I'm a bit of a confusing person. I have a love/hate relationship with horror.
There are certain aspects of horror that I can't stand. Mainly comprised of Torture Porn, Slasher Flicks and Infection/Zombie Movies. I know that cuts out a giant chunk of great classics, but I like to be able to sleep at night thank you very much.
Then there of course is my least favourite Narrative Trope which can be found in ALL OF THESE MOVIES. It goes as follows.
Take a small group of people (for it to be effective you need at least two) put them in a dangerous cut-off location (the bottom of the sea, in space, the outside world flooded with radiation, you know the drill). Then something horrible happen to them, like an alien invasion, an infection, the air supply starts leaking, someone becomes a murder. But of course our group of characters can't get out.
Cue the slaughter.
So along comes Prometheus.
I immediately became obsessed with the trailer. I loved the pacing, I loved the visuals. I just loved everything about it. It was one of the best trailers I have seen in a long time. The trailer also scared the crap out of me. Most of this came from the sound effects. Specifically the alarm like screaming that begins at 1:43 minutes into the trailer. I'm going to refer to that noise as a trigger noise.
Trigger Noises are sound effects that become tied to their movie and are there to invoke a specific reaction from the viewer. They're the noises (and sometimes music) that when you hear them or someone does an impression of them, you know exactly what movie they're from. Think of the Fog Horn in Inception, The Alarm in Kill Bill and the Jaws Theme (Dun Da Dun Dah) for Jaws. In the case of Prometheus, the noise causes panic, fear and terror. It's supposed to set up the dark and dangerous environment and the decent into the horror the characters feel. This noise managed to make me feel uncomfortable every time I watched the trailer.
Like a good trailer should, it did not give away the plot of the film, it gave us a feel of what the film was supposed to be like. To me, Prometheus seemed like a throw back to the older scifi movies I have seen with a nice injection of modern science fiction. It clearly was to take place in the Alien world (which was another reason for uncomfort from me) but it wasn't going to be about Alien. People questioned Ridley Scott about the tie ins to Alien and many of the articles I read referred to it as the Alien Prequel.
This really isn't the case.
So What is it Then?
I don't want to spend a lot of time discussing how Prometheus and Alien relate to one another, it's pretty clear and can be summed up nicely in this one graphic:
Prometheus has its own agenda, and ends with its own form of sequel bait that has nothing to do with Alien. Prometheus ends with our dear Doctor Shaw taking off into the stars with David to try and contact the Engineers and ask why they gave up on humanity and decided it needed to be destroyed. This ending upset me, but I'll talk more on it later. The important thing is that Shaw and David, are going to continue on with their adventures, which will probably be seen in some form of sequel down the line.
Due to actions that occur in this movie, the events of Alien are cemented. It's as if the left over characters have come to a cross road: Shaw and David go in one direction to harass the Engineers. Shaw's Alien Baby goes in the other to start the race of the Xenomorphs that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. It's pretty simple.
So What About the Actual Movie?
The actual movie... I think I liked it?
The movie was okay, if you ignored a lot of the plot holes, lack of explanation about certain things and a lot of explanation on what the characters would clearly not know or understand. On a visual level, the film was absolutely stunning. You can clearly see how much hard work and effort was put into every single frame. The attention to detail was phenomenal, and the use of 3D was unobtrusive. You clearly felt like you had entered another world. Which I absolutely loved. I believed that these characters had been dropped thousand of light years away from earth. The sets were alien enough but at the same time had a humanoid feel to them which connected to the idea that these two species were somewhat related.
And then there was David. But we'll get back to him.
Character Writing: Or How I Learned to Make Realistic Characters and Not Murder Fodder.
Coming into Prometheus, you are fully aware that most of the characters who are paraded infront of you in the first 20 minutes aren't going to make it to the end of the film. We all know how this genre works. We all know how to tell which characters are going to bite it first. When you look at the crew of The Prometheus, a handfull of the people do not even get names. You know they're done for. I went into this with as much of an open mind as possible, but within the introduction of the crew I knew that the only one to survive had to be Shaw. She was the only human who had a somewhat rounded character. She also seemed like the kind of character that a Director would just love to torture. And how how Ridley does.
Say hello to Doctor Shaw.
She's one of the two scientists who discover the cave paintings that kickstart the mission to the home world of the Engineers. She's romantically involved with her partner scientist, Holloway. The kicker is that even though she is a scientist she is still devoutly religious. Shaw comes to represent the "religion" aspect of the plot. Never giving up on the God that she "chooses" to believe in, even though the movie constantly is throwing reasons in her face why she should. The other defining point of her character is that she is sterile. Unlike other women (and unlike the Engineers), Shaw is unable to bring forth life and as it can be guessed this really upsets her. It is also one of her driving motivations in her quest to find out why we were created.
This is when the Director torture begins. Holloway becomes infected with an alien substance and when the two of them have sex... he impregnates her with an alien baby.
An Alien Friggin Baby.
This begins Shaw's best acted scene. She decides that she needs to cut the thing out of herself and runs to a surgical pod. Sadly for her the pod is meant for male use only (Director Torture Number 2). So saw pumps herself up full of painkillers and tels that machine that there is a foreign object in her body and needs to have it removed. The machine then proceeds to slice her open with a laser, drop down a Toy Story inspired claw and rip that little sucker out of her. Shaw is then stapled shut and proceeds through the movie on sheer force of will and super human pain tolerance. She also is popping pain killers to the point where I was expecting the entire second half of the movie to have been a vivid hallucination.
That could have been fun.
What I'm trying to say is, if you're running around with your stomach stapled closed... then your probably going to survive the rest of the film. We all know about The Last Girl Horror Theory.
As for the other human characters, they're kind of meh.
What we need to discuss here is character motivation and character actions.
Characters in films need to make mistakes. If they didn't the film wouldn't be worth watching. There are two different kinds of mistakes that characters can make. There are the logical ones that fit with their characterization and then there are the ones that are clearly there just to make the plot move forward and are stupid.
Take for example the characters taking their helmets off in the caves. NOT SMART
or
David poisoning Holloway. LOGICAL
Prometheus bounced between these two kinds of actions, the characters bumbling along stupidly with looks of horror on their faces till a moment of unspeakable clarity. After that... well it was back to being in the dark.
You Clearly Really Want to Talk About David.
David was by far the most fascinating character in the entire film and the best acted. With the release of the viral marketing add Happy Birthday David. I realized we were going to be in for a treat. David is an android... as Faassbender described him in an interview: "The butler of the ship". While everyone else is in stasis, David is wandering around, taking care of them and making sure the entire ship is running smoothly. He is also teaching himself how to speak many different languages to try and find the root language that he could speak to the Engineers with.
He also obsessively watches Lawrence of Arabia to the point where he dyes his hair blonde and tries out lines from the film as catchphrases. He's adorable.
I do really like how Roger Ebert described him:
David (Michael Fassbender), an android, who knows or can figure out more or less everything, even alien languages, and is sort of a walking, talking, utterly fearless HAL 9000.
David brings a third level of creation to this film. We have the Engineers who created us, and then there is us who created the Android. The relationship between David and the crew can kind of be read as the relationship that the humans could possibly have with the Engineers. Like the humans, David is obsessively curious, and needs to touch everything. Unlike the humans he doesn't have the emotions (like fear) to stop him from doing anything stupid.
David does everything to try and fit in with the human population and make them feel comfortable around him. He is there to help them even if he has a hidden agenda.You see David is hiding an old Peter Weyland on board and the two of them sneak off and have councils every once in a while.
Then comes the Holloway poisoning scene.
The stage is set as follows. Holloway is drinking in a common area of the ship. David walks in. The two of them banter for a while and David asks him what he is willing to do to find out more about the Engineers. Silly Holloway responds: anything and everything. David smiles, pours Holloway a drink and spikes it with the black goo he brought back from to the ship. I've heard a lot of arguments about this scene. Some people think that this was just David being one of the "bad guys" in the movie. I'm going to argue that if Holloway had said something negative, David would have wandered off with the black goo on his finger to try and find someone else to experiment on. David was working within his protocol... and due to the response of Holloway... well he could technically do anything and everything to him. Hell, I'm not saying that this was the right thing to do. This is David's lack of emotions rearing it's ugly head again.
Creepy Crawlies, Aliens and Things That Go Bump in the Night
First off. I really really really need to say this:
Looks a lot like this:
And there is my Sandman reference for the day.
In the world of the film, the Engineers were the ones who created humanity. For some reason they decided that they wanted to destroy humanity and start over. This of course is stopped by the fact that their biological weapon gets out of control and destroys their military base/science lab. It is never really explained what caused this to happen... did someone let out the black goo? Was it the work of a traitor or just a careless employee.
It just happened one day.
Luckily enough we get to see an Engineer create life on a planet that could be earth at the very start of the film. He's dropped on a planet, takes off his clothes and drinks some of the black goo that we will come to know very well, which kills him. His DNA falls into a waterfall and jumpstarts the evolution cycle.
We also get to see the face of the Engineers... which I so fondly described to a friend as: A Jacked Up Voldemort who got Botox... and a Nose.
In all seriousness, the Engineers were interesting and I would have liked to see more of the movie about them.
One of the major problems with this movie is that it tries to do so much. If it had dialed it back they would have been able to go into more detail on things. Instead we have to try and make leaps between the Engineers, the Proto-type Face-Huggers, the Black Goo with Worms in it and the Blue-Alien-like-Alien at the very end of the film. Not to mention they keep jumping around with what each creature can do.
We see the black goo eat through someone's helmet, but David an safely hold it on his finger.
The only creature that really got to me, was when they found one of the crew members all bent up outside of their ship. It wasn't him specifically that freaked me out, it was the idea that he crawled all the way from the cave in that malformed messed up way. That really got my skin crawling.
So Long Mom, I'm Off to Drop the Bomb...
All in all Prometheus was a good summer blockbuster. It was pretty to look at, it held my attention and it gives you something to talk about. It is not the best scifi film I have ever seen, but it's not the worst either. You can't really read into it too much without realizing just how shallow it actually is. And I think that's what has upset the critics and reviewers.
Everyone went into this movie thinking it was going to be the big movie of the summer and that it was going to be perfect. Maybe the viral campaign was too good for it? I don't know.
I was a little let down with the ending and the severe tonal shift.
Shaw and David, the only two surviving members of the crew decide not to head back to earth, instead they take an Engineer Ship and head towards the Engineer Homeworld for answers.
That's all good and fine.
It's the buddy-cop feel that the film devolved into that kind of upset me. I could just hear the cheesy music as the two of them went off adventuring into the stars.
But maybe that's just me.
So if you haven't already, go out and see this one. Even if it's for visuals alone.
One More Thing:
I've attached my initial reaction to the movie, done in the form of a vlog that my friend and I filmed right after we got back from the movie. If you want a more accurate/less thought out analysis to what I saw, here's the videos.
The following review is based off of a Reviewer Copy I received for my Kindle.
For as long as I can remember, there has been a place in my heart for scary stories. Being the coward that I am this has caused me to spend many a night curled up in my bed under blankets with all of the lights on in my home.
So when I picked up the The Dark Horde by Brewin, I was not let down. This book managed to hit me where it hurts at every single point. Not only was it just scary it was creepy and at certain points it made me feel uncomfortable. All three of these are great assets in supernatural horror, and help this book stand out from the many others I have read.
The other aspect that really stood out to me was the rhythm of the writing. The narrative switches between the main story (in normal text) and observations of characters and the demons (in italics). This did wonders to the flow of the text giving the entire novel a catchy rhythm making it super easy to get sucked in to the story.
Yet this book was not without a few weaknesses. The author throws many different characters at the Reader and very few of them have distinct voices. I found that I was getting characters confused and had to backtrack a bit to figure out who was who and how they were related to other characters. This made it hard for me to care about the characters. Danny though (a young boy at a Boarding School) did manage to win my heart over and I really hoped to see him victorious despite all of the odds.
The other weakness was the ending of the novel. It ends on an ambiguous note, which I do like with my horror novels, but the build up to the ending is a little bit rushed. The pacing before the final few chapters is really well done, but it feels like a switch flicks at the end and the author just wanted to story to be done with.
Overall, I found The Dark Horde a great read and Brewin shows extreme potential and I hope to read more of his work. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Strain or has a soft spot for slasher flicks.
I present the new project I am working on, ontop of book reviews. I've always had a soft place in my heart for HBO TV Shows and this project offers me a little bit of a change of pace from what I am usually doing.
The Map of Time tells three interconnecting stories that center around the use and discussion of time travel. H.G. Wells' most recent novel The Time Machine and the recent opening of Murray's Time Travel Company, time travel is on the minds of everyone. Murray's Time Travel offers those who can pay the steep price a trip to the year 2000 to watch the final battle between the humans and the automatons.
In the first story we are introduced Andrew, who fell in love with the prostitute Mary Kelly. Mary Kelly is then killed by Jack the Ripper and Andrew spends eight years severely depressed. On the eve of her murder, Andrew decides to commit suicide in her old apartment, only to be stopped by his cousin Charles. Charles proposes that they go to Murray's Time Travel and try to convince Murray to take them back in time to save Andrew's love.
In the second story, we follow Claire, a young woman who feels like she is out of place in her time period. When her friend Lucy proposes that they go on Murray's Second Journey to the year 2000 she decides that no only will she go but she will stay there. During her trip to the year 2000, Claire falls in love with the leader of the humans Captain Derek Shackleton. But there seems to be more to this future then first meets the eye. How can Claire continue her romance with a man who isn't even born in her time period yet?
The final story centers around H.G. Wells, as he tries to stop a time traveller form destroying famous pieces of literature.
The cover also deserves to be looked at. I really like it, it mixes Victorian-Gentlemen- class with Steampunk making you wonder exactly what is going on in this book. I borrowed this book from a friend, and was there when she bought it. The cover caught her eye... yes sometimes we do judge books by their covers. I know. It's bad.
What I liked about this book was how the stories intertwined so well. I liked how it established the different characters and then referenced them throughout the rest of the novel. I was more drawn to the last two stories then the first. The middle story being my favourite narrative wise, while the final story was better character and theme wise. The thing about this book is that it is super heavy (literally and figuratively). I'm a pretty fast reader, but I found myself having a hard time reading it. I was enjoying it immensely... but it did not matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get through it. It seemed like the author was adding pages as I read it. Finally one afternoon I sat down and just powered through 300 pages and was done with the book.
So if you love the Victorian Era or even just Victorian Fiction, you might be interested in this book. If you loved H.G. Wells' Time Machine definitely give this book a read. This book is the perfect cross of historical-fiction and science-fiction.
This book has motivated me to re-read The Time Machine this summer. So there will be more on that later.
Also known as "The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Star-Wars-Belgariad-Doctor-Who-If-It's-Fantasy-And-Published-It's-In-Here-Somewhere" Book
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away my Little Brother told me about a book called Eragon. Staring a farm boy named Eragon who found a magical dragon egg and became a Dragon Rider. Of course Eragon lives in a fantasy world ruled by an Evil Dark Lord and only Eragon can defeat him. You know, the usual stuff.
I've been trying to write this Review for a while now, but it's been difficult. I think the major problem is that I have been trying to write a spoiler free review, like I usually write. Given the nature of these books I think I'm going to have to give up on my usual format.
From here on, there will be spoilers:
When I finished reading the third book in the Inheritance Cycle, I vowed to myself that I would finish this series even if it killed me. My logic was that I had already fought my way through 1,934 pages... I might as well see this to the very bitter end. I might as well find out how the story ended... maybe this was going to be that one series where the author pulls a fast one and the villain will win. Honestly, if that was how it ended this series would have been worth the uphill climb. But Paolini isn't one to break tradition.
I have a few theories why this book didn't work out so well.
THE LENGTH
Sitting at a whopping 849 pages, Inheritance is one of the larger books that I have ever read.. but it doesn't really need to be. Lets take for example, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Each of the books in that series is around 600-800 pages long, yet the length works. Something is always happening. There are no tangents, every sentence is part of a well oiled machine that serves a purpose. In the case of Inheritance, the novel goes off on tangents that aren't vital at all. They could be completely cut out and it wouldn't even be noticeable that they were missing. If you were to take Brisingr for example, stuff happens at the beginning, then there are 600 pages of padding then something at the end. In the case of Inheritance, the book meanders around for a while eventually leading to Eragon to face off with Galbitorax in one of the most anti-climactic endings ever.
Looking back at Eragon and Eldest, I'm not sure if they suffered from the same problem as the last two. It's been years since I read them and I really have no interest to go back and try them again. Maybe I'm being a little too hard here. The thing is I just don't care.
LETS TALK ABOUT ERAGON AS A CHARACTER
The biggest question that needs to be asked is what makes a likeable character? For me I would say it is complexity. When I think of the books I love with a passion, the characters who inhabit them are mutli-dimensional. They're more than a stereotype, you can believe that they could exist in the real world (personality-wise). Not to say there are certain books that I love where the characters are stereotypes, but that's a topic for another day. When you break down Eragon's character he is lacking flaws. He suffers from the Richard Cypher Syndrome. Since he is the Protagonist, he has to be awesome. He just works so hard to be so awesome you just have to love him. But you don't. Eragon is completely unrelate-able to his readers. He goes through NO CHARACTER development in THE ENTIRE NOVEL. You just don't care what he does. The weight of the entire world is supposed to be on this boy's shoulders, but that stress and (I can just hear the fangirls screaming and sharpening the pitchforks) the pressure doesn't seem to effect him at all, other than him mentioning once in while that the job seems so hard. He doesn't suffer though, in fact he leaves the army and his advisors behind to go and do other stuff. I mean REALLY?
THREE GOOD CHAPTERS?
Surprisingly yes, there were three good chapters. About one third into the book, Eragon and friends are captured by a religious cult that worships the Raz'ac. I guess it's my fascination with cults and black magic portrayed in books... but these chapters were actually interesting. Or maybe it was because Eragon did seem like he was actually in a bit of trouble during these sequences. As I mentioned in the character section, you get so used to Eragon being awesome and always able to save himself... and here he is... screwed. Of course Eragon is able to escape. But you just kind of hope he doesn't.
FUTURISTIC STUFF EXPLAINED IN MAGICAL TERMS (LIKE BOMBS)
So, I think this was what my biggest issue was. Eragorn, Saphira and Glaedr travel to Vroengard Island where the Dragon Riders used to reside. Unbeknowest to them it is now a severely dangerous place. During the battle with the Foresworn, one of the elves cast a spell that caused him to explode. But wait, there is more this explosion caused a sickness to spread across the land... for things to change... to mutate.. for people to get sick... and it left a crater.
Yes.
Yes.
Are you catching my drift? The Elf went nuclear and there was RADIATION. But because this is a fantasy book... that can't be said. This just bugged me to no end. I don't really know exactly why. It felt to forced? It seemed like a cop-out? I'm not exactly sure.
But this ties into the ending.
KILLING WITH LOVE: MAKE YOUR EVIL OVERLORD GO NUCLEAR IN TEN EASY STEPS!
So, we have all been waiting for this moment. Eragon and Galbatorix have to have their epic face off. This is it, the most epic battle of the century and Galibatorix pretty much wipes the group out with one foul swoop. You see, our Evil Overlord has figured out the name of the Ancient Language, none of Eragorn and Co.'s magic can touch him. At this point it feels like the book has hit a wall. How can Eragon get around this one? Well somehow Murtaugh has found out the name too and he saves everyone. The Eragon is able to cast a spell to make Galbatorix feel EVERY EMOTION EVER. But mainly love.
Yes. It's happened. This is a book that kills the villain with love. I'm seriously having flashbacks to my childhood and the Care Bears.
So poor Galbatorix can't handle ALL OF THE FEELINGS and goes nuclear... just like that poor Elf at Vroengard. BAM. His castle explodes, nuclear radiation floods the city. But Eragon saves them all. Because he's Eragon and that's just what he does.
OVERALL THOUGHTS AND ANGRY RANTING
As you can tell from this review... I hated this book and I hated this series. What the book really needed was someone to help cut down on the useless information and keep the story on a straightforward path, not let it wander off in random directions.
The internet seems to love these books and I can't really understand why. But I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
I would like to hear other people's thoughts and opinions on this one.
I was one of those Whedon Fangirls who knew about The Cabin in the Woods when it was originally mentioned years ago. I've been following the Science Fiction-Fantasy-All round nerdy awesome blog io9 for what feels like a million years now. Way back in 2010 they posted their excitement for the new Whedon-Goddard Project with the most fantastic posters ever:
If something is chasing you.... split up.
Absolute brilliance.
Around this time there was a rise in the need to be meta. This film was either going to be a piece of meta brilliance, similar to the Scream films... or well just the usual Whedon awesomeness. Sadly, the company releasing it went under and The Cabin in the Woods was lost into the Nether of the Films that will never be.
But I still hoped.
If you follow this blog with any form of dedication, you probably have realized my love/hate relationship with the horror genre. I knew that if The Cabin in the Woods was ever released, then I would most likely wait for it to come out on DVD and watch it at home. As long as it had the same kinda nature as Zombieland I should be alright. I expected that the Whedon sense of humour would make any form of horror in this movie easy to handle... and tie that in with the meta-horror-making-fun-of-horror... it should be a cake walk. As long as I watched it at home with all the lights on... and maybe clutching a pillow (just in case)
But then as if by miracle, there was a trailer and a release date. The fangirls went wild, two Whedon movies in under 30 days? What is this madness? (I'm talking about The Avengers of course).
Not only did the film get the trailer, it also got a spiffy new poster:
My interest was peaked. But I still wasn't willing to watch it in the theatre though.
Sadly for me, I have some really persuasive friends, so one night on our way back from getting amazing Burgers at a local Burger Joint my two friends decided that we would go see The Cabin in the Woods. They spent a good twenty minutes telling me it wasn't scary, or that gory and that I could easily watch it and not regret it later. Only until AFTER I agreed to see the film, they revoked the statement on the gore. By that point I had already said yes and we were on the bus to the theatre.
Spoilers from here down.....
The intro sequence gave away the premise of the film to me pretty quickly. We were going to be dealing with a sacrifice to some form of God. Tie that in with the trailer and well... there's the main plot of the film. There are five friends who go for a relaxing weekend at a cabin in the woods. They're cut off from the rest of the world and picked off one by one by some form of axe murderer. We're all really familiar with that horror trope. Hell, I'm working on a script based off of that idea. What we know going into this film from the trailer is that there is an even more sinister level to the story. *Cough* sacrificing these kids to the evil gods from before *cough*
What Cabin in the Woods does that is absolutely brilliant, is to make you question all the other slasher flicks that you have seen previously. When we were busing back from the theatre one of my friends raised a pretty interesting point: "Do you think The Cabin in the Woods is saying that all the other horror movies before it are actually sacrifices?" Yes. I think that's exactly what this film is going for. Whedon and Goddard keep coming back to the point that there are cultural narratives that we all are extremely familiar with. The American Scenario portrays our fascination with type casting. In our horror movies we need to have the different basic characters dichotomies: The Whore and the Virgin, The Athlete and the Scholar and of course the Fool. The film also references the different dichotomies and cultural narratives in different countries (I LOVED the side plot about the Japan Scenario. It was brilliant).
If you are interested in looking into more research on cultural narratives and archetypal theory, I highly recommend you look into the works of Carl Jung. I could start talking about that right now, but then I would never be able to finish this blog post. Notes on Carl Jung will have to happen another day.
Come on guys, we know exactly which stereotype these
characters will be.
I've heard people argue that the characters in Cabin have their own distinct personalities that end up getting morphed into the stereotypes through the use of chemicals. I have to argue that this claim is false. Yes, the kids do have some distinct personality characteristics that are different from the usual slasher basic personas, but right from the very beginning we know that Chris Hemsworth is the Jock and his girlfriend is the traditional Blond Bombshell who is one of the first to die. The beauty of Cabin is that it acknowledges all these stereotypes and has fun with them, it doesn't try and take itself seriously.
I absolutely loved the Stoner Marty. All of his little asides and how he easily figures out what is going on before everyone else. He's easily the most loveable character out of the group and his "death" comes as a shock. Marty is the second character to be killed off. What is found out later is that he managed to escape and is undermining the entire system. Good job Marty, it's nice to see someone actually doing something productive in a horror film. That doesn't happen that often.
Cabin in the Woods as I mentioned earlier is focused on ritual sacrifice. The five kids need to be sacrificed to appease the Old God and stop him from rising and destroying the world. The humans who perform this sacrifice have fine tuned it to the extreme. They can control the environment of the killing ground, they can control the moods of their victims and they are able to see everything as it happens. I had a sick wish that I could have the job that the two main controller's have (similar to my wish that I could control the Hunger Games... It's the tech, I swear). But even with all this control, it's interesting to look at the control that the victims have. As mentioned by one of the Controller's the victims have to make the choice. They have to ignore the warning at the gas station, they need to select their artifact to choose their monster.
Witches, Sexy Witches, Kevin, What more could you ask for?
Which of course leads to the morbid game that the office workers play where they bet on which monster the kids will end up picking.
Where the film really shines is when Dana and Marty manage to enter the Office underneath the Cabin. The shot where they show the entire matrix of monsters is amazing. I personally loved the reference to Hellrazer with the circle puzzle and the razorblade-headed dude. Even his name was fantastic Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain. The film from this point takes on that of a blood bath, but it doesn't really faze you. Instead the joy from these scenes is the ability to recognize all the different horror icons and the films that Cabin is referencing. Hell, they even reference Supernatural!
Cabin in the Woods ends in a way that you don't see often, the two characters choose not to save the world by killing themselves, instead they let the world burn while they share a joint. The last shot of the film is the hand of the God bursting through the ground to rain destruction down on the world. Not many films end with the world ending, and even few end with the protagonists choosing to end it. Marty or Dana, I can't remember which, exclaims during the final showdown that "If this is the what needs to be done to keep humanity alive then maybe it's time we give someone else a chance."
All in all, what everyone thought was going to be a regular slasher film with a few quirks turns out to be something a lot deeper with a lot more going on. I loved Cabin in the Woods it was a breath of fresh air in a stale period of cinema. So if you haven't seen it, even though the movie has been significantly spoiled... still go see it. It's worth it, I swear.
If you want to see the list of all the creature references in the Cabin in the Woods click here.
Coming into Prometheus, you are fully aware that most of the characters who are paraded infront of you in the first 20 minutes aren't going to make it to the end of the film. We all know how this genre works. We all know how to tell which characters are going to bite it first. When you look at the crew of The Prometheus, a handfull of the people do not even get names. You know they're done for. I went into this with as much of an open mind as possible, but within the introduction of the crew I knew that the only one to survive had to be Shaw. She was the only human who had a somewhat rounded character. She also seemed like the kind of character that a Director would just love to torture. And how how Ridley does.
We also get to see the face of the Engineers... which I so fondly described to a friend as: A Jacked Up Voldemort who got Botox... and a Nose.
The Map of Time tells three interconnecting stories that center around the use and discussion of time travel. H.G. Wells' most recent novel The Time Machine and the recent opening of Murray's Time Travel Company, time travel is on the minds of everyone. Murray's Time Travel offers those who can pay the steep price a trip to the year 2000 to watch the final battle between the humans and the automatons.
