Shards of Delirium

Tag: horror

  • The Walking Dead: What Comes After

    WalkingDead_Vol18_WhatComesAfterIt seems like the last several Walking Dead collections have left me feeling reluctant to continue with the series, yet I keep finding new reasons to go on. And there’s probably a lot of truth to that, though I still stand by my most recent prediction that extending beyond today’s storyline will be a huge mistake. Luckily, that has not happened yet, and so I can document my positive reactions and not feel like a chump.

    So, you are undoubtedly asking yourself, What Comes After? Besides a painfully generic title, I mean. I guess my answer is, a cult of personality? Also, a renewal of my certainty that Carl Grimes is the toughest customer this side of The Internet’s Chuck Norris. But yeah, what I mean is, Negan is downright fascinating, for all that he’s a terrifying psychotic killer. Far more entertaining than the Governor ever was, and as long as he stays that way and nothing else really boring comes along, I’ll be fine seeing this storyline extend onward a ways. Could wrap up in one book? Could extend for two and not feel like it was being milked, if done properly. But after that? Yeah, I dunno.

    But it does seem like 20 is a nice round number, you know?

  • The Conjuring

    A large percentage of the modern horrorscape is devoted to possessions, hauntings, and the intersection between the two. So it makes perfect sense that people would comb through the documented cases of such things and put together a movie around that. After all, nothing adds verisimilitude to a project like slapping “based on a true story” to the tagline.

    Thusly, The Conjuring, in which actual people named Lorraine and Ed Warren set out to assist an actual Rhode Island family which consists of two adult Perrons and their five daughters, who mostly like to play Hide&Clap and get haunted by restless demons who are hidden implausibly poorly in a boarded up basement. Which doesn’t sound so implausible, I know, except that the house’s furnace is in the basement, and the first time it got cold (demonic or regular), someone was going to go looking for that, you know?

    The thing about a true story is, you’re constrained by it. If you’re trying to be anything like faithful to the narrative at all, you will have sudden stops and starts that don’t really fit the expectations of story progression, and no particular themes, just a series of disconnected events and an unreasonably creepy doll. The upshot of which is, this is a perfectly serviceable scary story about which I have basically nothing relevant to say.

  • World War Z

    First of all: while it’s possible that this WWZmovie borrowed some small amount of plotting from the book that shares its name, I would be hard pressed to name anything besides the title and its attendant premise. This does not make it a bad film, but it certainly makes it a misnamed one. Second of all: I’m probably fast and loose with spoilers here, although none plot-destroying. You’ll see why I didn’t care much about that.

    Okay, disclaimers aside, was World War Z in fact a good movie? Almost. It started off pretty solidly by introducing Brad Pitt (who had gotten too old for this shit) and his family, and then immediately dumping them into Run For Your Lives! And then it exposited about how he’s the kind of guy who could help find out how this[1] happened and therefore save humanity, and then blackmailed him into doing it when “saving humanity” was somehow insufficient. Like rich, pretty people don’t know that they are part of what’s being saved? I dunno.

    Then he starts globetrotting, picking up clues, narrowly escaping each place he goes to like a non-parodic version of John Cusack, and just when I started to get the impression that his arrival spelt doom for any place he might show up at, the movie kind of trickled out into nothing. I seriously expected another 30 to 60 minutes of plot, until about 5 minutes before the credits rolled.

    So, shorter version: cool, albeit stolen and warped, concept; cool execution; terrible payoff. Hot Israeli soldiers, though.

    [1] The zombie apocalypse, obvs.

  • Hack/Slash: Torture Prone

    I have three problems with the Hack/Slash series. The first is that the last few books have seen a lot of effort to get away from episodic mayhem in which chronically under-dressed teen hunter-of-killers Cassie Hack smashes and outwits her way through one supernatural slasher rampage[1] after another, in favor of there being a secret society that causes these guys to live again in the first place. I cannot tell if this is unsatisfying to me because I don’t like the way it’s written or because I don’t want them to tie in an overarching plot and take away the possibility that the adventures continue forever. Either way, I’ve not so much been a fan.

    The second problem is that I’m just not that attached to all the secondary characters. Give me Cassie and her misshapen companion Vlad, and I’m perfectly happy. Page after page of teen detectives and unhappy Indianan couples and romantically dissatisfied strippers and… well, okay, the skinless, speaking dog from another dimension is pretty cool, I’ll grant them that one. My point was, every page of those characters is a page that doesn’t have Cassie in it, and I’m pretty enh on the whole concept of her not being the focus. The good news is, Torture Prone is perhaps taking me in the direction I want to go, here.

    The third problem is that if you take away the significant cheesecake quotient and consider that I don’t much care for the plot I’m being presented with, there’s almost no reason for me to be reading these. Cheesecake quotient, by itself in a vacuum, really isn’t something I can justify. I mean, I don’t have to justify it, so there’s that, but if this is a thought that I’m thinking, you know something has gone wrong. Upshot: I’m really hoping I was right about the second problem being on the path to resolution, because there are still four or five books before the apparent end of the series.

    [1] Jason Vorhees. Chucky the Doll. Freddy Krueger. You know the drill.

  • This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It

    The thing about John Dies at the End is that, despite the highly visible spoiler, it still left some room for a review. Who is this John fellow anyway, for example, and what kinds of emotions will I experience when he dies? The problem with David Wong’s finally-arrived sequel, This Book Is Full of Spiders with its helpful sticker warning of Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It, is that pretty well sums the book up. It is very much full of spiders, that book. Invisible spiders, on the bright(?) side, unless you are like David and his friend John Cheese and have been dosed with an alien drug called Soy Sauce on the street, which gives you all kinds of time-and-space-spanning knowledge and also allows you to see all the invisible things in the world that your brain usually protects you from, like (in this case) giant far-too-large spiders that intend to crawl into your brain and take over control of your actions and decisions, possibly while leaving you unaware of this fact.

    The good news is, that’s pretty much the only problem with David Wong’s new book. Just like JDatE, it is funny and terrifying and occasionally entirely sweet, only this time it was plotted as a novel instead of a long, rambling series of internet stories that got turned into a novel at the last second, which means it works a lot better structurally, with all manner of foreshadowing and sinking “oh hell, that really just / is about to happen/ed” feelings, and he even got to toss in another mention of the Monkeysphere.

    Shorter version of this review: man, I’m happy I read this book, and man I’m sad that there probably won’t be another one anytime soon[1], considering the five year gap between these two. Also, I’m glad I finally reviewed it, because I’m caught up again and, not that reading tons of old comics isn’t gratifying in itself, but it will be nice to be reading actual books again also. Truth.

    [1] I wonder if there will be a movie, though? That wouldn’t suck.

  • The Walking Dead: Something to Fear

    That show’s pretty good, huh? Well, I guess a lot of people didn’t care for the most recent season; I share their opinion, but for different cause. Oh, Andrea, why did they have to make you so hateful? Anyway, though, the show is like a dozen volumes behind right now. I can’t recall exactly where they are[1], but I do know I just finished volume 17. Which is a lot of volumes you guys.

    I stand by what I said most recently. I continue to be compelled by this current plot, and I will keep reading until it is run into the ground regardless. But… and okay, here’s where I get a little wishy-washy. I can see ways to extend the current storyline at least two more books, without even half-trying. And I do not even mean they’d be stretched out or bad. Rick’s most recent and most shocking decision in a long time just has a lot of character potential, that’s all. And plus of course I should have known it couldn’t wrap up in this current book, because we hadn’t had an “oh no holy shit” moment recently enough, and that trumps plot progression.

    So, my new claim is this: The Walking Dead can no longer tell a compelling tale past the resolution of the current storyline. Because, like I’ve been saying, they’ve already been down every road they reasonably can, without taking huge steps backward in character growth. I just hope Mr. Kirkman is paying attention to me over here, and gets while the getting is yet good.

    [1] The people in the show.

  • Evil Dead

    In a way, I’m disappointed by Evil Dead‘s prologue scene, since it removes the possibility of the film being a nightmare metaphor for facing and exorcising one’s demons. I mean, no, that’s not fair. It’s still a metaphor for that, but I wish I was able to believe that was true internally to the story instead of only externally, and the prologue is the line between those possibilities.

    Metaphor aside, Evil Dead is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Sam Raimi’s original 1981 flick. Five friends head out to a cabin in the woods[1], find and foolishly read the Book of the Dead sitting in the basement, and then some fragment of hell breaks loose, the trees get frisky, and people start getting dismembered. I’m sure there are movies I’ve seen with more blood in them, but I’m hard-pressed to remember one. I know for a fact I’ve seen films with more gore, if only because nobody spilled their intestines. Still, though, I don’t think I’ve seen any movie that has as many things going into and especially being pulled out of someone’s body. So, that’s a claim to fame, I guess? At the least, you know what to expect now.

    The acting (except for maybe the blonde chick) was above average, the effects were impressive (especially if you unfairly compare them against the intervening three decades[2] and more than an order of magnitude smaller budget of the original), and the soundtrack was pretty darn good. You could do worse for a horror outing and you could do a hell of a lot worse for a remake outing. …but seriously, who sees movies because they’re remakes?

    [1] Not a Cabin in the Woods, though the influences of the original on that very fine movie are easy to spot.
    [2] God help us.

  • John Dies at the End

    You guys. I am so embarrassed about this right now, and it’s going to be probably the worst review ever, but… I’m like four reviews behind, and at this point I can no longer separate out John Dies at the End the movie from the book that spawned it. At least, not in a meaningful way that I would use to form a discussion about it. In a way, that’s good; I mean, it wasn’t so awful as to make me wonder why they made the movie at all. In another way, it’s certainly bad as it did not transcend its source.

    No, you know what? That’s not bad by default, I’m completely wrong about that. It’s great when an adaptation sees into the heart of the source material and creates something new, that part is true. But there’s no shame in making people remember, giving vision to words on a page, and broadening the audience. Which is the thing about this one: I hadn’t read the book in (apparently) six years, so I didn’t remember a lot, but every time some new event occurred[1], it all came right back, and yeah, I can dig that.

    The plot is sufficiently strange that I’m not sure it’s worth explaining, except I have a thing that depends upon you knowing a little. See, there’s this drug on the street called Soy Sauce, which gives its users the ability to see through the barriers of time and space. And, okay, that’s pretty awesome, except that some users die horribly or are attacked by the things they can see that nobody else can. Everything else is a spoiler, except you should know that David and John are the two people standing in the way of all of this certain doom.[2]

    The point of all of this is that I learned a very important lesson. See, I saw the movie at the Texas Theatre, which is known solely for being where they caught Lee Harvey Oswald, y’know, later that day. It has been somewhat remodeled, and now includes a bar. And the bar had a special related to the movie of the hour, the Soy Sauce Shot. (Which generated the first of the flashback memories I mentioned earlier.) That’s all exciting and fun, right? So we went for it (Jez and I), and… so, um, it was vodka and soy sauce[3]. Cheap vodka. It…. it tasted about like you’d expect. My lesson, if it was not entirely clear, is this: don’t drink a shot made of cheap vodka and soy sauce.

    [1] Prime example: the meat monster.
    [2] Trust me, it would be certain doom. Also, you may recognize John’s name from somewhere, so I will elaborate that David is the narrator.
    [3] The sauce, not the reality-altering drug.

  • Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

    It is nice to have an occasional horror film that doesn’t try to pretend to be anything other than what it is. No high-minded art, no unforeseeable twists, no goddamn filming a Texan[1] story in Louisiana. In short, a movie that tells you everything you need to know right in the title and doesn’t skimp on a single drop and/or chunk of the gore.

    For example, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. I mean, you know the fairy tale, right? And you know the genre of the movie? (Well, you maybe did not, but I have told you it, so now you do.) So, you now know everything about this movie. Let me prove it, by putting questions in your mouth.

    1) “Are Hansel and Gretel a pair of siblings who make their living hunting and killing witches to save the people of medieval Europe from…. witches?” Wow, that kind of got away from you. Try being a little more planned and less off-the-cuff next time. However, to answer your question: yes! Yes they are and yes they do.

    2) “Do they kill these witches in disgusting and effective ways that make you think they could never have been able to come up with such tools in real-life witch-infested medieval Europe, and do they crack wise with modern sensibilities in every line of dialogue along the way?” …I appreciate your taking my advice to heart, and also I’m growing impressed by your ability to glean fine points of detail from a movie title. Which is to say, again, yep, they sure do!

    3) “No thanks, I’m good, that pretty well answers all of my questions.” I expected as much. So, um… huh. Didn’t really think about how awkwardly this would end the review. Maybe you could come up with more questions even so? Help a brother out here?

    4) “Nope.” Well. Damn. This is because of that ‘kind of got away from you’ thing earlier, isn’t it?

    5) “Yep.” …yeah. Fair enough.

    [1] First person to mention Ed Gein gets chainsawed in the face.

  • Texas Chainsaw 3D

    Here are the problems with Texas Chainsaw 3D, in no particular order. 1) The 3D was honestly kind of… no, wait, I’m sorry. I’m thinking of the preview for the GI Joe sequel in front of it. That 3D was terrible. This 3D was perfectly fine, if you are not the kind of person who hates 3D. 2) The timeline did not make even a vague attempt at working. If you have an original movie set in 1974, and… man, I’m bad at this. Now I’m trying to remember what year was listed on all the stones in the cemetery. Maybe they pushed up the start year after all? But if I’m right and it was 1974, then you can’t very well have an infant in 1974 return to claim her inheritance in 2012, yet only be 24 or so at the most (and realistically, more like 19). 3) Lack of naked. And, okay, I do not require naked in my horror movies. It’s cool and all, but by no means required. But, if you’re going to condemn people by their sexual transgressions, or pop open the last two buttons of our heroine’s shirt, then you should deliver the goods. It’s perfectly fine to decide that the plot will not be served by naked, but teasing is a violation of the covenant.

    And now I look like a chump, because I’ve overruled all of my problems but the nudity. But seriously, I did overrule them in real time, this was not a clever bait and switch (unlike when nobody got naked in the movie), I swear. Anyway, here is what they did right, also in no particular order. 1) Favorable violation of one of the far more unfortunate covenants set forth by the horror movie oeuvre. 2) Chainsaws. 3) Plot twists! 4) Yeah, I’m gonna say chainsaws again, because, boy howdy was there a healthy dose of chainsawing going down.

    Oh, and hey, I just remembered another valid complaint! Do you know where they filmed? Louisiana. Are you kidding me?