31 Days of Halloween 2017: It Comes at Night

2017, Trey Edward Schults (Krishna) -- download

Damn, when I am coming home work stressed and tired and upset and suffering sleep deprivation, maybe the first thing I watch shouldn't be a psychological thriller with shades of post-apocalyptic malaise and .... wait for it... scary wooded areas after dark. Really, the latter is fine, but the human interaction of people living in a tough situation, and just making the worst of it, really pushed my personal anxiety through the roof. But I am ok, we did a Brooklyn 99 palate cleanser.

It Comes at Night is a plague story. Paul, Kim and Travis live in a secured house in the wilderness. There is a disease ravaging the world, and the movie starts with them putting down Travis's grandfather, covered in sores and barely coherent. Travis was obviously close to his grandfather but also affected by his father's seemingly cold pragmatism.

They live alone having no outside contact. Everything is boarded up and there is only one entrance, a mudroom with a single well locked red door. This protective solitude is interrupted when Will breaks in. After some zealous overreaction, Paul allows Will to bring his family to live with them. Maybe protection in numbers will help.

We know its a mistake; its always a mistake. But how? Most of it centres around Travis, a 17 year old obviously suffering loss and isolation anxiety. His constant nightmares and fixation on Will's young wife don't help the matter. And then there is the paranoia of the disease. Even though they constantly wear gas masks outside and wash and cover themselves, and check for ... cracks between the fingers (??) ... they don't really seem sure of how it is transmitted nor how to properly check. The dark outside is terrifying and full on danger, but from what? Anything.

Living with constant fear and anxiety is not easy, especially when everything is out of your control. Paul tries his best with his controlling measures, but you can see the weight it has on him. Travis is broken by it and the new family is not sure of what they have come into. Where is the horror, what comes at night? Fear. Just fear, sticky and more contagious than the disease.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Hidden

2015, The Duffer Brothers -- download

Full disclosure. I may have marked these things for the date they were watched, but I am writing them days if not weeks after. Life, procrastination, whatever.

So, how appropriate that as I start a new po-ap (post apocalypse) game (Fallout 4) I am writing a bit on such a movie. A family living in a bunker, fearful of creatures that are stalking them in the world above. Short of food, low on patience, doing their best to stay positive. At least in the game, they get to come out.

There is something about bunker movies. Ever since Graig and I saw The Divide, the idea has sat in the back of my mind. Not that the idea has been captured a lot on film. But the isolation, the scarcity and the close quarters are something that make my gut twist. I wonder how the idea of bunkers ended with the close of the Cold War but we still tell  tales of them, which often leads to these bunkers being stale holdovers, replete with the aged resources. Will there ever be more tales of new bunkers, where people ride out the zombie plague or comet fall? Does the one from Lost count?

Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood) and Andrea Riseborough (Oblivion) are keeping their daughter safe in the dark. The bunker is not so far below ground as they are not aware of the surface, so every day, nighttime or not, they keep alert to whomever could be hunting for them. The Breathers have been looking for them ever since whatever happened on the surface. We get the impression the Breathers may be monsters or merely the hungry infected. The family has rules: stay calm, stay quiet, stay alert and don't talked about the Breathers.

We get the occasional flashback, as the family deals with the breakdown of their stable if utterly soul sucking life. We learn of a disease, a distant thing but something looming closer. I have always liked the way information seeps in slowly, via the Internet and news, when we know that news would spread over social media like wild fire. Nobody would not know if something big was going on. Between flashbacks we see things going wrong, rats eating their food and fire destroying some prized possessions. And fire means smoke, and smoke escapes. And can be seen.

SPOILERS. Do I have to keep doing this?

The third act of the movie is the twist, the alteration of the direction the movie had taken. The Breathers have found them! And guess what, as I was beginning to suspect, they are not so much as monsters as they are.... us. Soldiers, the American government, are who is looking for them. Normal people. And if the soldiers are the normal ones, then... oh wait, that means... wow. Yep, the flashbacks to a disease spreading and the subsequent firebombing and blocking of the mountain pass reveal our lovely family to be the monsters. "Stay calm" was not just a way of staying hidden but kept the real horror of the disease in check -- rage virus. They suddenly get all veiny and powerful jumping on the pursuing soldiers, ripping them limb from limb.

I loved it, it was quite the turnaround. And so we didn't lose complete faith in the family, they are are able to draw it back, rein it in after the soldiers are dispatched. They may be the infected but they are still people. Somewhere in there. Hidden.

Notes for the End of the World: Parts Per Billion

2014, Brian Horiuchi -- download

This is not an apocalyptic movie about the end of the world, it is a movie about relationships that happens to be set during the end of the world. Whether this is the premise you use to defend or condemn the movie, this pretty much describes what we watch. This is the point in my fictional novel (non-existent novel, not novel of fiction) compares his own conspiracy focused theories with those of a very real sounding catalyst for the end of the world. Right now, as we speak, Iraq is collapsing again. And army of very capable insurgents is taking city after city, and with no US soldiers backing them up, the Iraqi military is falling. In the movie, not the other fiction, this war culminates with the release of a man-made disease. And this ends the world. We experience it through the eyes and hearts of a handful of couples.

Anna and Erik are light hearts, a musician and a poetry lover, ignoring the end around them and trying to focus on starting a life long (???) relationship already crippled with doubt. Len and Mia are a damaged couple, trying to bring it back together when the finality of events drives them further apart. Only elderly couple Andy and Esther, solid in their love for each other despite having a real hand in what is happening around them, are not afraid of the end and only pull together. Each couple is shot independently but we are shown their connections, a statement that no one is really ever alone in anything.

Previously, in Goodbye World, the couples are focusing on surviving the end of the world. There is no defined way out in this movie; yes, it is that bleak.  But with soft lighting, beautiful people and lovely (but challenged) relationships, we are exploring the emotional impact. It doesn't hurt that the director chooses to make this a very clean kill disease, with no horrible death scenes of bodily functions. Basically, you have difficulty breathing and then you lay down and die. Horiuchi also side steps the panicking masses, giving all his characters solitude and empty spaces to come to terms with their ends. Its well shot, well directed but fails because we are never able to deep dive into any of these couples and actually care about their independent reactions. In the end, it felt like another shallow attempt at a first movie that means something but isn't sure what it means.

Notes for the End of the World: The Retreat

2011, Carl Tibbetts -- Netflix

The Retreat is a by-the-numbers thriller about two people confined to a house, captives of a madman. It stars Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Inception) and Thandie Newton (Chronicles of Riddick, tv show Rogue) as a married couple surviving the still birth of their child.  Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, King Kong) is the madman who shows up on their doorstep, wounded and bleating about the end of the world. According to Jack, a virus has appeared in the world and in the few short days while the couple were spending some alone time in a quaint cottage on an isolated island, the world has fallen. He tells them how it is all Road Warrior out there, all violent people seeking to escape the plague. We are never sure whether to believe him, with no evidence at all, or to add this to the premise of the movie.

As a movie, it easily hits all the familiar notes of a thriller. The couple don't quite support each other, having to deal with the still birth in their own ways, but repressing the anger with each other. Jack is extreme, dominating and intent on expanding the rift between the two. The questions as to the validity of his claims are given equal amounts of doubt and support, with a broken radio and the mysterious disappearance of the cottage's caretaker, who should have been here days ago. And when the two began to rebel, Jack threatens with violence. Who is to be the bigger man, Cillian Murphy or Jamie Bell? Who will Thandie gravitate towards, loyalty and love or the strength of a survivor?

It was actually somewhat of a surprise that there was actually a plague. After the notes of the thriller are all played out, and Thandie choses Cillian, Jack is shown as just a madman, a criminal that was confined to a military hospital and given the disease. When he escaped, it escaped into the world with him. His first victim was his wife. In a small bid for redemption, he actually escaped to the island to isolate himself from the world. The only thing awaiting him outside was death at the hands of the military. But he is a bad man, one that cannot redeem. And as the story of the couple ends, so ends the story of the world. And yes, it was that bleak of an ending.

3 Short Paragraphs: Resident Evil: Retribution

2012, Paul WS Anderson (Event Horizon, AVP, DOA) -- cinema

Yes, this definitely joins my list of bad movies that I will probably watch again.  I must admit up front to being a fan of the series having again watched them all to catch up for this one.  Its funny because watching them again, I am always reminded how bad the acting and plots are, which I always seem to forget in the times between.  They are a zombie series based on video games but so very lacking in zombie staples.  These are video game zombies, where they become fodder for the sub-machine guns, as opposed to being slow moving terrifying antagonists for those incapable of defending themselves.  It also lends a little to my love for post-apocalypse, the third in the series ending the world and setting the stage for the rest -- a world that has been destroyed by both the monsters unleashed and the havoc the virus wreaks on the environment.  Not that the movies care about any of this, beyond the third.

In the last movie, we were all gathered on a ship off the coast of LA.  Alice just freed all the people stored inside the ship, who were emerging onto the deck, dazed and confused.  In the distance we can see a flock of attack Ospreys converging on the freighter.  This movie starts with quite the lovely reverse-film credit sequence that sums up how the last movie leads into this one.  You see, they could start the movie right at this sequence with her defending the newly released pawns and defeating the whirly bird armada.  But no, each movie now must begin with Alice naked-but-for-a-sheet-of-paper so we must rush through this early footage of her being defeated.   Her rescue of everyone in the last movie was all for naught.  Seriously, these movies are not about the human and zombie fodder, they are all about Milla / Alice.

So, again Alice is escaping an Umbrella underground facility dressed only in the Aeon Flux outfit (paper sheets don't stand up to gunfire) Umbrella gave her to wear.  This time there is a twist as  the facility is under water, not underground !!  Plot summary: fight way to surface through various staged environments representing Moscow, NYC, the suburbs from Dawn of the Dead and Tokyo.  Along the way she will meet other characters from the video games acted in astoundingly bad fashion as well as clones of characters from previous movies, good clones and bad clones, again acted oh so sweetly bad. With each movie, less sense is made, all condensing down into a handful of beautifully choreographed combat sequences.  Anderson does know how to craft a lovely gunfight scene and probably feels beholden to stitch some sort of loose plot together to hold the scenes.  Besides, I would probably watch Milla just play golf.

3 Short Paragraphs: 50/50

2011, Jonathan Levine -- download

Fuck you cancer.  As they say, we have all been touched by cancer.  As I say, it is not whether I will get cancer but when I will get cancer.  It is just a characteristic of the geography I grew up in.  But the last few years have given me some direct contact with it, luckily most ending (does it ever really end?) well.  50/50 approaches the cancer, i-might-be-dying, story from the point of view of someone with, as they say, his entire life ahead of him.  Cancer stories from characters in their 40s or 50s are common place enough to be subplots on TV shows when ratings get low. But a character in his mid-twenties having to deal with a 50/50 shot at surviving is something new.

I was interested in seeing Seth Rogen challenged to do a role where he needed some concern & seriousness along with his usual levity.  His character Kyle is the jerk friend, the friend we all have that annoys the fuck out of us but time forces us to retain.  Also, we usually see some element of charm in them.  But when forced to confront the impending possible death of his friend, and the very real bad months coming with chemo and its side effects, Kyle straightens out... just enough.  It was very touching to see a friend be a real friend by retaining the jerk attitude when needed but also being very very affected behind the scenes.  Not surprising as the script was loosely based on the experiences of Seth Rogen's real life friend Will Reiser.

Small movies, and can you really call them indie anymore (??), shine through in the focused dialogue and the well chosen cast.  Bryce Dallas Howard is the girlfriend who just cannot quite support her boyfriend.  We hate her, through Kyle, for doing it but see ourselves in her.  Could we support someone through all the pain, lethargy and visible illness?  Anjelica Huston is the overbearing mother whom he can no longer avoid or put off -- this time her desire to just take care of her son, as if he still a little boy, is warranted, if still typically heavy handed.  And the small supporting roles of Phillip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer were just perfectly noted.  Everything was handled nice and low key.  And nice movies are nice to watch.

3 Short Paragraphs: Contagion

2011, Steven Soderbergh -- cinema

Ever since I read The Stand by Stephen King I have been fascinated with the idea of plagues. Fascinated might be too strong a reaction, probably more like thrilled by the fear it instills in me. Like zombies, the idea of something that we truly have little control over doing such harm scares me. Add to that the idea of human nature making things worse and it unnerves me even more. But the failing in most disease ridden fiction is that they never go far enough. Few are like King's novel in that the sickness is just a prop for the end of the world. Most are about the fear humans will encounter and the brave souls who will do what needs to be done to end the plague, but without losing their humanity. Most isolate the outbreak and have the cure found after only a few dozen or maybe even a few hundred succumb.

Contagion was almost an emotionless depiction of a disease that ravages the world, starting with the literal first case and ending with the vaccine.  It's clinical in its depiction, reserved in its drama. but it is also relentless sparing few, even award winning actors.  At its start the fear is heightened by the speed of the disease, the quick road from cough to death. This is no story about the rush to a cure but more the rush to containment and, when that fails, the slow plod to stability.

The movie draws more upon what we have been experiencing for the last few years, than from fiction like I mentioned.  SARS, bird flu, etc. are all things we have seen happen around us whether on the news or across the street, as I did when SARS was in the pubic view.  The combination of heightened nervousness and placid apathy is there as cities depopulate, governments impose draconian measures and sensationalists cash in. Is it completely realistic?  I am not sure as no matter what we have really experienced, we have never seen hundreds of people dying around us. The movie ends with an explanation settling in a fear that no matter how much we sanitize, something could just ... happen.