm for harm.

Announce off screen badness

Announce future badness.

Inflict harm

Take away their stuff.

Activate their stuff’s downside

Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost.

Make a threat move.

Make them investigate.

Review: Burning Dark

November 15, 2014 No Comments

Burning Dark by Adam Christopher

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.
But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.

Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?

This is the book that hates the reader. It hates you. For some reason, it starts in media res with some random woman freaking out about…something. You don’t know what. You don’t know why. The next chapter is about the protagonist in the midst of a space battle. That’s fine, though it doesn’t neglect to use some terminology you’re probably not familiar with. The chapter after that is a scene with five or six people all of whom are upset, none of whom you have ever been introduced to. They’re not described or differentiated in any way and they have nothing to do with the previous chapter. The dialogue has no tags. The dialogue has no tags.

And this is why I put this book down at least five times before bothering to slog through these first few pages. I hope the editor was fired for this crime. Only after reading the rest of the book did I realize what had been done to it. I can picture it now, some editor or suit guy reading the manuscript and going ”No! This is too slow! This is boring! It needs explosions!” and some other dude going ”Well, there’s a space battle like, at the end of the book but…” and the suit guy gets a glint in his eye: ”Perfect, cut that chapter out and put it in the very beginning.”

As it says in the blurb, the protagonist is the hero captain of a space battle. However, reaching the end of his career in early retirement, no one believes him. The beginning scene is his description of the famous battle. He tells the story to a bunch of assholes who doubt him. Only problem is that this scene takes place at the last third of the book, when we have actually met the aforementioned assholes and are familiar with them. When you reach the chapter, you literally have to go back to the beginning to re-read it, since it’s highly unlikely that you understood anything then, let alone remember.

Anyway, enough about my pet peeves and what makes me homicidal. On to the book.

I have a soft spot for sci-fi horror. One of my favorites movies is Pandorum, which, let’s face it, is not a very good movie. So I went in with a harkening for some scary sci-fi shenanigans. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t say this is a very scary book or that it even belongs in this sub genre. Except for some ghostly happenings that make up a very small part of the book, there’s not much here to warrant the horror label. To give you my own take on the plot, Cleveland is a fairly passive guy that straight up gets bullied by some tough guy space marines, while waiting out his retirement on a decommissioned station. Soon, strange things start to happen, beginning with a weird radio signal he receives that is essentially a leftover from early human space age. People start disappearing, spooky things happen and ghostly ghosts make a lot of people faint like they’re in a H. P. Lovecraft story.

There’s nothing particularly bad about the book, it’s just a bit of a kitchen-sink novel with a lot of different ideas mashed together. I’m not opposed to the approach, but the ideas are so radically different that it becomes jarring. Ancient Japanese myths mixed with alien wars and ghosts and a dead Russian cosmonaut. What connects all these things? Well, not very much, to be honest, outside of a vague conceptual link that’s revealed at the very end of the book.

I enjoyed some parts, including the Russian cosmonaut (based on a real world event, most likely a hoax by a couple of Italian radio operators) and the world building that Christopher did (of which we only see a small part). The protagonist is a bit of a wet towel, somewhat spineless and a bit of an idiot. It’s not that I like Mary Sue protagonists, but there’s something to be said for characters that drive the plot instead of responding to events. The space marine characters were far more interesting, although we don’t see a lot of them.

All in all, the book was a bit of a letdown. It feels rushed and sloppy, probably because of the different ideas it’s trying to shove together to make the plot work. Perhaps it would have worked better spread out over a couple more books, if the author filled in the gaps nicely. I’d read another Christopher book, but not this one. Never this one.

2 out of 5 Space Ghosts

Review: California

November 15, 2014 No Comments

California by Edan Lepucki

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they’ve left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can’t reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they’ve built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she’s pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind’s dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

In hindsight, the blurb makes me groan and touches upon most of my issues with this novel.

It’s hard to talk about this without making some kind of judgement on the author, so I’m not going to beat around the bush. The author of this book has either grown up in the whitest of white suburbia or is writing about a society she thinks exists in that suburbia. The amount of complaining and the horror in which these characters treat problems that are commonplace for a lot of people today is dumbfounding. This is not post apocalypse, this is ”I’m going camping” level problems. Oh no the water we shower with is cold! Oh no we don’t have electricity! Oh no we sleep in a queen sized bed! It’s utterly bizarre that the image of post apocalyptic society she managed to paint was ”Sometimes the water is cold.” I’m not suggesting that vast swathes of the American population live without hot water or electricity, but for anyone who’s been even a bit poor, these things should be familiar.

I’d wager that in a post apocalyptic society there’d be problems like not having water to drink (let alone shower) or food. Cold would probably kill you, depending on location. While horrible things happen (suicide, death, murder) in the book and things are definitely grim, the overall vibe I got from the protagonists is that they are hugely spoiled middle class kids. That might actually be on purpose, but since no one else shows up that’s any different, I don’t think so. You’d expect some kind of contrast between a survivalist who maybe knows how to hunt and skin animals and build a cabin and the couple who struggles to garden and lives in an abandoned shed.

The second biggest flaw in my opinion, was the plot. While there’s a lot of meat on it to distract (and some of it is fairly enjoyable), for anyone who has ever consumed any kind of post apocalyptic media, this might be the most generic plot there is. People go looking, find strange community of survivors who appear to be doing really well and welcome them in, but are also secretive. What is their big secret? Read to find out. I mean, up to the point where they decide to go looking, they seem to have a pretty good life, without any major problems. Food, shelter, safety. The reason they leave all that is basically because Frida is bored and wants some cool shit to happen, or something.

What elevates this novel from the bottom of the barrel is the writing. While a bit pretentious at points, once you get used to it, it serves its purpose very well and distracts from the bare bones plot by adding a myriad of subplots and characters. Switching the POV between the couple is a smart move, allowing us a better understanding of their choices and motivations. I personally found Frida to be really unlikable and was forever waiting for Cal or someone else to call her out, but alas, it never happens. I suppose it’s fairly realistic, but at the same time not really that enjoyable, which always seems to be the problem with realism.

I admit to being a bit perplex both by the plot and the universe in which it takes place in. It’s a sort of ”soft apocalypse” where society has slowly crumbled, but it sort of doesn’t make a lot of sense. On one hand you have private schooling and a very middle class existence and on the other, you have suicide bombers and packs of marauding bandits. I’m not sure how those fit together. I can’t talk about the plot without some major spoilers, but there are a few things there that make no sense either. If civilization is mostly gone, who the hell would care about politics? It’s such a strange thing to get hanged up on when society has completely collapsed.

The major plot twists keep me from delving too much into the plot, so I’ll cut this rambling mess short. I enjoyed part of this novel, but was very irritated by Frida and a couple of other characters. A lot of things stress suspension of disbelief for me so overall I must say I was left disappointed.

2 out of 5 Spoiled White Kids

Halloween 2014 Mixtape

November 1, 2014 No Comments

Review: Bring Me Flesh, I’ll Bring Hell by Martin Rose

October 21, 2014 1 Comment

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.
Vitus is horrified to discover the photo of the couple’s missing son is a picture-perfect reproduction of his long dead son. This leads him to question the events of his tormented past; he must face the possibility that the wife and child he believed he murdered ten years ago in a zombie-fugue have somehow survived . . . or is it just wishful thinking designed to pull him into an elaborate trap?

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I don’t actually care about the ethics of blogging or whatever, so this is the first and last time I’ll mention it.

Bring Me Flesh, I’ll Bring Hell is a genre-aware horror noir novel. There seem to be a few of those lately, which is something I’m pleased about. Now zombies aren’t really my thing, but I don’t think it’s quite fair to call Vitus a zombie. More of an undead private eye or a Hellboy kind of thing. Minus the brawls.

Vitus has spent a decade being dead and slowly falling apart, when a couple of clients shows up at his doorstep with a photo of their son, who has gone missing. Only the picture is actually a photo of Vitus’s son all grown up, even though he’s supposed to have died ten years ago in Vitus’s hands. At the time, Vitus was more of a traditional zombie and had fed on his wife and kid, before the people responsible for his condition came up with a drug that keeps him human (as much human as a decomposing corpse can be anyway). Now he takes a dose every few hours, lest he loses control again.

”We miss our son and would give anything to have him back, Mr. Adamson. Can You help us?”
”Anything at all, Mrs. Rogers?”
”Name your price, we’ll be happy to pay it.”
”Can you get blood out of everyday household items?”

Anyway, he takes the case if only because he needs to figure out what the hell is going on and if his son is actually alive. As per noir guidelines, this throws him down a rabbit hole of increasingly bizarre and complicated situations: A hooded figure following him around everywhere, trying to kill his clients; a femme fatale (almost literally, she’s a mortician) that heals his wounds and weird clients that keep ”rising” from the dead.

I’ll try not to spoil anything, as I believe discovery is half the pleasure in a novel like this. I found the book to be very well written, if a little ”purple” in places. However, any purple prose is satisfyingly gory, grim or funny. Nothing about sunsets and beautiful vistas, all about sinew, rotting flesh and fatalism. The plot is meaty and complicated, but not overly so. It really is a noir tale, which in my experience is rare to find, even when it says so right on the cover. Many an evening has been wasted reading The Maltese Falcon retreads.

The premise might seem ridiculous from the outside, but is handled deftly and doesn’t stress your suspension of disbelief too much, even when the really bizarre stuff happens. The last third of the book moves along on a brisk pace, with revelations just around every corner and it’s a pretty good ride if I may say so.

Check it out if you like: horror noir, grim humor or the Sandman Slim books.

Review: Young Ones

October 20, 2014 No Comments

Set in a near future when water has become the most precious and dwindling resource on the planet, one that dictates everything from the macro of political policy to the detailed micro of interpersonal family and romantic relationships. The land has withered into something wretched. The dust has settled on a lonely, barren planet. The hardened survivors of the loss of Earth’s precious resources scrape and struggle. Ernest Holm (Michael Shannon) lives on this harsh frontier with his children, Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Mary (Elle Fanning). He defends his farm from bandits, works the supply routes, and hopes to rejuvenate the soil. But Mary’s boyfriend, Flem Lever (Nicholas Hoult), has grander designs. He wants Ernest’s land for himself, and will go to any length to get it.

From writer/director Jake Paltrow comes a futuristic western, told in three chapters, which inventively layers Greek tragedy over an ethereal narrative that’s steeped deeply in the values of the American West.

I enjoyed this a lot. I admit to being a little disappointed that the PR material for it gave me a completely different idea of what the movie would be (I guess I was expecting a new A Boy and his Dog or Mad Max, while this is more or less a sci-fi drama. Still, it’s a well made film and the director/screenwriter made some interesting choices that I appreciated it.

Ernest is a poor old farmer that owns land but not water. He has a job delivering supplies to the men working to bring water to the fields, but not his fields; the water is going to industrial farms further away. His attempts at convincing or bribing the boss to throw some water his way are unsuccessful. In the meantime, his daughter is dating this really douchy kid who needs to get smacked a lot. Ernest doesn’t trust me and refuses to help him with whatever scheme he’s trying to run.

All this comes to a head when Ernest’s donkey, which is instrumental for his work breaks a leg and has to be put down. He invests on a robotic donkey. When Ernest refuses to loan it to douchy guy, it gets stolen and used to smuggle contraband across the border. This is where shit goes bad and where I stop lest I spoil ya’ll.

There’s not a hint of melodrama as I would probably have expected in a movie about a down on his luck farmer trying to provide for his family (crippled wife and all). Things are mentioned (perhaps sometimes bluntly, like when Flem accuses Ernest of crippling his wife in some kind of accident he likely caused because of his drinking) and then never expanded on, but left to shimmer in the background. There’s no need for them to be brought up again later on when Ernest’s daughter is freaking out and screaming at him. I appreciate the economy.

I rarely review good movies, because reviewing the bad ones is much more amusing and let’s face it, lazy as hell. It fits my personality, so to speak. After watching this one and checking out some reviews online, I just felt that I had to give my 2 cents as well. In fact, let’s look at this review so that I can make fun of it.

Young Ones makes use of brilliant cinematography that is instantly wasted in the hands of a director who is without a shred of talent, an editor who must have been a butcher, mediocre sound editing, and a cast that is almost as misguided and inept as the screenplays author. A story that had true potential was crippled by a lack of character development, and the nonexistence of focus. The directors lack of skill is clearly seen in his failed attempt to (I may be paraphrasing) give the character of the machine, a robotic donkey, a sense of having a soul (not even a glimmer of this is seen in the film), and his somewhat unsuccessful try at implying that there is prosperity outside the boundary of where the characters live. The film is without any sort of outstanding performance by the cast, and lacks even a single character that the audience can empathize with. Personally I believe that this feature was a waste of a perfectly good cinematographer, and I wish I had spent my time at another premier.

— Cossette-mark

This is the only review they have posted on IMDB, and they joined roughly 2 months before they posted it. A bit suspicious, but whatever, I can’t imagine why someone would want to do such a hatchet job on it. Pretty much the whole thing is bullshit, but I’ll try and play along.

Young Ones makes use of brilliant cinematography that is instantly wasted in the hands of a director who is without a shred of talent, an editor who must have been a butcher, mediocre sound editing, and a cast that is almost as misguided and inept as the screenplays author.

That’s pretty bizarre. I think the director did a pretty good job, managing to avoid any unnecessary melodrama of the kind the reviewer seems to be after. The editing was adequate, it didn’t really stick out. The cast includes Eddie Fanning (she was pretty great in this) and Kodi Smit-McPhee who plays the son is an atypical actor and was also great for the role. Then we have Michael fucking Shannon, who is good in everything.

A story that had true potential was crippled by a lack of character development, and the nonexistence of focus.

I’m gonna go ahead and say that Young Ones is very obviously a bit of a fable, a kind of old time western, just updated and moved into the far future. I mean the story is classic: A farm that’s dying or dead, the pioneer father trying to take care of his family and the asshole who wants to fuck them all over and steal their land. Hell, it has a lot of overlap with The River (starring a young Mel Gibson), if you just switch out the flood for the drought and the rich banker guy who wants to sleep with Gibson’s wife with the kid in Young Ones who is sleeping with Shannon’s daughter.

The directors lack of skill is clearly seen in his failed attempt to (I may be paraphrasing) give the character of the machine, a robotic donkey, a sense of having a soul (not even a glimmer of this is seen in the film), and his somewhat unsuccessful try at implying that there is prosperity outside the boundary of where the characters live.

Why the fuck would a robot have a soul? It’s not even an A.I, it’s literally a donkey robot that walks around. Do you expect cars in films to have a ”sense of soul?” This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard and shows how far removed the reviewer is from the actual movie and what it set out to achieve.

The film is without any sort of outstanding performance by the cast, and lacks even a single character that the audience can empathize with.

Even the bit roles were interesting and had a little bit of depth, even if they were on screen for a few seconds.

Anyway, fuck you.

4 out of 5 robot donkeys

Bad Movies Double Feature: Buck Wild and In Fear

September 11, 2014 No Comments

Buck Wild

What happens when you make a horror comedy with actors that possess no comedic talent. Extremely awkward, rarely funny and too long by half.

”When their originally planned outing is cancelled, four friends go on a hunting trip in Texas. They include Craig, a straitlaced man; Jerry, a mysterious relative of Craig’s from New York; Tom, a nerd; and Lance, a hedonist. When they arrive, they discover that a chupacabra has bitten their guide Clyde, and, unknown to all, he has begun to slowly turn into a zombie.”

The synopsis doesn’t inform you how ~*wacky*~ the movie is. There’s a flaming gay redneck mafia dude that shows up at the beginning. At some point there’s conflict between the protagonists and him and one of them get paddled by the mafia boss’s cronies. This is the height of comedy this movie is trying to attain.

Between painful jokes about Craig’s unfaithful girlfriend, shitty sex scenes with the ”dumb slut” stereotype neighbor and the meandering plot, there’s very little of value here. You might enjoy it more if you’re into gore and zombie stuff, but I was just waiting for the whole thing to end.

1 out of 5 redneck zombies.

In Fear

This is a movie so boring, so bland, so incredibly shitty, that I feel as if I’ve already reviewed it in the past and I’m stuck in a kind of purgatory where I have to talk about this piece of shit forever. Harsh words, you might think, but I’m 100% serious, this is an offensively stupid movie, made even more agonizing by the fact that the director think he’s some kind of auteur making cinema. It seems to have worked as the movie has a 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is idiotic at best. Fuck you.

”Tom and Lucy have decided to go on their first trip as a couple, to a music festival and a secluded hotel. However they soon find themselves unable to actually locate the hotel and spend much of their time getting lost in a labyrinthine series of forest roads. As they continue to drive, their tensions rise as they realize that something or someone is deliberately toying with them and enjoying their torment. They pick up Max, a strange hitchhiker that may be connected to everything that is going on.”

Probably the couple with the least chemistry in the world, you’ll spend the first half hour trying to figure out if these two idiots have just hooked up for a weekend getaway or if they have actually met before. After a series of increasingly improbably events and choices, they get lost in some sort of maze made out of hedges. Why at no point does anyone say ”fuck it, I’m off-roading this bitch” is a question that will torment you as the minutes tick on by.

Realizing at some point there’s only so long you can go without having anything remotely interesting happen and also that your actors are just not good enough to prop the whole thing up, a weird guy they find on the road is added and that’s really where the terribleness of the movie ramps up into nonsense.

This is devoid of value.

0 out of 5 idiots in a car

Mr. Jones Review

September 9, 2014 No Comments

Mr. Jones

Hey look, it’s a horror movie I didn’t hate. I mean I didn’t like it especially much, but that’s rare enough on it’s own when your movie watching is the equivalent of a garbage disposal system.

The IMDB synopsis is pretty unhelpful, so I’ll get you up to speed myself. Probably massive spoilers follow because I have no filter.

A couple decides to move to the middle of nowhere because they have artistic aspirations. This eventually becomes an issue when they start arguing about how they left perfectly good jobs so the guy can make a stupid documentary or whatever. At the same time they find weird sculptures around their property and adjacent areas, eventually realizing they are the work for an artist that’s a bit of a underground sensation. Unfortunately he’s well known for the fact that everyone who buys his sculptures has terrible shit happen to them.

The movie is basically about solving the mystery of this artist and his creations, via the medium of found footage.

Mostly but the numbers for the first half, it turns into some serious what-the-fuck territory in the latter half. Don’t watch this while high or tired, it’s pretty nightmarish. The movie as adequate at most things, managing some creepy moments here and there by actually utilizing the whole handheld camera aesthetic. The couple is kinda irritating, but what horror movie couple isn’t. I wasn’t gnashing my teeth while watching it so it must not have been too bad.

The ending…well… I don’t know what to say about the ending. It wasn’t disappointing exactly, but it was so convoluted and messy that I’m not sure what the hell supposedly happened. It kinda tries to throw a twist at you but it’s all very confusing and open to interpretation. Feels like they tacked on some wtf-ness to make it more interesting, but I don’t think they landed it.

2 out of 5 creepy-ass branch sculptures (I’d say 2 and a half, but I don’t like decimals)

7 Awesome Made-for-TV Horror Movies

August 31, 2014 No Comments

I unironically love trash TV movies. We got a lot of those growing up where I’m from and sometimes it was all you can get outside of video rentals that were few and far between. Some of these I only saw as an adult and thus I didn’t enjoy as much. Sometimes the medium is the message, and staying up late on a school night and watching a scary movie on TV is probably the best medium there is for less-than-stellar acting and cinematography.
Salem’s Lot
”Vampires are invading a small New England town. It’s up to a novelist and a young horror fan to save it.”

Based on the fantastic Stephen King novel of the same name, it’s probably my favorite made for TV horror flick. Of course it takes the #1 spot. The scene with the kid floating outside his friend’s window is iconic for a reason (and still terrifying today).

Dark Night of the Scarecrow
”In a small town, a wrongfully killed man exacts revenge on those who murdered him beyond the grave.”

It’s been a while since I’ve seen this, but it’s a pretty solid revenge/horror flick.

Dont be Afraid of the Dark
”A young couple inherits an old mansion inhabited by small demon-like creatures who are determined to make the wife one of their own.”

Has aged remarkably well, in all honesty. The remake was terrible, so I’d rather watch this instead.

It
”In 1960, seven outcast kids known as “The Loser Club” fight an evil demon who poses as a child-killing clown. 30 years later, they are called back to fight the same clown again.”

Hey, another King adaptation. Arguably the TV movie that has scared more kids than any other. I like the book a lot and while I don’t love the movie, Tim Curry is pretty cool and it features some creepy ass scenes.

Duel
”A business commuter is pursued and terrorized by a malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer.”

Langoliers
”Most of the passengers on an airplane disappear, and the remainder land the plane in a mysteriously barren airport.”
I’m gonna get flack for this one, but I enjoyed it as a kid, back when I worshiped King. It’s goofy as hell, but hey, this was Lost before Lost.

Body Bags
”Three short stories in the horror genre. The first about a serial killer. The second about a hair transplant gone wrong. The third about a baseball player.”