Jurassic World

It's that time of the year again. Summer Sci-Fi block busters and all their intense theoretical systems of post-structural baggage.

This time I watched Jurassic World on Sunday evening. There is something about monster movies that allow them to tap into the world of meta cinema. It starts with Voyage Dans La Lune where the ant-like monsters are able to appear and disappear. The director figured out he could stop the camera and the actors could move off the set then start the camera back up on an empty set. Movie magic reminds us about the literal manipulation of cellulose to create still images that flash before our eyes. Then king kong stunned the world with stop motion animation. The premise of finding a secret lost world that can only be transferred by the cinematic screen means that some monsters only ever exist through the lens of a camera.

Peter Jackson's king kong was even more meta cinema with the director, Jack Black, taking the role of lead supporting actor next to Kong. That was an adventure to make cinema and re-stage scenes of the original film while also re-expanding on that lost world and the magic of CG dinosaurs.

Thus Jurassic World evolves from such a genetic lineage as the fourth installment of the Jurassic Franchise. The plot is that the park is up and running and the wealthy with small children travel across the world to see live dinosaurs. There are ingenious kid-friendly dinosaur experiences like the triceratops petting zoo which made me laugh. Many a dig at the Disney's Amusement emporium. One wonders how the park supports so many side personnel to run the hibachi restaurants, copious gift stores, as well as custodians for the monolithic hotels connected by monorail. There should have been a side story about some cleaning person who tries to escape the chaos of pterosaurs when they descend upon the guests. (That scene also needed a flight of the Valkyries, but I digress) I want more moments of individual bravery, of course the ex-Navy marine will be tough as guts. But everyone else... meh. Otherwise, I can't figure out if these workers also live on the island or if they take the ferry to work every day. The theme park bureaucracy might be the real monster of the film.

No, that's a mistake, Capitalism is the obvious monster. It seeps deep into the fossilized bones of the plot. The move is self-aware that we all go to watch these films with the expectation that a dinosaur will break loose and kill people. The movie is about making a bigger, better, scarier dinosaur through genetic manipulation to attract new audiences. The movie itself hinges on computer graphics artists and focus groups making a bigger, better, scarier dinosaur through digital manipulation. We are the guests of Jurassic World. (On a side note I wonder how Michael Crichton would feel about the continued return to his techno-thriller world?)

The funny thing is that trans genetics of this scale requires more money than the park can generate. They need investors. So Verizon offers to fund the newly created "Indomitus Rex." One of the comic lackeys in the control room starts joking: "what's next, Doritosaurus?" Haha, product placement, the movie seems to sigh sarcastically. But then the monster escapes and everyone seems to be driving everywhere in Mercedes Benz SUVs. Every scene starts with a shot of a car pulling up to a research or containment building. The camera follows the chrome grill, un-bespeckled by Central American mud, and the famous inverted Y symbol shines in our eyes before diegesis continues. Jurassic World needed corporate investors to design it's overthetop dino romp.

I don't mean to be too negative. They needed the money to include both CG and robotic scenes. Yes Robots. It seems to be a badge of honor among the new age of directors to still employ robots in their movies. The common eye doesn't look for these transitions but the two obvious ones were a heart wrenching scene where an apatasaurus dies from blood loss after the frenzied Indomintus Rex slaughters everything in the large herbivore exhibit. The humans hold its head in their lap and the minute twitches and eye blinks where beautiful to behold.

In addition, the velociraptors have great moments of robotic animation. It turns out as a side project the ex-Navy guy is training them like dogs of war. They respond to his commands and he pets them to build affection. But they would still eat them. So they have special walls where the raptors stick in their dino-muzzles and hydraulics lock in their heads. Now just the snout and eyes show while the rest of the dinosaur is behind a steel wall. Really ingenious trickery to use a robot but not have to animate the whole beast. Again, the quiver of lips and flaring nostrils make the proto-birds more engaging than the humans.

When I dump on the human components, I specifically want to call out the railroading of character motivation. Each character archetype needs to exist: the optimistic CEO, the realistic second in command, the greedy pro-military shadow branch of the corporation, the teenage kids getting stuck in wild dinosaur situations, the evil scientist who says he's not evil but just following the money, and the non-scientist who treats dinosaurs like animals that deserve respect. Each of these need to exist to have a full Jurassic experience yet when they reveal themselves individually it is so mind-numbingly obvious who's going to get eaten and who will survive. The genetics of the screenplay feel exposed. These movies cannot escape the original heirloom summer blockbuster established by Spielberg.

In fact, to continue with the meta aspect of the movie, the film digs up its own fossils. As the kids run away from Indomitus rex in the restricted part of the island they run into the old park headquarters. That's right, they rebuild the set of the original movie and cover it with ivy and dust. The movie seems obsessed with discovering its own bones and understanding where it came from.

As you can see I don't quite have a grasp of the meta just yet. It seems too aware that the joke is sickening, but it keeps going and it gets fresh again, but then it gets sickening, but then in the final scene when the realize they need the T. Rex to fight Indomitus Rex the female protagonist runs to the cage entrance and lights a red flare. In that moment they summon the iconic moment in the first movie when the paleontologist guides the T. Rex away from the children in the jeep. That is true American movie bravery. That burning red flare carries so much history and emotion that millions who grew up in the 90s hold the scene dearly in their minds. I fell in love with movies yet again.

Appendix:

If there was ever a small amount of original satire, it is at a moment when the two leads find the smashed gyroball where the kids were last known before the monster tried to eat them. Around the broken glass and metal the woman finds a smashed samsung phone and starts to whimper that her nephews are dead. Then the male lead says, "look foot prints, they escaped." In the instant before, the woman assumed that no teenager would ever go anywhere without their phone and if it was left behind then he must be dead. That's commentary on the state of American youth.

Noroi, The Curse (2005)

What few essays I've read on horror, none have yet acknowledged the feeling of "creepy". Horror and terror are distinct but I need to better understand creepy. As a long and complex entry in J-horror, Noroi  left me with a distinct chill about the silliest of symbols joined together in a demon resurrection film. Pigeons, ectoplasmic worms, child psychics, a village at the bottom of a dammed lake--Noroi has it all. Although it employs VHS tech for its atmosphere, it is not dependent on the technology for the dread it creates. Instead, Noroi is fascinating because it feels like such an ancient horror narrative that still leads the contemporary protagonists to frightening situations. Without attempting a long essay, that last sentence hints to my understanding of "creepy" as an effect in horror. Creepy is the doubt that makes an folk horror story real. A doubt that some magic has slipped through the cracks of science and reason. A doubt that the Kagutaba is out there. 

Watch Noroi, one of my new favorites.

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)

So thanks to wikipedia, I learned the director of this movie, Bob Clark, also directed the wonderful early slasher, Black Christmas, who's actress, Olivia Hussey, played Juliet in "the good" film adaptation of R&J that the quirky drama teacher showed my class in middle school.

You may think I'm avoiding writing about CSPwDT. WAIT! That's a horrible acronym. Let's just call it Children. Wait, that's kind of creepy. In fact way creepier than this movie. Let's just call it the horrendously amateur zombie movie that has no action until the last ten minutes. And that folks, is the number one reason it should not be watched.

I have other, more minor flaws, that upset me. There were too many names in the title sequence. The electronic soundtrack felt like it was dripping. The lighting made many shots unclear. It's a shame though, because the screen play had promise. I jotted down some enjoyable phrases:

"clever girl"
"sanctum of satan"
"vibrations are powerful"
"what a perfect place for mass murder"
"It's like a great B movie"
"a fire a day keeps those ghosts away"
"I do have talent, when I have a good part... and get in character"

Those last few point to an attempt at horrality. But their delivery and placement did not make for enjoyable, ironic meta humor. It just made for a bunch of idiots copying night of the living dead-but making it stupid. Stupid, because of the man I dubbed Prospero, the charlatan who leads the "teens" to the haunted island. His lines were ridiculously intellectual and shakespearean. And the part when the ugly girl goes all "Yenta the matchmaker" and bugs out her eyes.

So much potential wasted.

Trouble Every Day (2001)

Ah Claire Denis, I did not expect you to turn up on my list. I must of selected Trouble Every Day during random googling of phrases such as "unknown horror", "european horror", and "transgressive film". The plate of shrimp in this case is that my English professor showed us a film, Beau Travail, also directed by Denis (pronounced Deni) last month.

As such, I totally recognized her style and as soon as the Comic Sans title sequence ended (which I mentioned to a friend who joked "I would have turned it off") the film thrust an audience of one into a creeping tale of suppressed lust.

The striking element of Trouble Every Day is that as one who's been with the genre of horror for awhile, I totally knew its tropes. I knew the seductive femme fatale shown in the beginning was going to kill men after seducing them. I just knew that the American couple's honeymoon in France would not be hunky-dory. I just knew the two teens were going to unleash the femme fatale's dangerous lust. However, I did not know that it would take long shots of gritty French interiors and wordless character development that diverts from the established protagonists to follow the hotel maid to get to these conclusions. Denis rejects "horrality" in all its self aware glory by not letting the tropes propel the film. Instead, the camera's focused eye maintained a brutal grip on the narrative. The audience suffers unease while the camera lingers on places instead of gazing upon the actual horrific events.

Adding with the horror tropes, the "explanation" of the characters' vampirism/cannibalism/sexual bloodlust derives from a Resident Evil-like scientific experiment with rainforest plants containing hormones or some such biochemistry that changes humans. There were beautiful shots of stirring rods spinning in beakers and flasks being shaken on electric shakers. Mechanical repetition that contrasts with the organic irregularity of the characters' lifestyles.

Even though I identified these tropes, Denis refuses to completely align with them and demands the viewer make their own connections. The most powerful scenes are those with blood. Beautiful blood. Breathtaking crimson arabesque that leaps from shredded capillaries and paint the external world. These are scenes of pure transgression where the internal fluids become an external hue. As a result, the violence and the sex are the most concrete actions in the film. Trouble Every Day is a successful, artistic horror film because the reasons for the violence don't matter. The tropes don't make the film. The tropes are a product of showing me the true violent lust capable within a human being.

Ringu (1998)

Enjoyably creepy. The actual cursed VHS had clips that reminded me of chiascuro from Begotten (basically the definition of gritty cinema). I watched this gem with my family and my brother had the creativity to call the home phone on his cell phone right after the first time the protagonist watches the film, made for a great jump scare that I recommend others to repeat.

Yoichi is such a cool name.

Rabid (1977)

keloid /ke·loid/ (ke´loid)
a sharply elevated, irregularly shaped, progressively enlarging scar due to excessive collagen formation in the dermis during connective tissue repair.

Following up my essay on the architecture of Cronenberg's Shivers, it's fitting I continue with his second film of body horror, Rabid. I enjoyed recognizing some stars from Shivers returning to the screen. In fact, Shivers and Rabid create a pleasant multiverse alternative timeline ot the fall of Montreal by zombie-like transformed humans. And yet Cronenberg does not trap himself within the confines of the zombie genre. My few comments on Rabid will consider the physiological message emerging from Keloid Clinic.

As a plastic surgery clinic, they seek to make external appearance beautiful. The examination room has a poster of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man on the wall. The use of these "neutral cells" (read as stem cells) to recreate the proper texture of flesh show. I caught a phrase from a magazine in the waiting lounge, "the truth about skin care" that seems to be a late warning about this fixation on the external. Ironically, a keloid does form and these aesteticians cause internal changes they cannot begin to comprehend.

The motif of external to internal leads to support the perhaps obvious conclusion that Rabid is a film of penetration. The protagonist's armpit penis, the use of needles to immunize, feed, and sedate, the drill that penetrates the health minister's car, and most importantly, biting, the vector for infection. The doctors of the clinic gave a female a phallus, perhaps they only imagine true beauty in the shape of a man?

I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

Why do I suffer the exploitation film? They are horrible. Where chain saws and gore transgress the physical boundaries of our contemporary culture, watching rape shatters the mental boundaries of human imagination. I Spit On Your Grave seeks to show the totality of masculine brutality against women.

The color red is a pervasive hue in the film that works at multiple levels to address the problem of violence against women. Red is the reason, the warning signal, the stage of, and the after glow of the violence. The multitude of meaning in this single signifier presents the argument that misogyny is ubiquitous in our society. Jen's solution of murder implies stopping misogyny requires revenge that is equally beyond societal boundaries.

The color manifests as lipstick, a red dress, nail polish, and the apple that Jen gives Matthew. These reds are seductive, they seem to support Johnny's pathetic excuse that Jen "asked for it" through provocative actions.

The red of the gas station stands, the summer cabin's decorations, lampshade, curtains, kitchen wall, and the interior of her river canoe are a foreshadowing of the kidnapping and rape.

The final brutal onslaught in her cabin, marked by the terrifying scare of the boot kicking the phone from her hand, is saturate with red. The crimson carpet, the red armchair, her bloodied frame all painting the image of carnage against women.

Finally, three of the four murders involve blood diffusing into water. Cloudy red water of the attackers is the chromatic reversal of Jen's experience. She escapes on her motorboat leaving evidence of the violence to seep into the river and disperse until it disappears to hide her deeds. Red, at the end of the film, becomes evidence of successful revenge and victory of the men.

The visual presence of red works to eroticize the protagonist, to warn her of the attack but also becomes an element of the violence and a marker of her revenge; these contrasting instances complicate our understanding of its use. By being associated with the entire plot of the film, red gains universal presence. Instead of symbolizing a single emotion, it represents the entire societal culture of violence against women. With this reading, red becomes the backdrop of the events, a stage that permits the cycle of misogyny to continue as a whole even if Jen killed her specific attackers.

This film.

It's crude. It's amateur. It ends with the creation of a female killer who's origins are fundamentally different from the mindless masculine evil of Mike Myers and Leatherface. The woman has reasons, her evil only emerges from revenge, it was never intrinsic.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

This film made me sick. I know that my last post praised the masterpiece horror in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre due to the film's mastery of sensory emotions. But I must immediately raise another rapturous celebration for Last House's achievements in exploitation horror. Where Tobe Hooper succeeded by manipulating the objective correlative, I will claim that Wes Craven's success derives from his mastery of structure. Last House frames itself as a Shakespearean tragedy and revenge tale placed in the backwater town road outside a city (it may be New York, but the effect of the film does not require an specific location). I say Shakespearean because of the comic relief scenes involving the police officers. Just as the Gatekeeper in Macbeth disrupts the aftermath of the murder to inject a comic soliloquy, these police men brilliantly pull the audience out of the pit of overwhelming pathos. Another Shakespearean element is the gripping frustration at how close the tragedy came to being avoided. Just as Shakespeare denies Juliet seeing Romeo before he takes his life, Craven brutally denies Mari and Phyllis salvation from their captors even though both the police and Mari's home are tantalizingly close during the entire ordeal of bloodthirsty abuse, torture, and murder.

I repeat, this film made me sick.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

I must admit my project in horror literacy is outlandish and juvenile in many eyes. Sturgeon's law is no exception to my genre of interest, 90% is absolute crap, and I embrace such a reality. However, such a law does not mean to diminish the value of that 10% that strives to join the pantheon of arts. Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1974, is a member of the 10% that succeeds in art's eternal struggle to evoke emotion.

I interpret Hooper's success to the employment of the objective correlative, a modernist term to describe art's effect. Championed by T.S. Eliot, this theory of art argues:

"The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked"

--http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/423797/objective-correlative

Unlike the above definition, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as an singular film presents its simple "external fact" at the beginning of the experience, namely that it was a real, historic event. The subsequent mundane dialogue and rural American setting that introduce the doomed protagonists further re-enforce the singular "external fact". This (ir)rational grain of knowledge looms at the back of the consciousness a germinates to a dread that "this could actually happen" within the bowels of the American heartland. Within this structure, the objective correlative horror of individual scenes act by juxtaposition of objects and human senses that become unified by the terminating "external fact" which leads to a dread about our frailty against the madness of cannibalism.  
  
After corrupting the mental domain of the audience member's mind, the film begins a merciless assault upon sensory organs. Once the date fades from the screen, pure audio clips of scratching shovels and shifting earth begin the tale. Suddenly a flash of light burns the retina with the image of a decaying hand. Visual disgust initiates as the mottled, shrunken fingers shock the audience with the simple image of decay. The flashes, the decaying masses, and the whining of the bulb's capacitors all act to create an unnatural experience of rot but deny the audience a complete image. The sudden change to an orange hued image of a skinless corpse is the final shocking, unexplained scene of the introduction. The rotting skin glistens in the sunlight  signalling, if not a specific smell, the realization that this corpse is an abomination of the olfactory. This introductory sequence finishes its own objective correlative micro-arc with the radio's announcement: "Grave-robbing in Texas is this hour's top news story". At this moment, the audience understands that the camera flashes were the dreadfully unnatural transgression of the living against the dead. 

A second, powerful employment of the objective correlative occurs when Pam follows her boyfriend into the house and stumbles into a parlor with more bones than an ossuary and a single, caged chicken. The dark, ruined homestead is already a site of terror and unknown, but this single room sets up the film's central conflict of cannibalism. Feathers, bits of fur, and bone fragments coat the floor and offer a tactile sensation of filth as Pam falls onto the dirty floor. The single, freightened chicken provides an organic clucking that layers over the horror soundtrack and adds links the defiled room to the American image of the farm. The camera pans over the detritus on the floorboards and finds the bones of a human leg. It follows the familiar forms of leg and arm, creating the expectation of a sitting skeleton. Instead, the surprise is another piece of art, a couch outlined with the human skeleton. The continued panning over cracked turtle shells and swinging parts again offers the tactile sensation of their delicate fragility. Pam's wretching summons the viewer's imagination to construct the physical cringing of the internal organs. The sudden action sequence of Leatherface capturing Pam and carrying her into the "kitchen" climaxes to the most powerful physical sensation in the entire film. The meat hook. I will argue that proprioception, the sense of one's own place in space, is a more primal sense than the traditional five external senses. The ability to "feel" where our limbs exist allows to place ourselves into three-dimensional space. As a result, although we will never be held up off the ground by a meat hook piercing our back, every audience member can sense the pull of their body mass against the hook. Horrified by our own minds creating the self-perception of being hooked, the scene completes its absolute sensory overload. As a last treat, the objective correlative again offers up the "external fact" that this is the home of cannibals, and that the protagonists will be chopped up and eaten. 

The final objective correlative I present is Sally Hardesty's interaction with Grandpa. At this point the audience has been living in an adrenaline typhoon as Sally escaped Leatherface only to be captured and returned by the proprietor of the gas station. The blinding glare of the unshaded lamps casts shadows throughout the dining hall. Gagged and tied, the film's use of proprioception allows the tense audience to "feel" the constraints. After bringing Grandpa, the chair-bound human husk, to the table, the hitchhiker and Leatherface slice Sally's finger (one of the few, explicit moments of blood). The final objective correlative moment in this scene happens simultaneously with the revelation of the "external fact" that catapults the audience into the finest level of dread and disgust; Grandpa begins to suck. At this moment, the audience realizes that the mummified body is still alive. Defying age, the man sucks at the finger like a child sucks the nipple. Vile on basest, Freudian level, the audience can feel the sensation of having their finger sucked. Comprehension of this infantile sensation coupled with disturbing visual of an old man slurping and squirming like a new born throws one "over the cliff". It's the gross-out moment of the film, the horror that simultaneously becomes unbelievable, terrifying, and comic. The horrality. 

This analysis of the objective correlative is my evidence for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's classification as a masterpiece. The film applies the modernist definition of emotion evoking art by creating scenes that employ all the senses of the spectator. Through sensory overload, the film gains control over the audience and concentrates their emotions to a single feeling of dread for being at the pointy end of society's cannibalism taboo. This dread is not inferior to the emotions created by other art. Just because it may be more uncomfortable than a Beethoven symphony or D.W. Griffith epic  does not justify a label of inferiority. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an overwhelming cinematic force and deserves respect for its ability to make civilized man fear.

Misc. Thoughts

My side thoughts that would not fit within the above essay.
 
The demonic red chiascuro of the title sequence is beautiful. If this visual aesthetic interests you, consider the contemporary abstract art/horror film Begotten.

 I want to point out the reference to Psycho by using the motiff of family members maintaining the corpses of their elders, in this case "Grandma" and "the dog".

There are essays that consider the parody of the family American dinner table while Sally is tied up. I thought that the attempt to have Grandpa kill Sally is similar to Patrick Star's attempt to get Squidward to hold the jelly-fishing net. Absurd comedy for the win!
"firmly grasp it!"

Finally, the gritty art style,  obvious chain saw-wielding antagonists,  "horror soundtrack", backwater decaying buildings, and use of cannibalistic implications all make me conclude that Resident Evil 4's art direction borrowed greatly from aesthetics of this film.

Horror Literacy: Let the Right One In (2008)

In preparing for this short response, I browsed other internet articles on Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In. Most commentators and reviewers state how LtROI stands out from the pack of 2000s vampire revival culture. I can honestly say I feel removed from that discussion (I know nothing about Twilight and Ann Rice). Instead, this short response considers LtROI's spatial positioning of the vampire in comparison to Murnau's  Nosferatu (1920). Both European vampire films, they rely on the vampire living close to the protagonist's window (Figures 1&2).

Figure 1: http://www.silentsaregolden.com/featurefolder4/nosferatu18.jpg

Figure 2: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwN4grBHLfSBZ3gXpKUBYE0Nf6vclPifdJW6BPcks7gS2ztWc2mZCEWWZYLP0T5FTuNvdosTETB3aTHP0DFYxB6XeB5PB0hTikA0kvQN-LJO_8-WfJ8Bc6qeLzqoOleTWNNcB97PA37fo/s1600/windows.jpg

Nosferatu takes us residence in an abandoned wearhouse that looks directly into the bedroom of the protagonist's girl. LtROI places Eli's apartment adjacent to Oskar's apartment. Axial vs Adjacent. This is the core reason so many critics are quick to claim LtROI is a refreshing escape from other vampire cinema.

The rat-like Count Orlock in Nosferatu defines his existence by lusting over his female victim. His voyeuristic gaze seeks to hypnotize the young maiden to leave her defenseless. As a result, the vampire lives as a horrific abomination in opposition to society. LtROI opens with Oskar looking out the window. He sees his partial reflection and fixates on a bully that harasses him at school. There is not vampiric "other" that gazes back at Oskar, he is all alone in his muted and dreary apartment complex.

I enjoy that the first segment of the film is actually two parallel narratives: Oskar's isolated school life, and Hakan's task to harvest blood as an unexplained guardian for Eli. Compounding the divisive nature of the film is the elderly circle of friends who also live in the apartment complex. The few murderous junctions that propel the plot are the only times they overlap with the young leads. Oskar's school is another isolated narrative that only connects to the vampire plot during the ice skating scene and the final slaughter of the bullies. This division speaks to the vampire's role in an alienated society.

Oskar wants to connect with Eli to remedy his isolation. Morse code through the apartment walls and an failed "blood pact" are two examples of his courage to reach out and befriend Eli in spite of her folklore status as a demonic entity.

Looking at the title, both Oskar and Count Orlock's victim had to let the vampire in, by verbal acknowledgement or physically opening the window. In Nosferatu, the woman believes that only through her sacrifice can she trap the vampire to die by sunlight. She "lets in" the vampire to destroy it. Oskar however lets Eli in to help himself find meaning and love. His undergoes an empowering, stunning transformation by being around Eli. Bopping around his living room, rocking to some tunes while waiting for Eli to finish her shower, he looks five years older in style and motivation. His vampire next door is the gateway into puberty.

No longer does such the blood sucker plague society by existing in opposition to European communities. Instead, the vampire lives at the fringes of our lives, whose monstrosity is secondary to draining self alienation and despair that already infects the population. Instead, her monstrous instincts empower Oskar, the runt of society.

Horror Literacy: The Crazies (2010)

Last Night, I watched Bruck Eisner's remake of The Crazies. I haven't watched Romero's original yet but since the plot, military chemicals altering residents of small town USA, seems to be part of cultural knowledge, there were no real surprises or plot twists. The strength of the film is clearly atmosphere. These Iowans were not caricatures. Their town was a real slice of rural American life. I particularly marveled at the juxtaposition of the mayor's pool in the middle of a flat farmland, an example of rural American pastiche that selectively chooses its comforts. The sudden militarized containment of their humble town gave me shivers. This film, up to the final satellite image, espouses a fear of a faceless military government annihilating a community for the "greater good of America".

Voyeurism is not a new theme in the genre of horror, however, The Crazies distinctly puts the owner of the all-seeing camera into the nameless military. The satellite's computerized gaze shares a lineage with the dreaded panopticon but as a method of execution instead of discipline. Compounded with telecommunications being jammed, the film's rising action prays on the fear of helplessness through isolation.

More importantly, I want to comment on the connection to the zombie genre. I will argue the premise of The Crazies is theoretically more interesting than the common zombie-apocalypse plot. My reason is that two separate, enemy factions for the protagonists creates stronger pacing. There are multiple moments where escaping the threat of the military leads the Duttons and friends into the murderous clutches of the crazies who would be relatively harmless on their own because they are so slow. I see clear connections to video game series that place two enemy factions in the same area as the player's avatar. Such three-way dynamic puts a greater drive for pure survival and escape instead of brute force slaughter. The typical horror conflict of "us vs them" becomes "us vs them vs the government"; a powerful statement in our post 9/11 world where surveillance and military secrecy exist at the fringes of everyday American living.

Horror Literacy: Introduction

I was christened into the horror genre when I saw The Evil Dead at midnight 3+ years ago. Something clicked within my mind in the comfy couch of that little independent cinema. My aversion to blood and loud scares morphed into an attraction to the thrill and humor for the horrifically absurd and the comically gory. And so I began a steady march to watch more horror.

I saw films like Carpenter's The Thing and Videodrome at the Boston Science Fiction Marathon and my seedling began to draw nourishment from such genius. Then in our senior year, my high school friends and I watched the Romero trilogy. Suddenly the entire world of societal commentary became apparent. The greatest horror had messages directly related to society.

Freshman year of college, a class named "Zombies and the Apocalypse in American Pop Culture" appeared in the course catalog and I . Looking specifically at zombie cinema, the class focused on historical and societal messages in horror. Since this class, I've been watching horror with sparing regularity.

With such academic foundation, I now challenge myself to complete my foundation in horror literacy. This project commits me to watch 51 horror films that will elevate me from amateur to aficionado. Here is the list
(strike through denotes already watched) :

The Exorcist
Rosemary's Baby
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
A Nightmare on Elmstreet
The Howling
Friday the 13th (original)
Carrie
Martin
The Crazies 1973
The Crazies 2010
Let the Right One In
Trouble Everyday
Scream
When a Stranger Calls
Angel Heart
Jaws
The Haunting (original)
Poltergeist
Repulsion
Frailty
Eyes without a Face
The Legend of Hell House
Ringu
The Grudge
Saw
Cure
[REC]
Black House
Blood Beach
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
Dead and Buried
Dead of Night
Deathdream
Deranged
Dog Soldier
Dracula's Daughter
Grotesque
Kiss the Vampire
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
Martyrs
Mordum
Noroi: the curse
Rabid
Slither
The Grapes of Death
The Midnight Meat Train
The Mist
The Unknown
The World, the Flesh and The Devil
Last House on the Left (original)
I Spit on Your Grave

I hope to finish by the end of January. Short critiques and interpretations of each film will follow.

The Amazing Spider-Man Response

I write this from the point of view of having read the first 40 comics of the original Spider-man run
by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the 50s. I also cannot help but compare it to The Avengers however
I don't remember the Spider-man movies of the 00s well enough to compare.

One sentence summary:
The Amazing Spider-Man was a solid 21st century adaptation of Spider-Man's origin that employed
Peter Parker's broody teenage persona, Spidey's extremely acrobatic combat technique, and
a vibrant color palette.

Elaborating on the summary:

They definitely modernized Peter Parker's world. He's no longer a 1960s clean-cut dweeb in high school
but just a hip, quiet, and intelligent New York teen. "The Daily Bugle" got perhaps a several
seconds worth of screen time and the belligerent editor in chief, J. Jonah Jameson
did not appear. Makes sense as in this point in time, newspapers are not affecting how the
citizens of New York think. Spider-man answering his cell phone on the top of sky scrapers
was a shockingly real moment of connection I had. Every teenager this day in age gets
stuck talking to their parents at in-opportune times.

Some may be sick of the oversaturation of broody, angsty, secretive teenage protagonists in
our narratives these days. I can't lie, Peter Parker takes on those characteristics. He
wears his hoody, hides from his aunt when he can. Never looks confrontation in
the eye. Reading the 60s comics, that is who Peter Parker is. He has horrendous
girl trouble, and friend trouble in general.

The fight scenes where my favorite. In discussion with a friend, we had decided how
mixed the Avengers heroes were in power and fighting prowess. Again, going back
to the comics, the movie relied on Spidey-senses, acrobatic agility, and improvised
web-work. It makes him a red-leotarded sky ballerina, and I enjoyed it. Unlike Thor,
the Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America, Spider-man does not smash, stomp, or
pound- he jabs, flips, and webs.

I move my lens onto The Lizard. I like The Lizard, I pity him
because he's originally a scientist who lost his arm and simply wants to regrow
it using SCIENCE. He gets delusional once he splices his DNA but so does
every villain in the history of splicing. After some thought, the reality is none
of the Spider-man villains approach being as interesting as Batman's villains
(which is the movie everyone is actually going to define this summer by whether
they like it or not). They are all either scientists gone made with some sort of
radiation/gene mutation, or they are test subjects.
So The Lizard is acceptable. If anything, at least his
dastardly plan of releasing a biotoxin in New York City is more reasonable and more
realistically terrifying than opening a multi-dimensional door (*shakes
fist at Loki*).

Finally, the color palette. Spider-man's costume is beautiful. Probably the best
super-hero movie costume of all times. It's part under-armor, part mesh,
part spandex with real rich tones of red and blue. If I can say anything about
the old, first Spider-man movie, it did not age well visually. This movie on the
other hand is has great blue-black night scenes with neons of the city.
The science labs are sparkly and sterile with florescent lights everywhere.
I find it aesthetically pleasing. (Again, much more than Avengers)

***
Well did i make you want to see this movie? I don't know what I've done.
It feels good to write it down though. If anything, compared to the other
super hero movies of the summer, this one is probably the simplest
narrative, it does not try to do too much. It could have taken more
creative liberties with the origin story, but they were obviously hesitant
about fan backfire. I can't lie, it is a silly  movie. But in all honesty,
SPIDER-MAN COMICS ARE SILLY. I say that as an honest fan
of the medium. It's about a kid who could barely figure out his
regular life and suddenly has to protect the well-being of the
entire city of New York from ridiculous plots involving absurd
pseudo science.

Alien compared to Aliens

Image via WikipediaThe xenomorphs of LV426 are an iconic, terrifying bunch. I finally watched Alien and Aliens this week and I'm inspired to write after being asked which movie I like better. To begin, James Cameron has a way of taking an idea and making it a grandiose endeavor in the movie industry. "Favorite" seems irrelavant to discuss on the internet but I am willing to consider and compare the steps these movies took to be a science fiction action/horror movie.

We'll start with the singular Alien, setting; some gritty cargo spaceship and and for one part an uninhabited planet. The mystery factor a huge thrill ride when Cane discovers the field of hibernating eggs. The most important aspect is that the alien must escape from its host in a grisly manner. As much as its terrifying now, put yourself into the time period and realize that such a gruesome "birth" was a massive surprise to the first audience members.
The rest of the film follows Ripley and the crew as they try to survive against the invader. Plain and simple; human reactions to an unnatural enemy. The lack of light and space is absolutely detrimental to a human's natural abilities and scenes in the airducts ooze of claustrophobia. The only weapon available is Prometheus' gift. In addition, the discovery that "Ash is a robot" and the corporation considers the crew expendable completely destroy any sense of trust for the universe. In the end, Ripley escapes the ship with only Jonesy, a sylvan companion who will stand stand by the protag when the rest of space turns a cold shoulder.

James Cameron's sequel does not depend as much on the sci-fi setting but rather on the human interactions. Already, being 50+ years older can wreck havoc on your perspective of the galaxy. Using the allegory that the xenomorphs represent the feral, inhuman aspect of rape, the beginning scenes represent Ripley's inability to forget the terrifying monsters of her past. In addition, with the company ignoring her initial reports, she has no where to turn and lives a isolated life in an apartment complex. Agreeing to go on the expedition is only after trusting that she can get her old career back and hold hope of an attempted normal future.
Enter the marines. Classic science fiction reminiscent of Heinlein's troopers. On the planet, after a couple of interesting technology cinematics and the first alien encounter it becomes clear that training alone will not save you. It returns to ingenuity, Ripley's best resource. This time around, she is not as alone because of the discovery of Newt and the mother-daughter bond created. As the survival aspect of being locked up in the colony increases, the interactions between the humans becomes more important. Ripley needs to trust Bishop for the escape route (I would also say he represents a religious cleric who can help Ripley deal with all the rape, on a side note). Burke realized as a greedy corporate puppet and his supposed betrayal. And that one marine, the name evades me, who keeps having a break down about the inhumanity of their enemy and the hopelessness of the situation. Of course there is Ripley's lone venture into the hive center in the end but its the middle of the movie that comes alive with character development.Image via Wikipedia

As a conclusion, both movies follow the SF interaction between humans and nonhumans. Alien follows a more precise sci-fi "if-then" statement, "if an alien was in the ship what would the humans do?" with a great deal of unknown and darkness thrown into the mix. Aliens on the other hand, seems to have better character interaction, and slowly gives Ripley strength to save Newt and destroy the cause of her suffering and dreams alluded to in the beginning. Because of these redemptive qualities, Aliens is a more humanist approach of science fiction while Alien is content with discoveries and scares.

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Best Movies from the Marathon

These three movies were my favorite from the marathon

• Alien Raiders, we saw the premiere to this "straight to DVD", low budget movie and it was great. Even with minimal computer graphics the suspense was riveting. The story took place in a super market were special agents try to snuff out the hostages who have been infested with alien eggs.
• Logan's Run, based off the book by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, Logan's Run is a dystopian escape story. The protagonists Logan and Jessica escape from their automated city and try to find the Sanctuary in the world outside. The classic, futuristic city had some really amazing models for the time and the character interaction was really clever.
• Repo Man, reportedly a cult classic, I got my first taste of this ingenious film. This was awesome, the constant subplots and background humor makes it worthy to be watched again and again. Based around a young man (the name evades my thoughts) who reluctantly joins a repossession agency and subsequently gets thrown into the world of the Repo Man. This was the jewel of the night and really had some great wry humor along with intense "city street" dialogue.