#94 Gengar by Antwan Ragland
Maybe it’s just me. But over the past few years, I’ve noticed a lot of films and big-budget releases are slipping in terms of quality. They come off as highly-funded, jumbled messes of eye-candy that really don’t make sense in terms of story. Movies start making less and less sense to sort of “wow” their audience with bells and whistles like 3D and over-enthusiastic CGI. It’s not that I have a problem with special effects, I’d just prefer they be put to better use than simply being thrown into a movie with little purpose.
Indie films have always seemed slow and pretentious, so I haven’t quite found sanctuary there. In fact, one genre that has always disgusted me with formulaic story and horrible acting is modern horror. I never thought that even for a second, I’d ever stumble across these two gems that while operating outside of the boundaries of typical ghost stories, may have arguably came out of the Paranormal Activity era of imitation.
Ghost from the Machine and The Innkeepers have restored my faith in the horror genre. What makes them substantial is their lack of “hand-cam experience” that a lot of horror and action flicks seem to be climbing on board with, especially the aforementioned Paranormal Activity series. The similarities between the two titles is simply the use of technology to carry it’s story. Not necessarily implemented in the films’ production, but more as a plot device.
Ghost from the Machine involves a machine that can essentially bring back the dead. The story that ensues involves the moral conflict and limitations of if a machine like this ever existed and could actually work. While being a bit more reminiscent of The Sixth Sense, the concept still puts the power of bringing back the dead into the our hands. As for our second feature, The Innkeepers, a soon-to-be-closed Hotel is the setting for a very small yet curious haunting that becomes provoked through the protagonists’ imagination and persistence, who seems helpless in many ways.
Horror has always been something that has thrived for previous decades based on terrifying the audience. Some of the more memorable films in horror history have made their mark based on shock value. The more disturbing the piece, the higher word-of-mouth advertisement and thus, we have a hit. But the film has to be accessible. We’ve had aliens bursting out of peoples’ chests in the 70’s, but now we’ve had to resort to sewing people together by their mouths and anuses? The visual shock is what has made horror so depraved. Luckily, it seems like a handful of up and coming directors are in the process of giving horror the intelligent, genuine filmmaking it deserves. By the use of technology as a plot device, not a shaky camera that only conveys the point that anyone could film with with a decent camcorder. I feel comfortable that in the hands of indie directors, horror will live with it’s cinematography in tact. If you haven’t seen either of these films, do so.
Six reasons why the words “video game adaptation” pale in comparison.
(Source: nope-hope, via shewhodestroys)
It’s funny how J-Rock can improve the dynamic of mostly any video. Most people won’t realize at first, that this song won’t be playing over the entire game’s duration, let alone it’s duller moments.
Donkey Colossus. An unused gallery piece.
Note about the Colossi Defeated. It should be 2 instead of 0. Will fix and update sometime soon!
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(Source: slapyourpappy)
(Click the image for the trailer)
WARNING: Most of this is speculation and shouldn’t be taken too seriously since the game won’t be releasing for quite some time (I honestly doubt it’ll make the November release date). I am by all means, subjected to be wrong and am simply making judgments based on the game’s first trailer.
Three Kings, Not Queens: First off, welcome back Leon S. Kennedy and what appear to be authentic zombie enemies that haven’t been seen since the PS1 era of RE games. I’ve also noticed a few other appearances that quickly breeze by, including Ingrid Hunnigan and Ashley Graham (the president’s daughter) of RE4 fame. Ingrid can be seen shortly after Leon and his new unknown female companion have a ruin-in with an infected president,on a computer and seemingly talking to Leon. As for Ashley, that’s moreso speculation, but more on it later.
Mixing It Up: The game seems to have stories involving three different central characters: Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and an unnamed new male character whose blood seems to be the key to stopping the infection. Each of these characters seem to have interwoven stories with oneanother, as well as significantly different styles of gameplay. Leon’s seems more exploratory and having to do more with slipping beneath the zombie-radar (much like RE4), while Chris’s seems to about gun-toting and taking down enemies with cover-fire and an actual Squad AI that appears to greatly resemble that of Gears of War’s Delta Squad. Our third lead, Mr. Unknown, doesn’t seem to use firearms at all (though he can be seen at least holding a rifle). We’re only subjected to his knife-slashing abilities to which he’s very inept and shows very close and fast-paced combat. He also seems to have a female companion, a blonde girl whose voice sounds distinctly familiar to Ashley from RE4. While it hasn’t been confirmed and with her father succumbing to the virus, I don’t think she’d be simply sitting around the white house.
How Capcom Could Fuck This Up: While I’m all about a variety pack mentality on gameplay, I can’t help but think that one would outshine another. It feels very experimental. Capcom could also implement another forced co-op instead of bringing us a great single-player experience. There doesn’t appear to be any cooperative gameplay in the trailer, but each of the aforementioned central leads does have somewhat of a companion durring their segments that could end up being our Player 2. We can only hope that if Capcom does add co-op and decides to make it local, that they don’t pointlessly invert the second player’s screen to the right like the last game.
Why History Shouldn’t Repeat Itself (How Capcom Could Fuck This Up, Part 2): Perhaps the best aspect of the new trailer is the game seems to be straying away from trying to recapture the brillaince of former Capcom game director Shinji Mikami, who left Capcom about a month after RE4 was first released. This was a landmark in RE’s gameplay, introducing a third-person perspective, a whole new virus, new enemies, Lovecraftian environments and more importantly, a much greatly emphasis on shooting. RE5 tried desperately to replicate this, especially durring the first half of the game. The similarities came off cheap and unoriginal, still using the Las Plagas-infected enemies but only changing their nationality (instead of backwoods Spanish people, let’s have crazy Africans!), not to mention an on-rail gatling gun fight with an El Gigante (whom you could have beat him wth a pistol in 4, yet a gatling gun proves challenging?) that was simply renamed Ndesu, a giant of Mid-African myth. A literal flow chart could be made of the errors involved in trying to immitate a much more critically successful game, where branching out and creating something new and enthralling in their own respects could deliver a much more substancial Resident Evil experience.
Out With the New, In With Some Tyrants: Everything about RE6 seems familiar and new in a great way which is undoubtedly exciting to me. The gameplay and story will definitely need improvement if they’re going to surpass RE5, but making my way through a city-wide infection of walking dead never gets old. Whatever route they go with, the nostalgia factor will secure a lot of buyers and every Resident Evil has been high-production and above average in my book. In fact, I still load up RE5 from time to time to watch those gorgeous cutscenes. Let’s hope this one will keep me loading up the game to actually, you know, play it.
Looks like the remake of the Evil Dead has lost an actor (actress to be precise). Actress Lily Collins was supposed to appear in the project, only to drop out due to what she claimed to be scheduling issues, which seems to be a common problem for many actors. Personally, I think it’s a load of B.S.
This reminded me of Drag Me to Hell’s development (also Sam Raimi) where Ellen Page was originally slated to appear as the film’s protagonist, only to turn the project down at the last minute due to the content of the script, which she eventually corrected to be due to a “scheduling issue.” For those that haven’t seen the film, various scenes included different things being inserted or “gushed” into a female character’s mouth. Everything from a woman’s arm, to a pair of rotting eyes, as well as an excrement of god-knows-what vomited out of a dead woman’s mouth and into Alison Lohman’s (Page’s replacement). This isn’t a first for Raimi, since the original Evil Dead even had a scene involving a tree raping a young woman.
Collins leaving Raimi’s latest production could be for a legit reason. But if you ask me, she probably just doesn’t want to get tree-raped.
