Why We Love…The Allusionist

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As anybody who has ever read any of my scripts would know: I can be a bit wordy. Some would say “super super pretentious”. My method for writing a lot of things is basically: monologues first, everything else, after. On the upside this means that it’s piss-easy to find pieces suitable for audition as can just send one of the auditions over and it’s easy for them to record on their own. On the downside it does occasionally make it seem like all my characters have suddenly appeared from a Diablo Cody film (side note: watched God Bless America yesterday and it had a brilliant line: “fuck Diablo Cody, she’s the only stripper with too much self esteem”).

The other downside is that it can occasionally provide slip-ups for actors. I’ve rejected people’s auditions based solely on a mispronunciation of a film title. And at least once per film I have to explain what a word is. My favourite was when I put the word “defenestration” in a script, actor didn’t know what it meant so in the next draft I put the complete etymology of the word in the script. See what I mean about me being pretentious?

So why am I saying all this? Simple, because of my predilection towards pretentious monologues and obscure words, I’m interested in language. I like finding out how words work and interact with each other. How changing one word can effect the whole flow of a sentence. Sadly most people don’t agree with this so the chances of there being a long running series about language on BBC2 is slim (ok, there was the Stephen Fry show but that was a while ago). As such you have to go to other sources. Enter, the world of podcasting.

The Allusionist is a podcast about language (as you can probably guess from my self-celebratory rant above). Hosted by Helen Zaltzman, (perhaps better known from the Answer Me This podcast), it’s a joyful ride through the history of words you know, the truth behind words you think you know, and the definitions of words you probably don’t. It describes itself as “small adventures in language” which is pretty accurate. Zaltzman has a genuine love for the subject and a warm wit that shines throughout, whether she’s talking about werewolves, baby talk or penis’s, she never wavers and you end up leaving each episode entertained as well as educated. Let’s face it, language can be a tricky subject to make interesting, but she makes it fascinating so you’re never bored whilst listening.  For example, my new favourite fact is that “Tory” comes from the Irish for robber/bandit. I’m sure you’ve already made a joke about that in your head. The average episode is about 13 minutes long so you get through them remarkably quickly.

So yeah, that’s that, The Allusionist is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and TuneIn. Listen, I doubt you’ll regret it. Or just go to the website and read the transcripts here: http://www.theallusionist.org/transcripts/

Where To Start:

  1. Episode 1: not only is the first episode always a good place to start, this episode is specifically about puns, so you can see why it had a special place in my heart.
  2. Episode 4: Lots of swearing, lots of laughs.

Also Listen To

  1. Answer Me This. Helens other podcast, her and Olly Mann (alongside Martin The Soundman) answer user-requested questions. A lot funnier than I’m making it sound.
  2. Skeptics With A K. The Merseyside Skeptic Society discuss everything in the world of skepticism. Very funny, very interesting, and very useful for telling people exactly why homeopathy is balls.

Why we love…The Lost Crown: a ghosthunting adventure.

On By troubledproductionsIn Why we loveLeave a comment

Let’s talk about British Video games (and by that again I mean, I talk, you read). They are out there, I know that. Most famously we all know Rockstars’ British (though I shamefully didn’t know that till I saw The Gamechangers), but I’m not just talking about Brits making video games. I’m talking about Brits making video games set in England that actually feel English, and not just another culture’s idea of us they’ve seen on the telly.

lost crown cover
Lame name, but with a cover like that it doesn’t matter.

I’m sure there’s more out there than I know, but it’s a good segue into the topic of this week’s post. A continuation on our look at all things spooky, the British Horror-adventure game, The Lost Crown: A Ghost Hunting adventure. (Yes the names lame, but apt, so bear with me)

lost souls
Seriously, it takes a bit of time to get going, but it evolves into a deliciously messed up adventure.

Written and developed by Jonathan Boakes, who has developed a number of other British point-n-click games, like the very awesome Dark Fall Series. The third installment of which I almost reviewed for this spook fest, as it  is another of my favorite, and most underrated scary games.

loast crown coast
Lost Crown is set in The Fens of East England coast, and steeped in British folklore and legend. In classic story form, you play as amateur ghost hunter Nigel, sent to track down, what else, lost treasure. But the only way to find it is to solve the mystery of the strange town of Saxton.

saxton

Now there is a lot wrong with this game, faults that would make most rightminded gamers run to the hills, faults I will get to. But I’ve already gone on record saying I’ll put up with the worst if the story grips me, and man oh fucking man, that’s where this game digs deep.
Solve the mystery, put some ghosts to rest, and find the treasure. It sounds simple enough, but with a backdrop filled with British history, and influenced by classic ghost stories like, M.R James A Warning to the Curious, Lost Crowns plot has the mentality of a Zelda fetch quest.

last crown investgation
It even a hefty amount of procedural work as you piece together all the mysteries, Zodiac style.

lost crown king

To solve one mystery you have to solve one or two others, just to get the context to solve a bigger one that’s really just part of an even larger one. Every location you explore has a dark past to uncover, from the station, the forest, the caves, the church, and even the home you rent. The game truly captures a sense of history, by not just being a long story for you to stumble plot point to plot point, but by subtly laying a dozen stories set over centuries; all connected through your investigation. Stories ranging from pirates, to smugglers, to WW1 bombers, to religious cults, suicidal couples, and crazed kings.

lost crwon jamima
Like a store clerk who only speaks through a rag doll.

It’s this understanding of place, and depth of history that like fictional towns Silent Hill and Bright Falls before and after it makes Saxton feel real. Another part of that are the characters, beyond the prissy everyman you play as, the inhabitants of Saxton are an…eclectic bunch of people. To use the well warn example, it’s a bit Twin Peaksy in how normal yet off everyone feels, like they’re from another time. And there more than window dressing, as you actually get to know them pretty well; who they are and their pasts tend to tie in to at least one mystery and ghost around town.
So yeah the story’s tight. The ends a bit obtuse, but far from ruins it.

But on to the other stuff. The technical stuff.

TheLastCrown plane

To get the positives out the way, the graphics are good, not great for 2008, but good. Done in stylish black and white with splashes of colour, it does its job and creates the perfect atmosphere for a ghost story, rendering the English countryside beautifully. I didn’t find it a very scary game, more just creepy; but it has its moments and excels at building unease with minimal action. Having a, hear don’t show approach, with subtly unnerving visuals. The direction is also topnotch, with the use of fixed camera positions to make some truly gothic and unnerving angles. So even when it doesn’t look good, it looks good.

lost crown angel

The gameplay is also your typical point n click fair; click the screen and the character will wonder over, biggest fault there is the speed Nigel moves at. Slow and steady doesn’t win shit.
The puzzles are mostly a lot of fun too, based around using actual ghost hunting gadgets, your EVP meters, night cams and whatnot, to unearth phantom clues. So any fans of Ghost Hunting shows will be at home here.

lost crown cctv

But the rest of the production is… shaky….no, a better word is hilarious- unintentionally so. The dialogue works when it needs to but is largely stilted, especially when married to some bizarre voice acting. The supporting cast come across okay, but our hero Nigel is the odd mix of wooden yet over the top, which leads to plenty of unintentionally funny moments. You will never want to hear the phrase “Nothing ventured” again.

dumb ghosts

And for some fucking dumb reason, this puzzle based game also features a very out of place rail shooter section, with some of the worst 2D ghosts you’ll ever see in a 3D game. It comes out of nowhere and is over just as quick, no other part of the game is like it. It’s the worst kind of bad, sudden and random.

lost crown

Then theres the FMVs, oh the FMVs. At certain points, mainly near the end, FMVs are used to show flashbacks, and they look terrible. This isn’t Ripper or Phantasmagoria level video either, it’s straight up film student looking, and again, out of nowhere and pretty pointless. Most of what they show, like a person being killed, could just be covered in dialogue or by investigating the crime scene…which you do.There was no need for a jarring psychic full-motion-video vision of their demise. It’s the only moment in the game that made me want to stop playing, and I would have if I wasn’t so invested in finding out what’s up with this town. Lucky theres only a handful in the whole game.

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Now I haven’t played it in a few years, so I’m sure there’s even more odd stuff I’m forgetting. But with all that said I still recommend this game highly. If you like a spooky ghost story, and defiantly if you have a taste for old style point n clicks.

TheLostCrown ghost

I need to play it again before I can name it one of my favorite games guilt free, but I’ve always had affection for ugly ducklings, for the odd and the strange. And a game that is simultaneously amazing in one aspect and so bad its funny in another is just my style.

Why We Love….London Calling

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22nd December 2002 is possibly the most important day in my life from a music listening perspective. The day Joe Strummer died. Some of you may be aware that The Clash are one of my favourite bands, and I’m not alone in that respect, they were widely called The Only Band That Mattered and they’re good enough that that name doesn’t seem like hyperbole. Which makes me feel even more guilty about what I’m about to say, I didn’t know who The Clash were when Strummer died, in fact his death was what made me a fan of the band. Not in a hipster-ish “I only bands who were underground so I wait for members to die” kind of way, don’t worry. I was sitting at home one day flipping through the music channels when he died, I know this as London Calling played on Q (I think), and it was labeled “London Calling – The Clash. Joe Strummer R.I.P”. For some reason it was the first time I had paid much attention to that song, and something clicked in my head about how good it is. Then I went through to another channel and they played Should I Stay Or Should I Go? I was amazed. How can one band perform two songs that sounded so different? Then the triangle of triumph was complete when a channel played Rock The Casbah. It was at that point I knew I needed to find out more about this band, so, Boxing Day, 2002 I went to The Shop Formally Known As Sounds Perfect and brought what would turn out to be one of my favourite albums of all time: London Calling. To those of you who haven’t listened to this album: you’re less of a person and you should fix that immediately. Since then I’ve heard the other albums they’ve made, and whilst they’re all good, they’re no London Calling. I think part of that is because of the experimentation shown on this album. Very few albums have as many different genres on show here: almost every song sounds different from the next, with some punk, some ska, some lounge, some R&B, some reggae, some jazz etc. In terms of styles the album is just a hodgepodge of different styles and clashes that combine to form something truly wonderful, in much the same way as London (specifically, Camden). This album is, still today, the sound of London in much the same way that It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back is the sound of New York. It’s not just the music, it’s also the lyrics. The album is not just good (in my opinion, whilst Sum41 may have named their album as such, this album is the true All Killer, No Filler album), lyrically this album is a masterpiece, covering the issues that needed to be covered right now. From unemployment through to racial conflict, drug use and the responsibilities of adulthood. Guns Of Brixton (a.k.a: the song that launched a thousand basslines, seriously, this has to be the most punk song which you could use as the backdrop for a hip hop song) has one of the intense opening lines of a song:

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

The fact that such brutal lyrics were laid against one of the best bass backdrops in music history opened the casual listeners minds up to the situation. The trouble with a lot of punk music is it’s preaching to the already converted. If the Sex Pistols were singing to people who were punks, it was The Clash that turned these people punk in the first place. The Clash are like Bob Dylan in that they have influenced outside of their genre. The best way to gauge a bands influence is via tribute albums. Yes, The Ramones tribute album does seem to have a wide variety of bands (Metallica, RHCP, Rob Zombie etc) the only true completely strange one to see is U2. The Clash, however, on Burning London have not only the expected ones (No Doubt, Rancid, Mighty Mighty Bosstones) they also have some you’d never have expected (Ice Cube, Moby). If a band can lay claim to have influenced bands as diverse as that, they must truly be something special.

Now onto my favourite part of this album, how it was released. Now, the band had had trouble with their record label prior to this. CBS had refused to release the bands debut album in the US, released singles the band didn’t want, and asked them to clean up their sound. The issues for this album came from the band wanting to release a double album, the record label refused because they were assholes. They did, however, allow them to release a free single with the album. So the band put a free single with the album, it was just a single that contained a lot of B-sides, in fact, almost an entire albums worth of B-sides. Since the deal was that the single would be free with the album, this meant that the (now) double album would be released at the same price as a normal album. The band won as they got to release the album as it was intended, the fans won as they didn’t have to pay more, and the record company lost, which is exactly how it should be.

So yeah, that’s why I love this band, and why this album is one of the most important pieces of music I’ve ever heard. And why it makes me feel even worse that it took the death of the singer to realise how amazingly talented this band is. People can keep their 1959 plane crash, for me, 22nd December 2002 is the real day the music died, and the day it was reborn, out of the fire like a phoenix, into my head, and into my heart.

Like if you enjoy

  • Rancid
  • Green Day
  • Arctic Monkeys
  • Rage Against The Machine

After this, check out

  • Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years Of Amnesty International. A 4 disc tribute album to Bob Dylan, only one song is featured more than once, and every song was recorded specifically for the album. Dylan is one of the select few artists you could do this with, especially with the amount of talent on show: This is the only album where MCR, The Gaslight Anthem, Rise Against and Bad Religion sit alongside Mick Hucknall, Miley Cyrus, Bryan Ferry, Natasha Bedingfield, Sting and Adele.
  • Heartattack. I knew I had to put a modern punk compilation on here. Was going to put one of the Punk-O-Rama albums on here but then realised I listen to the songs from here a lot more. Featuring a bonus disc of new songs to celebrate Burning Heart records, this album features some truly fantastic songs.

A Nightmare A Day: Day 9 (A Nightmare On Elm Street: 2010)

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Director: Samuel Beyer

Budget: $35million

US Box Office: $115.6million

  • Ok, it’s the end of the road, I’ve got my DVD, I’ve got my laptop to type on, I’ve got my cous cous. Let’s do this!
  • Sudden thought: what if it’s worse than Freddy Vs. Jason?
  • OMG what if it’s worse than Final Nightmare?
  • Creepy opening credits, already feeling unsettled. The cast names appear on screen as normal, then appear written in the background in chalk in children’s handwriting.
  • Okay the first person we see is male. Kind of strange as I liked that Nightmare was female focused and yet never really made them seem like victims. Was a nice change. But still, I suppose 2015 isn’t as progressive as the 1980’s.
  • Or I’m wrong and I can just quit whining. Yeah, let’s go with that.
  • “i look like I haven’t slept in three days?” To be fair, to prepare for his scene, the actor didn’t sleep for three days to look suitably exhausted. Impressive, yes, but you know what’s more impressive? Acting.
  • First look at Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy. Looks more like an actual burn victim. Impressive.
  • This girl falls asleep at a funeral and is scared by Freddy-based images. Yeah, it’s scary, but you know what else is scary? Being very rude and sleeping at a friends funeral. Pfft, young people today, no respect, no manners.
  • “Oh my god, a picture of me when I was young with this person, but I don’t remember knowing him until high school”. You were just standing somewhere in the vicinity of him, doesn’t exactly prove you were best buds, you could have been photobombing him.
  • “open your books to page 84”, LOL, as if these people can read.
  • Kris falls asleep in class and there’s a pretty cool visual where the colour of the scene changes and her classmates disappear. Very cool looking. That alone makes it better than Final Nightmare.
  • Big scare for the character there is that her hair fell out. It might not mean Freddy is real, you might just have alopecia.
  • “are you gonna let me in?” Yeah, because who wouldn’t let someone into their room who climbs up to their bedroom window?
  • Next time she’s asleep she dreams of a school, lots of schoolchildren being all creepy and whatnot.
  • Oh, she’s dead. She’s definitely going to die. She’s being thrown around the room (possible homage to the first film) then cuts appear in her chest and she falls back onto the bed. I like this, there was blood, but not too much. The trouble with a lot of horror films is they think “blood” equals “scary”, so the more blood the scarier the death, so a single cut automatically gushes blood, I prefer it when it seems to almost ooze out.
  • Oh, Rooney Mara is Nancy. I dunno, I like Rooney, but she’s not quite in same league as Heather CougerMellacampaLampaKappaDappalIie (I can’t remember her actual second name)
  • Guy appears in someone elses house, covered in blood, and seems surprised when he’s accused of murder.
  • Random question: when a murderer comes in covered in blood, who pays to clean it? Is it the prison/taxpayer? Don’t let The Daily Mail find this out, they’ll have a fit.
  • “Why are you screaming? I haven’t even cut you yet” That’s a damn good line.
  • Random fact: Jackie Earle Haley was asked how he got into character for this film. His response: “sitting in a make-up chair for hours. After that you fell like you could kill someone”.
  • Ok, so this guy just died.
  • “Did you know that once the heart stops beating the brain can keep functioning for seven minutes? we’ve got six more minutes to play”. Holy hell that’s good writing. The idea that even dying doesn’t stop Freddy torturing you, you’re just left being made to fight an unwinnable fight with a time limit. Just the concept of that is truly terrifying.
  • “I keep dreaming about children”, careful now
  • Freddy just licked Nancy’s face, then holds her hand and says “you smell different”. Because that’s not disturbing.
  • “he died in his sleep” yeah, of blood loss, that’s not normal.
  • The guy from (I think) Jennifer’s Body dreams (during a swim lesson, totally safe) and see the death of Freddy. He’s being chased and hunted by angry parents as he shouts he didn’t do it. Now, Jackie Earle Haley seems to be playing it as an innocent person. What if he is?
  • “what’s the right way? Our kids go on a stand and tell a room of people what happened?” Yeah, I mean, a fair trial, where’s the justice in that?
  • What if he was innocent? Adds a completely different spin to the story. Freddy is no longer a perverted serial killer, he’s just really pissed off, and who can blame him. He’s angry at the parents for killing him, and he’s angry at the kids (who he’s now killing) for lying to their parents and causing his death. Means the line “you think you can turn back time? You think you can bring the dead back to life? I didn’t fucking think so” has a LOT more to it. It would also explain why keeps bringing them to the pre-school. He’s not taunting them, he’s trying to get them to face their own bullshits.
  • “We were five, we would have said anything. The things we said he did, the cave, did you ever find it?” They didn’t. Now the film itself is raising the possibility itself. Oh, this is good. This is very very good. Please don’t fuck this up.
  • Apparently Jackie Earle Haley would improvise a lot on set, just to make the other actors panic. That’s actually pretty brilliant and method. As long as he didn’t stab someone during filming, that would be weird.
  • Random fact: Jackie Earle Haley stabbed someone during filming. Ok it was an accident and only a small one but still.
  • Okay, I’ve just figured out this kid is called Quentin. Please Freddy, please kill him, to teach his parents a lesson about suitable childrens names.
  • “what if I say no?” “why don’t you sleep in it?” Dude, in this type of context that’s super rapey
  • Oh, it turns out the kids were telling the truth, Freddy was abusing them. Kind of disappointed, they had a chance to do something chilling then pulled out at the last moment. Probably to stop whiney fans bitching about the changes. Oh, and if you’re sitting there thinking “but fans of films won’t complain about stupid things that don’t effect the previous films, fans are smart”, then remake a franchise and make a character black, then wait for the online reaction from “fans”.
  • Kind of a dull death for Quentin. Shame as had some cool set pieces which would have really suited a death. The swimming pool scene, for example, if you’re a writer and can’t think of a good-looking way to kill someone in that environment you should just give up now.
  • Oh, Quentin didn’t die, just nearly died. He manages to stab Nancy with adrenaline, Pulp Fiction style to wake her up, she holds onto Freddy and drags him into the real world. I get the feeling this isn’t going to end with Nancy just shouting at Freddy.
  • Holy crap that’s a great ending! Nancy goes home and is thought to be safe, but Freddy appears behind her mother in the mirror, sticks his claws through her mothers eyes then pulls her into the mirror, the mirror sealing up behind her. Amazing end to the film, brutal, and looked brilliant. But the best part of it? It cuts very quickly to the credits, and the song All I Have To Do Is Dream

So, that’s it. It’s over. All I have to say about this film is: f*ck you I liked it. Haley is a fantastic Freddy, like a yapping tenacious dog. The story makes sense, had good inventive set pieces etc. Of course I’m majorly disappointed that for a moment they briefly teased a much better film, but it’s still pretty impressive.

Guest Review by Conor Amos: Silent Hill 2

On By troubledproductionsIn Guest Post, Why we loveLeave a comment

For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by horror and all its isolating and macabre brilliance. Slasher flicks and psychological thrillers from the `70s and `80s were the earliest iterations of horror that I was subjected to. From Stanley Kubrick’s disorientating and beautifully crafted The Shining to John Carpenter’s dark, suspenseful Halloween. 

Halloween

Along came the Playstation: a beast of a console that would quickly revolutionise 3D gaming as we knew it. My only gaming experiences up ‘till that point were playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Mega Drive or Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

SONY DSC

Suffice to say, I was used to playing video games that were fairly innocuous collect-’em-ups with bright colours and somewhat childish imagery (I still love those games, so don’t misconstrue what I say) and so when my older brother eventually bought Resident Evil about three years after it was released, I was naturally as aroused as an eight year-old can possibly be at the prospect of playing a horror game.

thedogs-resident-evil1

I don’t need to say much about Resident Evil, since you’ve doubtless played it already or at least caught glimpses of the clunky, polygonal exercise in macabre from behind a tightly gripped pillow. However, I will say that it opened up a whole new world of gaming for me. Its gritty visuals, haunting soundtrack and claustrophobic locales and camera angles shook me up something fierce; giving me nightmares for weeks afterwards, yet a thirst for more.

TSuHwmW

Now that I’ve given you a somewhat verbose and unnecessarily lengthy introduction to my love for horror, I’ll get to the meat of this piece:Silent Hill.

Silent Hill was released in 1999 by Konami; the same year I had first ever played Resident Evil and this was what is considered by many a momentous occasion for survival horror gaming in general. Although Resident Evil and its sequels were chilling in their own way, they also became more Westernised and formulaic as far as horror and storytelling is concerned. Silent Hill was an entirely different game and Team Silent had the ball in their court (for want of a less flimsy sport analogy).

tennis

At first glance, it’s ostensibly a story about a guy looking for his lost daughter in a town inhabited by supernatural ghoulies looking to nibble on his testicles, but it is so much more beneath the surface. The town of Silent Hill is essentially a playground for a cavalcade of intense psychological distress and torture for its unfortunate visitors. The idea that the town itself is the protagonist’s and indeed, player’s worst enemy, gripped me instantly.

silent hill town

Silent Hill’s story, upon further inspection seems to be more of a benchmark for Konami’s future investment in the series and is greatly dwarfed by its sequels. It features some interesting imagery, is absolutely terrifying and deals with some very adult themes, but falls flat in many areas – with the introduction of a Satanic cult and attempting to give some semblance of meaning to the town’s ambiguity. However, it did the job in suppressing my appetite for terror as a child and I hoped for more.

DahliaBalkanChurch
Apparently she’s only 45….Silent Hill cult, not once.

Of course, there were more games, but I didn’t play Silent Hill 2 for many years after it came out. Regrettably, I must say, as it was the one game that changed my entire perspective on video games as a creative medium and their artistic merit within our culture. As a phenomenon perpetuated by a society obsessed with stimulation and expressing ideas, video games are the perfect medium for such, since they are interactive and invest the player’s time and emotions into the story, subtext and characters presented to us.

ARTAlso, I wasn’t intellectually mature enough to understand what the whole thing was about. What the symbolism truly represented and how the choices made by the developers were unanimously integral to creating a world and a story so tragic, so frightening and so human that even the most jaded of pricks would be moved by it.
The enemies in Silent Hill 2 were created with a thematic purpose; an underlying motive behind their behaviours and superficial characteristics. As humans, we fear greatly what is alien to us. Inadvertently: what is considered alien to us, in fact reflects our subconscious in subtle ways. Disfigurements and warped, exaggerated human forms are what Silent Hill 2’s creatures essentially are. They encapsulate an intrinsically human blend of the tangible and intangible, with microscopic attention to detail in its cerebral imagery.

Silent-Hill-2-Monsters

The creatures are psychological representations of protagonist James’ subconscious. From the faceless nurses with their tumescent breasts and exaggerated curvy forms that represent James’ sexual repression and how he would have viewed the nurses during his wife’s hospitalisation, to the well-known Pyramid Head creature that slightly resembles an executioner and how he sexually tortures other monsters when he’s not toying with James.

Despite the horrific nature of the town’s ‘inhabitants’, it is ultimately the town itself that feels like the real enemy. There is an overwhelming sense of isolation throughout and each disorienting locale feels like a cleverly-designed maze built by Silent Hill to tap into James’ repressed, damning psyche.

charcters

James encounters four equally important characters on his journey. There’s Angela: an ostensibly young, socially awkward girl who always looks uncomfortable around James; Eddie: an overweight twenty-something with a lazy eye and repugnant characteristics (the first time you see him, he is vomiting violently into a toilet and rambling about how he shot a dog); Laura: a temperamental, bratty child that has no qualms about vilifying James and his actions, and finally: Maria.

maria

Maria is quite possibly the most important character in the game and certainly the most ambiguous. She resembles James’ late wife Mary, who has been dead for three years. He received a letter from Mary claiming that she’s waiting for him in their ‘special place’ in Silent Hill. His grief is what brings him to Silent Hill, despite the idea of receiving a letter from a dead person being totally preposterous (it’s crazy what love can do). Maria is the exact polygonal structure of Mary and is played by the same voice and motion-capture actress. She’s more sexually alluring and is often quite condescending to James, but can sometimes be sweet and in those moments resembles Mary even more. Her presence is the driving force of the plot and she practically strips James down to his core; revealing his idiosyncrasies, his motivations and the conflicting emotions that plague his mind (so elegantly portrayed by the game’s horrific imagery and symbolism).

No game is without a polished sound design and Silent Hill 2 is an example of perfection (no hyperbole here). Akira Yamaoka (the series’ ex-composer) understood the importance of melody, nuance and indeed, silence when painting a picture of horror. His blend of industrial percussion and reverb-drenched blues guitar is ingenious and evocative. From nothing but the echoes of footfall down a dark, narrow corridor in the apartments, to the swing drums and twangy guitar melody in the bowling alley – it all creates a feeling of disconnection between the reality of the town and what James is actually going through.

imgsilent hill 21

The environments and the music evoke a sense of time and place: namely nineteen fifties America soaked in horrific dissonance antithetical to that supposed utopia. It was presumably a tranquil and beautiful town decades earlier and we get to taste that in the soundtrack and the simplistic, modest architecture that the town is rife with.

DEAD

Unfortunately, the series’ popularity unceremoniously dissolved with the split of Team Silent and given Konami’s bullshit business practices of late, the future looks grim for Silent Hill. However, Silent Hill 2 will go down in history as one of the greatest examples of horror storytelling in video games and entertainment in general. It is and always will be my go-to game for intense psychological terror and an immensely tragic love story.

boat

This is only scratching the surface of what Silent Hill 2 really means to people: it has a huge cult following and the fans can talk about the game for hours on end; weaving a web of archives and discussion forums that keep this ship afloat.

It’s an obsession, and one I can definitely identify with.

Written by Conor Amos
Pictures by Mark Tonkin

A Nightmare A Day: Day 8 (Freddy Vs. Jason)

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Director: Ronny Yu (Bride Of Chucky, Bride With White Hair, The 51st State

Budget: $30million

US Box Office: $114.9million

  • Unskippable adverts on the DVD. This company REALLY wants me to hate their films don’t they?
  • I now refuse to watch Underworld on principle. On the principle that it looks awful.
  • As does Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the Michael Bay version, which is odd as I didn’t think chainsaws could explode)
  • Random fact: at one point Peter Jackson was on board to direct this. Nothing against Ronny Yu but that’s the second time a studio has turned down a chance to let Peter Jackson do a Nightmare On Elm Street film. Idiots.
  • Should point out: I won’t be counting the deaths in this one for two reasons
    1. There’s too many
    2. Not all of them are Freddy’s so would be wrong to compare body counts
  • Opening scenes show Freddy pre-death.
  • In a really disturbing scene, Freddy kills a small girl, then licks a photo of her.
  • Freddy origin story. I usually abhor this kind of thing, but it makes sense here as it was a while since the last Freddy film, and plus the Friday The 13th crowd might not know much.
  • Really good shot of Freddy’s eyes.
  • Yay, flashbacks to the earlier films. First death shown: the human puppet death. Evidently it’s not just my favourite one.
  • Also explains why there haven’t been any new films in a while.
  • “being dead is okay, but being forgotten, now that’s a bitch” Oddly poignant line there.
  • Montage of Freddy being bitch slapped by everyone.
  • Boobs! *sigh* Not needed. Could have been achieved through just shooting from the neck up and leaving it to imagination.
  • She puts a jacket on, but evidently the power of fanservice means one of the breasts attempts to escape and just hangs there outside her jacket as she runs. So disappointing. Horror films do know there’s a difference between “scared stiff” and “scared whilst stiff” right?
  • “you know what your gift is? No matter what they do to you, you cannot die” erm thanks, I got you a gift voucher, I feel our gifts are slightly uneven.
  • “make them remember what fear tastes like!” Chocolate covered gherkins?
  • Main character is called Lori, and her boyfriend disappeared, I bet that won’t come up later.
  • Hey it’s the member of Destiny’s Child who isn’t Beyonce or the other one.
  • “i only smoke when i drink” “but you always drink” “well that’s what I’ll work on next” Will admit, that made me chuckle.
  • “don’t be a total cocksmith” is that like a blacksmith, but with penis’s?
  • “i like the flow of your place, got good feng shui”, I hope this guy dies, slowly and painfully.
  • “babe, don’t make me ask you twice” All of you just die.
  • FFS more pointless boobs. This one’s even more annoying as the actress had a no-nudity clause in her contract so they had to hire a body double. See, the fact that no-nudity clauses exist are why their needs to be a greater representation of female film-makers. And the fact that directors pressure women into breaking that clause is why there these women need crossbows .
  • Hey, the guy died. Good.
  • So just saying “freddy” is enough to somehow make people who aren’t aware of Freddy Krueger scared of him. It could have been any Freddy: Mercury, Adu etc. That would be a much weirder film, people being haunted and killed by an American soccer player.
  • Lori dreams of walking past a set of posters of missing children, who turn to face her as she walks past. Proper video-game style scare. On that note: I was going to blog about Eternal Darkness today, and why that film is fantastic. I won’t now though as we’ll be having a special blog written by a guest contributor that will be very cool and we hope you enjoy. Oh, also in the dream there’s a girl with gouged out eyeballs who tells her more about Freddy and his love for little girls. I love gouged out eyes in horror, such a visceral image.
  • And now the feng shui guy is dead (I think, all white frat boys look the same to me). Hacked by a machete after waking up and seeing his dad’s head fall off. I hate when that happens.
  • Hey, there’s a mental institution with a guy in it with same name as Lori’s ex who disappeared randomly. What a crazy coincidence.
  • Hey, it’s young not-John Cusack (no, not Miles Teller, the other one).
  • “you had to sleep at a police station, I’d have had nightmares too” of course you would, you’re black, you’d get knocked the f*ck out.
  • Hey, the institution guy is her ex. Who saw that happening?
  • And luckily the guy not-Beyonce tried to hook her up with is now dead, so no moral questions of whether they’re still in a relationship or not. Lucky!
  • Oh, side note: Lori’s ex is called Will and is played by John Ritter’s son. So close to awesome.
  • “this fucker’s going to spread like the plague, kid’s are going to be falling asleep” Fairly certain that’s normal.
  • Jason appears at a rave and doesn’t dance. If this were CinemaSins they’d be a ding right there. Of course, if this was CinemaSins we’d have a bigger audience so….
  • He grabs a weird metal pipe, kind of like I do when I play Condemned. If he spends the next hour picking up dead birds this film is gonna suuuuuuuck.
  • Not John Cusack delivers a “Reason You Suck” speech to not-Beyonce. She deserved it.
  • “let’s go shake our ass on the dance floor”, says the only black character, yay stereotypes.
  • A raver basically rapes one of the characters. Some people would disagree but for me, she’s passed out, he tries to fuck her, that’s rape.
  • He dies. Good.
  • So does she, not so good. But she was kind of annoying, that’s bad too.
  • Jason steals Freddy’s kills. Come-on man, don’t be a shock-blocker (lame I know, but not many synonyms for kill rhyme with block, if he killed him with a kitchen appliance I could have said wok-block).
  • That reminds me: if a serial killer kills another serial killer does it work like conkers so he gains all his kills?
  • Jason appears in a cornfield and is heckled by two stoners. Because obviously if you see a serial killer (and in this universe Jason is real so you’d have to assume they know him) carrying a machete, you mock him.
  • Jason kills someone with a neck massage. Then goes to kill the fat stoner who attempts to run away.
  • Fat guy dies, this is why cardio is important, kids.
  • The guy spits blood at the screen when he dies. Fantastic shot.
  • Random fact: there was originally going to be a scene which showed that Freddy had raped Jason’s mother, thereby giving Jason motivation to go after Freddy. This was then changed to Freddy molesting Jason when he was a kid. This was then dropped for being “too dark”. I’d have dropped it for being kinda stupid and contrived, “too dark” is a stupid reason considering the amount of deaths in this.
  • Hey, it’s Titus’s brother. In a photo, and yet is one of the only actors I recognise in this film without having to look them up.
  • Freddy sets someone on fire, telepathically, then throws them across the room and writes a message in his back using burn marks. Personally, when I want to get a message across, I use e-mail, but I suppose he’s stuck in his ways.
  • A stoner, who’s totally not based on Jason Mewes
  • “freddy died by fire, jason by water, how can we use that?” I dunno, find someone died from air?
  • “not a virgin, even if you pay for it it still counts”
  • I think I’ve figured out the problems with these films. Too many dream fake outs. Moments where you think it’s reality but it turns out to be a dream. It pulls that trick far far too often.
  • Crushed to death by door. There must be a joke there but I’m simply not seeing it.
  • Not-jay follows a bong-smoking giant worm.
  • Jason accidentally sticks his machete in a computer console, electrocuting himself and a cop who’s name I can’t remember but he looks like he’s called “Jesse”.
  • Side note: how often do you think Jason has to sharpen his machete? Just a random deleted scene where we saw him hunched over a knife sharpner. And what does he do if it breaks? Can’t imagine there’s many places that would fix it. “Oh that, it’s just cranberry sauce, I was chopping up cranberries, why didn’t I use a normal knife? Erm, *hacks to death*”
  • Stoner gets hacked to death at the waist in a scene reminiscent of using the bastard sword from ED.
  • Jason chops of Freddy’s arms, I would make an “don’t worry about him, he’s ‘armless” joke but Freddy’s arms grow back and he makes the “wanker” hand gesture. And my room for jokes is “never be less funny than the thing you’re making jokes about”. That’s why I don’t make jokes about [insert public figure that you, dear reader, do not personally like]
  • Change of colour scheme there from red to green. Is weird as always associated red with Freddy, so it’s odd that the power struggle shift where Jason becomes weak is signified by the colour no longer being red. I’d have thought it would be the other way around.
  • I haven’t seen any Friday the 13th films so I may be wrong: but Jason isn’t afraid of water is he? So why is he here? The villain in the first film wasn’t Jason, he didn’t appear until the very end where he came out the water and killed someone. So if he was scared of water his first appearance wouldn’t work. Freddy works in dreams and has infinite powers there, you didn’t need to give Jason a weakness to make it an even fight.
  • Finally, over an hour in and we get the Jason origin story. Basically, he was bald and kids bullied him, put a bag over his head and throw in the river. Kids are awful people. Surely that goes beyond a prank is more, erm, what’s the word, homicide?
  • “what do you want me to, give him mouth to mouth?” dude, it’s not gay if it saves a life.
  • “Kia, he has asthma!” Worst dramatic line ever.
  • Beautifully lit scene where Freddy jumps out the water. One downside is the lighting makes him look like Darth Maul, or that weird thing from Insidious.
  • “always had a thing for the whores in this house” Dude, I know you’re a psychopathic child killer/rapist, but is there any need the misogyny? Freddy’s not a gentleman, he has a hat yet he never doths it.
  • Freddy says “bitch” far too often. It’s making me uncomfortable.
  • Generic rock music, track 4.
  • “it’s just a scratch” says a dying person. Sadly, not a monty python reference
  • Slow pan down to blood pouring from him to make it clear he’s dead, as if we didn’t know already.
  • Again with the calling women bitch?
  • “how sweet, dark meat” That’s racist!
  • “what kind of faggot runs around in a christmas sweater?” Kelly Rowland there being massively homophobic. Important note: it’s not the script being homophobic, she improvised that, it’s all on her. The writers detested it, because they’re halfway decent people. I bet if the writers were in Destiny’s Child then Beyonce wouldn’t have left. Basically what I’m saying is, Kelly Rowland is directly responsible for me having to google Beyonce songs to try to think of a joke to end this bit on, thereby making my google search history that little bit more embarrassing, and I couldn’t even think of one. F*ck you Kelly Rowland.
  • Kelly Roland gets hit with a machete and somehow defies the laws of physics by not being cut, but by flying into a tree. If she survives I’m going to kill her.
  • Several close ups as something heavy hits a wall. Not so much “chekovs gun” as “check out this really obvious thing that’s going to happen”.
  • Freddy has lost his hat, now he looks more like a pizza than ever.
  • Lori there carrying flames like the olympic torch. Oddly apt considering how many deaths and evictions the olympics have caused.
  • Stuff happens, massive fight scene that goes on far too long and doesn’t feature any creative set pieces.
  • Jason comes out the water carrying Freddy’s head. I guess that’s that settled then.
  • Oh wait, Freddy winks at the audience. He’s still alive. I guess this whole endeavour was as pointless as the anatomy of a Ken doll.

Overall: not bad, but really weird when compared to the rest. From the increased death count, the language and the nudity, the whole thing makes it seem like it’s aimed at teenage males to go “wooo” at. It tries so hard to be mature that it ends up coming off as downright childish. It is very well directed though, has some truly beautiful shots, it’s just a shame the script is lacking.

The issue with these “vs” films is you can’t end them. You can’t show one defeating the other fully as it says the other franchise is weaker, so kills it right there. So you have to go with the fake out ending like they do here. It might have worked better as a video game, where you control one of the two and need to outlast/outkill the other. They’re DLC in Mortal Kombat, so we’ve got that I suppose

A Nightmare A Day: Day 7 (Wes Craven’s New Nightmare)

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Director: Wes Craven (Scream, and of course all of the sequels, Music Of The Heart (seriously)

Budget: $8million

US Box Office: $19.7million

  • So this is it. Super excited for this. If I remember correctly this is one of the most meta horror films until Scream practically made it essential.
  • Starts on a movie set. Always fun.
  • Heather Langenkamp is back, she was Nancy in the first and third films. Side note, her and her husband now have a special effects/Make-up business and have worked on Cabin In The Woods, Dawn Of The Dead and Angels and Demons. And here she is, having her on-screen husband show her on screen son special effects and make-up.
  • “it must have been picked up by an AD’s walkie talkie”. If that’s the case then you really need to work on your safety precautions.
  • Possible two deaths here, but not counting them as we’re not sure if they actually die. We see some of the effects from the nightmare, but not on the two supposed dead, so I’m not counting it. Basically: the previous scene was a dream, the claw came to life and killed two tech guys. Tech guys always die on set, we had four set guys crushed to death by a giant clock during Projector. But how else were we supposed to get a clear shot of a clock? Do a close up? Pfft, amateur hour.
  • “you were probably half awake and saw I got my finger cut, dreams are like that”.  He’s true, dreams are strange.
  • Someone phones her home phone and quote Freddy at her. Come on, man, if you’re going to be an abusive dickweasel and abuse people over the phone at least be original.
  • “you played that girl in that movie with the guy with the pfft” wow, it’s like you’ve known her all your life.
  • “I’m hardly a star” Come on, you’re in the back of a limo, you’re clearly either a star or 10 teenage girls.
  • “that movie’s the best, when all that blood comes out of your boyfriends bed” Creepy limo driver is creepy.
  • “we’re approaching the 10th anniversary of the original nightmare on elm street, five very popular sequels” yeah but only four of those sequels were any good.
  • “is there going to be another sequel?” How would she know she was just the actress, you know she didn’t write any of that shit right?
  • “would you trust your co-worker with your son?” What the f*ck is this dude implying? He does know there’s a difference between reality and fiction right? That’s like saying you wouldn’t trust Anthony Hopkins to make you dinner.
  • Ewww, he just touched her legs.
  • It’s odd seeing the hero worship of Freddy, I don’t just mean in this film, I mean in real life. There were actually children’s halloween costumes of Freddy. I mean, really think about that. There were children dressing up as a child molester. That would be like forcing immigrants to wear a UKIP badge (whereas we all know UKIP would much prefer if they wore yellow stars. Yeah, that’s right mother f*ckers, I’m making a holocaust reference)
  • Really cool shot of Robert Englund as Freddy standing in front of spotlights, the lights making his claws look like they stretch out into the infinite abyss. Seriously cool shot that I would love to emulate one day.
  • “just because it’s a love story doesn’t mean you can’t have a decapitation or two”. Considering our first film was a love story set during a school shooting, we wholeheartedly agree with that motto.
  • Oh, those deaths did happen. Time of first and second deaths: 5 minutes I guess? No video available online though.
  • Heather seems really confused by the concept of someone wanting to talk to her.
  • The kid was scared shitless today, and now you’re reading him Hansel and Gretel.
  • Oh, she’s aware of this, but the kid likes the story. Thereby backing up my theory that kids are stupid.
  • “And then their father covered them with kisses and they were safe” I dunno, didn’t Freddy used to do that to people too? (minus the safe part)
  • The kid is guarded by a dinosaur. Well done, kid, guarded by a species known for being dead. Smart move. Kids are stupid.
  • Time of third death: 30 minutes. Heather’s husband falls asleep whilst driving and Freddy kills him. Little sympathy for this death, he fell asleep whilst driving, he deserves to die, I’m just grateful he didn’t kill anyone else. The death isn’t available online.
  • Heather falls asleep at the funeral. I swear, half the near deaths in these films wouldn’t occur if people had some god damn common courtesy.
  • Heather gets scared when her son Dylan climbs something very high in a park and falls off whilst she’s talking to someone. That’s not Freddy, that’s just bad parenting.
  • Robert Englund makes a creepy painting of Freddy. But for some reason he doesn’t seem to realise it until he’s finished painting. This would be like me writing a story, getting to the very end then reading it and going “holy shit, this is a story about a girl called Sybil. How did that happen?” it’s like, “bitch you were creating it so could have guessed what it was like 10% of the way through.
  • Only just realised. This film didn’t have any opening credits.
  • In a nod to the original, Heather gets tongued by the phone.
  • “you haven’t shown him any of your films have you, the horror stuff? She’s done other films you know!
  • “sometimes what a child says will give a clue to what ails him” You mean, speak to someone to find out what’s wrong with them? Genius!
  • So Wes Craven is writing about a genuine ancient demon who has attached himself to the series. I dunno, even ancient demons wouldn’t want to be seen with the franchise after the abomination that was The Final Nightmare
  • “I think the only way to stop him is to make another movie” That’s how I deal with problems too.
  • They literally just showed the conversation they just had as being part of the script Craven is writing. Nice. The middle-est of high fives.
  • Okay, those special effects death were definitely genuine. Either that or they were coincidentally slashed to death.
  • “Dylan’s in an oxygen tent right now” and you didn’t think to tell the mother? The medical staff in these films are the worst.
  • “Freddy, the man from your films?” Bitch she was only in two of them, and her appearances weren’t consecutive. If you want to be annoyed at anyone be annoyed at Lisa Wilcox, she was in both 4 and 5 (before she started a footwear jewellery retailers called ToeBrights with her fellow Nightmare On Elm Street 4 cast member Tuesday Knight, true story).
  • “every kid knows who Freddy is, he’s like Santa or King Kong”. Yeah but now everything thinks of King Kong as something Peter Jackson did, and f*ck that (apparently, I haven’t seen it, but haven’t heard good things).
  • The babysitter Julie attempts to stab a nurse with a syringe “i don’t know what’s in this one, do you?” I like her. She’s fun, adorable and strange
  • She’s going to die isn’t she?
  • Time of death: 80 minutes. Julie dies in a kind of cool homage to a death in the original, being made to crawl along the ceiling and walls. It’s pretty cooler here though through a much better use of angles.
  • A nurse seems surprised by the concept of sleepwalking.
  • Only just figured out that when Heather phoned Robert Englund, the button tones created the original theme song. Nice
  • “hey man, is she okay” Yeah, that’s right everyone, worry about the adult in the middle of the road, not the child that’s also in the middle of the road. I mean, I get it, kids are dispensable, but still, rude!
  • One of the actors (playing himself) slips into his character from the first film. This would have been more effective if they did it earlier I think. This is the main event that causes Freddy to come into reality, and it occurs almost an hour and a half into the film. That’s longer than some of the original films. I get you want a slow build etc, but if you kill two people in the opening scene you can’t then switch to a slow burn. You have to chose between the two, either immediate deaths or slow burn. Can’t have both. This is why the second and third ones worked out so well for me, they were really slow burners but they didn’t feel the need to attempt to “make up” for it by killing off loads of people in the second half, they maintained the pace throughout and were all the better for it. Although I don’t think this film had opening credits so it’s possible this is all just a massive pre-credits sequence.
  • Heather slides down a concrete water path. That was either super fun or super painful to film.
  • Heather is literally reading from the script, incorrectly. “There was only….her….life” she doesn’t pause between the her and life. I don’t think she should either, but that’s how it was written.
  • Freddy looks more tendon-ey and less burn-ey in this one.
  • Freddy, destroyer of dreams, haunter of nightmares, stopped by a small gap.
  • Damnit Freddy stop tonguing children.
  • Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?
  • Freddy wraps his tongue around Heather in a scene that’s actually ridiculous and renders all comments that this film is a dark and serious one moot.
  • Dylan stabs Freddy in the tongue. That’s not the cool part, the cool part is the psycho music playing in the background.
  • More awful special effects.
  • They all go home and find a script which details pretty much exactly what happened.
  • Music comes in far too loudly after quietness. Not in a “jump scare” way, more in a “that was awkward” kind of way.

Actually disappointed with this film. It’s quite meta but isn’t really meta enough. And the whole notion of it being a script brings up interesting ideas about the concept of free will which the film doesn’t seem to pick up on (second time that’s happened in this series). It’s definitely better than the last one, but I don’t like it quite as much as the first few. Luckily Craven would perfect the meta analysis of horror with Scream (which is what I’m thinking of doing for this blog series next halloween). It just seems tonally uneven, uncertain if it wants to go for suspense or gore. It either needed ramp up the deaths (otherwise the opening half hour is basically a woman being scared by two people not turning up to work) or go the other way and make us doubt whether it’s happening or whether she’s just having hallucinations. The characters in the film think she’s just gone crazy, but what if we, the audience did to? It would tell us a lot about the pressures put on scream queens, people who are known for being the scared victim. Overall I think it’s a very good idea that just needed slight tweaking. A part of this is probably the potential, and the advertising campaign. It promises something a lot darker, a lot grittier, but in truth a lot of it is just more of the same. It promises darkness and then just hits the dimmer switch slightly.

A Nightmare A Day: Day 6 (Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare)

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Director: Rachel Talalay (hey, female director, nice. Well played studioheads. Oh, also directed Tank Girl, and two episodes of Doctor Who, with another two later on in the year).

Budget: $11million

US Box Office: $34.8million

  • Hey, it starts with a quote. I’ve missed these. “Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground gives way under him, and the dream begins” – Friedrich Nietzsche. And to answer the question, no, I do not know the terror of he who falls asleep. But allow me to ask a question to you, mr dead German nihilist: do you know the muffin man?
  • Oh, another quote. “Welcome to Prime Time, bitch” – Freddy Krueger. I prefer that one.
  • Odd choice for opening soundtrack: The Goo Goo Dolls
  • “Springwood, Ohio, ten years from now”. 1) so in 2025? I hate when films do this, just put the actual year you mean. Unless you’re going for a “in a distant future when technology is changed” then you automatically date the film. 2) This looks like an Atari game, and not a good one.
  • So somehow Freddy has killed a lot of teenagers and adults since the last film, we don’t get told how or shown them, because of course we don’t.
  • Damn kids are creepy.
  • “I really need to change seats” If the plane crashes you’re going to die anyway.
  • “Don’t be a pussy”. Rude.
  • This music reminds me of the Wizard Of Oz.
  • His house is somehow flying and crashing to the ground. If it lands on a witch I’m tapping out.
  • Freddy appears outside the window on a broomstick saying “I’ll get you, my pretty, and you’re little soul too”. 1) #MovieReference 2) Oh so it’s okay when Freddy says it, but when I say that to people I get told to leave Asda?
  • Wait, Brian May did the music for this? THE Brian May? Poodle-haired Queen guitarist Brian May? No way. Oh, turns out, no way, it’s a different musician called Brian May. Well that’s disappointing.
  • This guy falls down a hill. For 40 seconds. Seriously, I timed it. 40 seconds.
  • He’s a bus station and the guy selling tickets is sat behind a bloodstained window, still nicer than Wycombe station.
  • He gets hit by a bus, and is kind of stuck to the front of it. The bus stops and he goes through some kind of portal (I think) and ends up in daylight. I’m guessing he got run over into reality, as often happens.
  • He hit his head, so he now has amnesia. Because that’s totally how that works. Honestly, when will films stop using amnesia as a plot device? What kind of idiotic person would write something so cliche?
  • Hey, it’s Spencer, played by “whatshisface” from Road Trip, and absolutely nothing else.
  • “all he wants me to do is grow up and be him” and maybe stop setting cars on fire?
  • “I don’t feel like playing football and date-raping co-eds.” Well, then don’t go to school in America then.
  • This kid had a pipebomb in his room. Apparently it’s not the first one. Are we supposed to think this is typical teenage rebellion? Because it’s not, it’s terrorism. Oh wait, he’s white, it’s just “youthful hijinks”
  • “you’ll be boxing champion on the world” not with all those kicks. Silly Tracy.
  • So got a deaf guy (Carlos). And in a kind of cool scene he just removes his hearing aid and we just get silence for a few seconds. I like it.
  • Turns out he’s deaf through some kind of physical abuse from father. You know, the kind of thing people say “if we could this kids would be better behaved”. Find it strange when people say “I was hit as a child and I turned out fine” Really, dude? Because you have a strange pre-occupation with punching babies, that’s not normal.
  • Amnesia guy wakes up in a seemingly abandoned house. Good use of shadow in this scene, award yourself +5 Directing points Mrs Talalay.
  • Ok, you lost all those points through woeful CGI of him climbing invisible stairs.
  • “I’ve dealt with amnesiacs before”. Is that the word? It seems clunky.
  • A sign saying “welcome to Springwood” and the exact population of the town. How often do they have to change those things? Or is it a “throw a baby out the town as soon as it’s born” kind of deal? If I had a town I’d put a sign up saying “Full of lots of lovely people, and Dave”
  • Pretty much the entire cast (I haven’t quite figured out who the main character is supposed to be) pull into the worst looking carnival I’ve ever seen. It’s so bad you wouldn’t feel annoyed at being there, just super depressed and lonely. Or as I call it: a typical Thursday.
  • No kids, apparently this is creepy and not some kind of wonderful dream world.
  • Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr make a cameo just before a Twin Peaks reference. Placing this film exactly in the early 90’s.
  • “I can relax you with these two fingers” oh? “I’ll puncture your heart” oh 😦
  • Carlos tries to unfold a map and all he says is “the map says we’re fucked”. Which it did, literally, someone had scrawled “you’re fucked” on it in blood. They showed this before he made the comment though, which kind of messes up the humour somewhat.
  • A teacher is teaching the history of Freddy in an abandoned classroom. Not a bad scene but it could have been so much better. The character is kind of a joke at this point so going more meta wouldn’t have harmed it.
  • “I will get some sleep then I’ll get us out of here in the morning”. He’s going to die.
  • Almost on cue: Freddy appears in his dream and cleans out his deaf ear. He then cuts it off, leading to another scene of silence. This is the last time they can pull this trick off really.
  • Slight audio now but it’s very muted, like watching the film whilst you’ve got your head in a bucket of water.
  • It may have seemed like I was insulting it earlier, but the use of silence and near-silence is REALLY effective in this. Great showcase of how less can be more. We’re so used to audio cues to tell us how to feel that genuine silence unsettles us as an audience.
  • Freddy throws his ear back to him, he puts it on and all audio is magnified to him, to the point where a dripping tap causes pain.
  • Freddy drops a pin from above but Carlos managed to catch it before it hits the ground. Freddy then threatens to drop a handful of them, Carlos shouts out “you wouldn’t do this would you?”, appealing to a child killers sense of kindness. Which I can’t imagine not working. Pretty genius, this kids going to live forever.
  • Time of death: 36 minutes. Well I’m shocked that plan didn’t work. Instead he’s killed via nails down chalkboard, which is the same way….ah, I can’t be bothered to finish that joke, it’s like the third time I’ve done it in this blog, just finish that sentence with whatever celebrity you feel would die like that (I recommend 1947 Academy Award winner Loretta Young)
  • Hey it’s Johnny Depp cracking eggs on tv in one of my favourite scenes so far. He’s doing one of those “this is your brain on drugs” PSA that were popular in the 90’s. Freddy reacts in the only way someone would, and hits him with a frying pan before saying “what are you on? Looks like a frying pan and some eggs to me”. Classic Krueger.
  • We then get the classical hymn, In The Garden Of Eden by I.Ron Butterfly
  • Time of death: 45 minutes. Spencer gets sucked into a video game and killed there. Mr.Forgetful and Tracy attempt to get into the dreams to stop it. Tracy through meditation, Mr. Forgetful through being hit in the head. Disappointing lack of video game references here. At least to specific games, there is a logical reference to the ill-fated power glove which I’d have been disappointed if they didn’t make. They don’t even seem to be doing much about the loss of control. Okay, there’s a few moments where he’s obviously being controlled by Freddy, but we don’t see them from his point of view so we don’t get to feel his helplessness. I mean, the idea of being controlled by someone else and being led to your death is genuinely terrifying but this film doesn’t really do much. The scene where the tv fills with blood is quite good though.
  • Time of death: 50 Minutes The amnesiac asshole dies. Basically dropped from a great height onto spikes after finding out he’s not Freddy’s son, and is somehow disappointed with that news. The death isn’t on youtube so instead enjoy dancing from the second film that I forgot to put in the blog.
  • So one of the characters from this is Freddy’s daughter. In one of the most asinine explanations ever he’s able to kill people on any street named Elm Street.
  • A really creepy father/daughter sexual assault scene. Ends the way that things like that should end, with her beating him with a kettle.
  • The secret weapon they’re going to use to defeat Freddy: 3D glasses. Seriously, the old green and red ones. 3D Glasses, the enemy of dream demons and fashion.
  • That’s the trouble with 3D films. No matter how impressive they’d look in 3D, you have to account for the fact that a lot of people will be watching them in 2D. That’s why Coraline works so well I think, and everything Pixar does. 3D works best when it makes the film better when you watch it, not by making it worse in 2D. Too many 3D films now just feature people falling down things going “wooaaaaaaah”.
  • Freddy is being taunted by his school peers in flashback of his life. Ordinarily this is where the film is like “see, the true evils of bullying”, but he just killed a classroom pet with a hammer, so the lesson seems to be “don’t bully sociopaths, kill them instead”.
  • We see Freddy again, this time being beaten by his stepdad. Again, horrible, but….he did kill something with a hammer. His stepdad is Alice Cooper by the way.
  • Freddy strangles his wife. Just to reiterate: actual body count: 3. Flashback body count: 2, and a pet.
  • Freddy gets offered the chance to be, well, Freddy, by some kind of weird floating tadpole things which you know were made entirely to look impressive in 3D.
  • Freddy dies again. His daughter stabs him with his own glove (the only glove based death in the film) then shoves a pibebomb in his chest. Thus we get the worst bit of 3D in the film as he explodes but his head flies towards the screen, then his head comes out of his mouth and flies towards the screen again.
  • We get a montage of the much better films that predated this.

Definitely the worst one so far. Some wonderfully directed bits so can’t really fault that, I feel part of it is down to the nonsensical 3D. It’s a shame as there were at least four ways it came close to being a lot better:

  1. The original script by Peter Jackson (in retrospect not using his must have cost them loads) involved Freddy being severely weakened and the kids of elm street beating the shit out of him every night. I feel that’s a unique start and could have revitalised the franchise.
  2. The carnival. Nobody died at the carnival. All that creepiness for nothing.
  3. The idea of Freddy having a kid who’s worried about taking on his legacy could have been really interesting and said a lot about whether evil is genetic or not.
  4. The idea that the town has no children in and all the parents desperately want kids but can’t in case Freddy comes back. FANTASTIC idea for a film. Terrible idea for a nightmare on elm street film, but fantastic idea.

A Nightmare A Day: Day 5 (A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child)

On By troubledproductionsIn A Nightmare A DayLeave a comment

Director: Stephen Hopkins (other films include Predator 2 and The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, I know, I’m surprised too)

Budget: $8million

US Box Office: $22million

  • Ah, Alice is back from the last film. So she’s a survivor from a previous film, and I find her cute, the only way I could be more certain she’s going to die would be if she was black.
  • Odd opening credits, the names look like they’re scrawled on in childs chalk handwriting. Works.
  • Opens on Alice and Dan from the last movie naked in bed together. Brave choice assuming we’ll remember who they are.
  • Alice takes a shower, this is pretty much horror shorthand for “this woman is about to die, but don’t worry, we’ll show you her tits first”
  • Yup, the shower starts malfunctioning and she almost drowns. She managed to escape however and ends up in an asylum. Because, well of course she does.
  • Hey, there’s Robert Englund as a patient.
  • Alice is now in a nuns costume and a nametag showing she’s Freddy’s mum. She’s locked in overnight because the guards are useless nincompoops.
  • Luckily she wakes up before this film earns an X rating.
  • “that’s not what a cover girl puts in her body” True, they never put lollipops in themselves, not in mouths anyway, hey, gotta get famous somehow.
  • I feel like we should know these people but in reality we have yet to be introduced to them, seems like there was deleted scenes earlier showing who they are. As it is, they all just seem like awful awful people.
  • “look, if you don’t dream about him, he can’t hurt you”. F*cking idiotic thing to say.
  • “this boy feels the need for speed”, really, he seems more like a weed kind of guy.
  • “i was watching from behind the rafters, didn’t want to embarrass you, you know, the drunk dad showing up” subtle bit of screenwriting there.
  • The creepy singing kids are back. These kids are sometimes the creepiest thing in the films and often lure people to their deaths, yet nobody ever just punches them all in the face. I’d struggle against Freddy Krueger, but a group of seven year old girls? I reckon I could take down most of them.
  • Freddy birth scene. The doctors reaction is “holy shit, what is it”. To be honest that’s my reaction to every baby.
  • The baby looks deformed and pretty much immediately runs out of the room. I know people on facebook who would still post “oh my god, my baby is so cute and smart”. Actually that’s a point, he’s walking almost immediately, in fact he’s quite independent from birth, evil or not, that shit is advanced.
  • Freddy fully returns in a church. What is it with Freddy and churches? Yeah I know his mum was a nun but I think he’d try to avoid them. I mean, what does he see in Christianity that he likes so much? His life is based around scaring people and abusing childr-oh, I get it now.
  • “It’s a boy” Freddy looks remarkably pink faced there, is strange. Side note, apparently that line is the only one that survived from the original script.
  • “Your birth was a curse on the whole of humanity” my mum says the exact same thing to me every week.
  • “sometimes I feel like I’m living with Melicertes”. I actually understand that reference! Read about him whilst researching Sisyphus, for comedy.
  •  “Alice beckons” That sounds like a good album name.
  • This film gets +5 points and levels up just for using the phrase “dickweed”
  • Freddy criticises Dans alcohol. Rude.
  • Dan steals a bike. Tosspot.
  • Dan is fused into the bike, just to be clear, the bike he stole.
  • Time of second death: 27 minutes. I assume, I mean, it’s going to be really hard for him to escape this
  • Let’s focus on the most important part though: dan would still be alive if he hadn’t FALLEN ASLEEP WHEN DRIVING! His dream mother was right, he is a dickweed.
  • “Hey Danny, better not dream and drive”. Why’s Freddy the villain? That’s perfectly legitimate advice. Even if Freddy wasn’t killing people in dreams, Dan would have died, because he FELL ASLEEP WHILST DRIVING! I cannot emphasise that enough.
  • “you’re just a little pregnant”. 1) weirdest phrasing ever. You’re either pregnant or you’re not, it’s binary opposition. 2) So you don’t tell her alone, you decide to tell her whilst her dad is in the room. Sure that’s breaking some sort of doctor rule.
  • Creepy kid, looks like Damien from The Omen.
  • “the parents of the murdered kids got together and killed him”. Wait, no they didn’t, it was just parents on the street. The girl from the first film, her parents had a role in Freddy’s death, and unless she had a brother/sister we weren’t told about, they weren’t parents of murdered kid, just parents of a kid. Unless they were just there for the pure rush of murdering someone.
  • Time of second death: 38 minutes. Greta, who’s characterisation is pretty much “her mum wants her to be a model so doesn’t let her eat”, dies through being force fed. Again we have other odd circumstances as she fell asleep at a dinner party. So even if she hadn’t died, her manners surely did.
  • Mark (a comic book geek) discovers Freddy. Alice saves him by drawing herself into one of his comics.
  • Jacob (the creepy kid from earlier), appears again. Turns out he’s Alice’s son.
  • “Do unborn babies dream?” “yeah, they do”. Congratulations film on making abortion that bit harder for women to get, so far they’ve only had to deal with being screamed at and mentally abused. Well done.
  • The doctor asks Alice’s friend to fetch her file, isn’t that what assistants etc are for? This is America so she’s literally paying for her friend to get her file for her.
  • Alice falls asleep and gets sucked into the ultrasound where she discovers her baby is being fed the souls of the victims. Someone had to write that scene.
  • “the pregnancy might be too much for you, being single and everything”. I dunno, I’d say the “friends all dying in mysterious circumstances” is a bigger deal.
  •  “we got a phone call from the doctor, he said you’re having paranoid delusions”. Does patient/doctor confidentiality mean nothing in this film?
  • A newspaper article about Freddy’s mum. Headline “a victim of the evil within us all”. No she was the victim of a hundred rapes due to incompetence.
  • Yvonne (a diver girl who hasn’t really done much yet), has a nightmare where she tries to escape Freddy by jumping off a diving board into a swimming pool that changes into a puddle. Turns out Freddy isn’t killing her, just taking her hostage, which works for all of about 5 seconds.
  • Mark starts reading from on his many comics (all of them Marvel apart from the one he actually reads) and it basically is the plot of the film in comic book form. He gets drawn into it “Take On Me” style, but disappointingly the film doesn’t have the balls (or imagination) to go full A-ha so just settles for his dream sequence being oddly coloured, by which I mean everything in black and white except for him, like some kind of non-holocaust and non-penis Schindlers List ((odd that the two most complained about aspects of that film from American Christians anyway) both involve showers))
  • Mark actually uses logic and transforms into a gun-using comic book character. Alas he doesn’t realise he’s just a side character so dies. Time of death: 65 Minutes. This one is actually kind of cool as Mark gets turned into a paper character and sliced by Freddy, the colour draining from him like blood. Kind of inventive.
  • Back to the asylum, Freddy is pushed into a pile of the maniac rapists and disappears into the horde to be torn apart. Is that how he dies? Seriously?
  • Okay no, he appears alongside Jacob like nothing has happened.
  • Jacob tries to run to Alice, but they’re both trapped in a kind of MC Escher situation. Side note: there should be an intellectual rapper called “MC Escher”
  • “Kids, always a disappointment”, I wish this film would stop quoting my parents.
  • Freddy tears himself out of alice (where it turns out he’s been hiding all this time) in a weird body-horror-esque move. I knew she’d die 😦 just waiting for the inevitable now. Poor lovely Alice.
  • Oh wait she’s saved. Yvonne found the body of the nun and freed her spirit, by touching the body.
  • The nun appears to Jacob and helps him defeat Freddy. So after being beaten by being shouted at, a kiss, his bones being moved, and a mirror, Freddy is beaten by something more powerful than any of them…..a nun and a child. Fred Astaire died the same way.
  • “schools out Krueger” Random fact, that line only exists because the actor was a minor so wasn’t allowed to say “fuck you”
  • Ends with creepy kids again. Then rap
  • Side note: the soundtrack to this album contains a christmas number one
  • Alice survived 😀 Yay!

Why we love…Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

On By troubledproductionsIn Why we loveLeave a comment

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Lets talk about Silent Hill (and by that I mean I talk, you read).
Not about Konami and their fucknutarry. But about the games we do have, the good and the bad.

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BURN KONAMI BURN!

As I mentioned in my Session 9 post, Silent Hill is deeply rooted in my childhood (okay teenhood), since I got the second game for Christmas when I was 13, then spend the rest of that day and days after playing it. I mean what else could get you out of the Christmas spirit better.

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But Silent Hill is special to a lot of people going back much further than me. At a time where horror games were more intone with creature features, or just puzzles with jump scares, your Resident Evils and Alone in the Darks- not to faults those series as they did they own part in progressing the genre, but Silent Hill came in with something more mature. Less violence, but more atmosphere and story building, where you don’t play as a gun toting bad ass, but as a normal guy.

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There were no end of the world conspiracy plots- well 1&3 kinda do- but were character driven and about real day to day fears that could actually happen, e.g. losing a loved one, marriages breaking up, guilt over the bad things you’ve done, ect. (Again I reference back to my Session 9 post). They became an alternative to people who didn’t want to kill the things that scare them, but think about why they do.

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Now despite the series to this date having eight full installments, it’s as far back as 3 that people say the series lost it and has been in a never ending downward spiral it has yet to- and Konami has made sure it won’t- recover from. But I disagree.
My favorite Silent Hill games remain, Silent Hill 2 (which really doesn’t need any more talking about), Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (the subject of this post), and Silent Hill 4 (the cult one). But these choices come from a gamer that cares much more for story than gameplay. I’ll put up with the worst fucking mechanics if the story grips me.

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And that brings me to, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories; an odd duck in the series. A reimaging of the classic first game, that shockingly is actually a fucking reimagining and not just a remake for the money- like 90% of all horror movie remakes. It takes the classic story of Harry Mason searching for his daughter in the spooky town, blends it up and turns it into a snow cone; Shattered Memories: Silent Hill 1 on ice. Removing the silly occult plot but keeping the father daughter drama, it embraces the pure psychological stuff- a great move in my opinion. I don’t hate the occult laden stories of Silent Hill, but I’ve always found they make better back-stories for the town, than when they take centre stage.

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Beyond its well done recrafting of the story (which I won’t spoil) the game’s other best feature is its great use of the psychology, not always subtle, but great. This takes the form of Dr Kaufmann, here your passive aggressive psychiatrist. The story of SM is framed round a FPV of you answering questions with your therapist. An idea a lot of people will recognise from this year’s Until Dawn, but is far better executed and worked into the plot than there (though it does lack the awesome Peter Stormare chewing scenery by the fistful).

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I don’t think he was given any direction. He just kinda went with it.

As instead of just picking and choosing between stock fears that will inevitably show up, it actually does try to psychologically analyse you. Staying away from most yes or no, A or B questions , it gives you a lot of variety to personalise; like colour this family picture, who looks dead or sleeping, match the couples, ect. Now a lot of it is blatant; you talk about sex, the monsters and other characters are erotic. You like to drink, you end up in bars instead of diners (I know I’m using that as an example of blatancy, but I still find that so cool).

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There’s at least three versions of every major character. And even up to nine of Harry.

But for all the point A to point B outcomes, there are just as many subtle touches to affect how it plays. If you colour in the family quick and slapdash, then Harry is impatient and rude in the next scene, but if you take your time to be neat, then he’s calmer and nice. Or if you are honest about how much you drink, then what would be soda cans littered around, are beer cans. Small but affective.

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And from the writer who would go onto create Her Story, its no surprise such effort would go into such small details. It is those little touches, used to dive deeper into the characters and story, that has made SM such a lasting game for me, and anyone who has taken the time to play it (though really it’s like a 5 hour game if you don’t rush).

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It’s scary the first few times, suspenseful the next few, then just tedious the rest. But it’s more than worth it to uncover the story.

Now a common complaint of SM is that it just isn’t very scary and for a horror game that’s a big fault. And I won’t disagree, beyond some jump-scares and damn creepy moments and locations; it’s more oppressive than scary. But was it ever really trying to be? I mean there are definite moments of horror and suspense, mainly the very frustrating otherworld chase sequences, but as I said; Silent Hill deals with relatable fears, and SM does this more than any.

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I feel this poster really captures the true heart and feel of the game.

Not dealing with murder or child abuse, but with simple divorce. Love ripped apart and the effect it has on all involved, from parents to child. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a horror by default, but drama by choice. And in a time where Gone Home, Life is Strange, and every Telltale game is so beloved, what’s wrong with that.