Author: Seth Harris

An immigrant from the U.S. trying to make sense of an increasingly saddening world.

Create-a-Character: Bubblegumshoe

185435Bubblegumshoe is the work of Emily Care Boss, Kenneth Hite, and Lisa Steele. The game was published by Evil Hat Productions in 2016 and is a variation of Robin Laws’ Gumshoe system. Where Gumshoe has been used to tell mysteries based around Lovecraftian horror (Trail of Cthulhu), space opera (Ashen Stars), vampire spies (Night’s Black Agents), among others, Bubblegumshoe explores the genre of mysteries like The Hardy Boys, Veronica Mars, and Nancy Drew. The text describes the default setting as: “High schoolers solving mysteries in a modern American small-town setting.”

The expectations of the game are that your characters will all be teenagers who are Sleuths. Players spend from a pool determined by the number of total players in a game to develop a list of Investigative, Interpersonal, and General Abilities that will aid them in finding clues and solving mysteries. The type of mysteries could be anything from investigating a murder to figuring out who cheated in the homecoming queen voting. As long as it makes sense in the setting and would be something your teenage sleuth would reasonably investigate then it works.

I have read a few of the Gumshoe books and, while I have always felt there was a strong personal appeal there, I’ve never actually sat down to play or run them for my group. When I heard about the development of Bubblegumshoe, it sparked my interest because of the type of stories it encouraged. I have typically clung close to the Powered by the Apocalypse system as my choice to run and play in, but I frequently think about dipping my toes in some other gaming waters. I was lucky enough to be gifted a copy of Bubblegumshoe at Origins 2016 and decided to make it the focus of my first character creation article.

Having the framework in mind, I decided I needed to have a setting for a game to determine what sort of character to create. The book comes with eight pre-made settings to work as examples so, using my trust d8 I rolled and ended up with Strangehill Scout Troop 211. The concept behind this setting is a scout troop of both girls and boys who are doing ordinary scouting things but also solving mysteries in their community. The tone is light-hearted and all about being good people and helping.

Scouts in this setting start with two stats: Cool 5 and Throwdown 4 representing extremely high abilities to handle tense situations and navigate socially combative situations. Unlike standard Gumshoe builds, these characters have Badges which operate as Skill packages. To start, every scout has the First Aid and Community History badges. First Aid is composed of First Aid 4, Cool 3, Reassurance 3. Community History is Computers 2, Negotiation 3, Town Lore 3. From here, I have two more Badges to choose from and 15 build points to spend to buy more abilities or bump up what I already have.

Before I started purchasing more abilities or stating myself up, I needed to take a moment and figure out who this scout would be. I used an incredibly comprehensive random name generator, and I clicked through names looking for something that jumped out to me as interesting, ending up with “Alyse Leung.” Alyse,13, has been adopted by her aunt, Rachel (maternal side), who works in a local automotive factory. Rachel is a single parent who enrolled Alyse in the scout troop mostly out of a need for some form of after school care. As a new kid, Alyse hasn’t made many friends, and the scout troop is her only real positive social experience. Alyse is a latchkey kid most days and has to fend for herself until Aunt Rachel gets home, and even then her caretaker is so tired the young girl is expected to continue caring for herself.

Now that I knew a bit about who Alyse is, I could determine what Badges she has learned in her time with the troop so far. Cuisine is a given because she makes most meals for herself and she would like to make them tasty. She’s even started getting compliments from Aunt Rachel about how good the food is. This gives Alyse BS Detector 2, Cooking 2, Pop Culture 2. Cooking is “capped” meaning no more points can be spent on it. I like to think BS Detector signifies Alyse’s ability to tell when someone genuinely likes what she has prepared. For her second Badge I chose Sports, the idea being that before the tragic death of her parents, Alyse played soccer for many years. Her father was super competitive about it and got Alyse to take it pretty seriously. She still plays at school and the park “for fun” but in her head, it is always a big competition. The Sports badge gives Alyse Athletics 5, Intimidation 3, Notice 2.

Now with 15 build points, I need to decide what abilities to purchase and which to bump up. Because she is a pretty studious kid, I figured Research 2 would make sense. These points are also used to create pools for relationships so I do want to hang on to some, or I won’t have much luck interacting directly with people who are important to me. With 13 points left I will set aside 5 for her Aunt Rachel. That leaves 8, so I want to beef up my BS Detector a bit to 4. I think Alyse has dealt with a lot of adults trying to shield her from the tragedy of her parents’ death. As a result, she listens carefully to what people say to determine if they talk to her like an adult or pander. In turn, this leads me to decide that Notice should be bumped to 4 as well. Alyse is a quiet, observant kid who picks up on little details the other kids quickly rush by. That leaves 4 Build points that I would choose to save for any relationships that might come up.

Before I can see Alyse as a playable character, I’d like to use a couple of metrics to understand where her mind is at and what she wants in life. The three I’d like to use are Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers’ personality type theory test, and Stephen Covey’s Maturity Continuum.

From what I have written about Alyse and my thinking about her she hovers somewhere between the second and third levels of the Hierarchy of Needs, Safety Needs & Love and Belonging. Her parents’ death has left her with trauma, but I don’t think it has manifested itself fully yet. She’s pushed past some of it out her tough nature, thanks to dad and the soccer career. As the new kid in town, she is deeply in need of friendship and isn’t getting the emotional support she needs from her aunt.

After taking an online version of the Myers-Briggs Personality Assessment, Alyse came out as INTJ meaning Introvert Intuitive Thinking Judging. This makes Alyse a very analytic person who likes to work alone rather than big groups, which should make the scout troop fascinating. Alyse enjoys working on earning badges at home and then presenting her accomplishments, but anything that forces her into a team setting will cause friction. Alyse knows her abilities and is a hell of a good researcher. Having this fact cause me spend two more of those Build Points on Research.

Now we take a look at Covey’s Maturity Continuum. Of the Seven Habits, I think is solidly nearing the stage of Independence, meaning she’s mastering the first three Habits: Be Proactive, Begin With the End in Mind and Put First Things First. I still think there are some hurdles to overcome with the self-doubt she has and the lingering trauma from her parents’ death. She is going to be very far from approaching Interdependence because of some of the pesky aspects of being an INTJ. For Alyse, learning to work with the fellow scouts of the Strangehill Troop will be her greatest lesson.

So to finish out the character creation I need to choose Alyse’s socio-economic class, clique, drive, and story arc. For class, I think she is very working class now because of Aunt Rachel’s situation but came from middle class. Her clique would be nerds or nerdy-jocks, not “meatheads” but more studious soccer player types. Her Drive is definitely “Justice for the Weak” based on the loss of her parents. Finally, she has a Story Arc of “Find Closure about Parents.” Alyse’s ability to come to a healthy place talking about her parents and expressing her emotions, particularly with Aunt Rachel who has also been pretty closed off, will lead her to a healthier and happier life.

Here’s a finished PDF of the character sheet for Alyse.

Next up: John Wick’s 7th Sea 2nd Edition

PopCult Book Club Review #3 – Experimental Film by Gemma Files

Experimental Film by Gemma Files

(ChiZine Publications, 2015)

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Lois Cairns is an ex-film critic/ex-film professor who seems to be mired in a permanent funk. Her only son is on the extreme end of the autism spectrum and her mother and husband seem to have more love for the child than she. Feeling hopeless personally and professionally, Lois stumbles across an experimental film made by a wealthy Toronto art scenester that incorporates some fascinating found footage. Doing a little background work leads Lois to discover the secret film career of Mrs. Whitcomb, a turn of the century philanthropist who threw the majority of her husband’s wealth into the work of an unscrupulous medium. A side project appeared to be the filming and re-filming of an obscure Eastern European fable about Lady Midday, an angelic entity that tormented those who refused to toil in the fields. As Lois investigates further, she uncovers dark truths about Mrs. Whitcomb and the story of Lady Midday.

Experimental Film does a lot of world-building, almost 80 percent of the text is world building. Told from the first person point of view of Lois Cairns, the reader is educated on a large number of the topics, the main one being the Toronto academic film scene, and in some instance, the way film is funded by the state in Canada. There was a point around halfway through the novel that I began to feel fatigued from the amount of digressions being taken from the mystery of the story. Any time a supporting character is introduced, we’re given multiple pages of prefacing about who this character is in the larger film scene, rumors and relationships in Toronto that may or may not have any weight in the larger narrative, and just lots and lots of details. You often get lost in the details that the path of the overarching story becomes lost.

The horror that the story is leading is a very original one, but its reveal is a rough sequence in the novel. Lois and a side character are in a literal race against time to prevent the “gateway” from being opened that will allow the entity to kill again. It plays out as the type of confrontation I do not seek out in my horror fiction, a little too direct and too on the nose. The direct battle leads to a disappointing resolution and happy ending that I believe undercuts the entire horror of the piece.

There are excellent ideas here and a few scenes that are captivating, but the overall piece was disappointing. I was all right with Lois being a less than admirable character; I enjoy characters that are rough around the edges. Where the novel falls apart is with its constant digressions, losing the very delicate tension and atmosphere that great creeping horror needs to build.

Discussion Questions:

Experimental Film poses the idea that film can be a form of haunting. As the back catalog of film, both professional and amateur grows in our culture, how do you think this phenomenon could be used effectively in horror fiction and media?

Lois Cairns is a protagonist who does not embody the benevolent, virtuous figure we see in a lot of popular fiction. She doesn’t adhere to traditional maternal expectations and is unapologetic for it, finding a way of communicating with her son that works for them both. How do you feel about unsympathetic characters in fiction? What about them helps you connect with their character or do you feel yourself disconnected?

Masks: The Junior Elite #3 and 4

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Issue 3

The Junior Elite stood in the lab of Magnificent Man, Xion unconscious on the floor and robot-butler Symba having gone full berserk mode. Black Hoodie, with support, hacked into Symba and forced an emergency shutdown. Symba was locked up, and Xion explained that as he was constructing a possible gateway to bring back The Elite, a presence entered our dimension and possessed Symba. Xion is convinced that the Elite are lost and wants to take apart the gateway his was building before something worse passes through.

At the same time, local Halcyon news is reporting the team’s visit to the Eon Institute as an illegal break-in and framing is as youth gone wild in the absence of their adult authority figures. Magnificent Lad is fed up with this, as it adds to his internal frustration over his search for his parents, so he rockets off to the site of the live news story. He shows up attempting to plead his case. Earlier, Gen. Juliet Mayhem of AEGIS cryptically warned him that certain forces would seek to weaken The Junior Elite through public perception. Mag Lad begins explaining what is going on when a powerful force bolts from the sky and carries the hero off in a bear hug.

 

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Apollonia, member of The Elite

On the television, the rest of the team sees Apollonia is the culprit. Apollonia is the alien queen, exiled to Earth and was one of the lost members of The Elite. She’s apparently under strict mind control. Kid Atomic gathers the team onto his Warthog, and they fly off to help Mag Lad. A battle ensues and using an extension of Black Hoodie’s psychic powers they wrest control of Apollonia’s mind back. The heroine is grateful to be free of the control and explains that she believes The Elite are lost to the Dark Dimension, now in the thrall of an omnipotent entity called Golgotha.

 

Gen. Mayhem gives Kid Atomic a lead, letting him know the mysterious overpowered weapons Professor Dark and his crew were wielding came from a lieutenant in the Fortunato crime family, Rocco di Chiara. The Junior Elite arrive at Di Chiara’s front, an Italian tailor’s shop in the Little Sicily district. They try to talk their way in with the elderly Italian tailor, but he catches on and unleashes the shop’s hyper hi-tech security system. Busting their way through the blast door and past the energy cannons and find a shipping center in the back where made men are prepping weapons for distribution throughout the city. Rocco shows up with some more men, armed with the interdimensional weapons and fires on the team as they try to escape, disrupting Silver Arm’s energy construct. The team plummets and Mag Lad barrels into Rocco, creating a crater in the street that brings the villain subterranean. Rocco gets off a lucky shot, incapacitating Mag Lad and he and his men escape.

 

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Rocco Di Chiara, ruthless member of the Fortunato crime family

Meanwhile, back in the Magnificent Island laboratory, Xion is busy dismantling the interdimensional gateway when a twisted, talon-like hand bursts forth and grab’s his, crushing the bones like paper….

 

Issue 4

Xion is missing, and the Mag Island lab is in disarray. The team got beaten badly by Rocco Di Chiara and his men and now Gen. Mayhem has shown up to tell them it’s time to give up the search for The Elite. Apollonia sides with Gen. Mayhem but the Junior Elite defiantly say they will find their mentors with or without their help. Kid Atomic begins searching for Xion and discovers traces of his blood on the floor, Gravinian blood, which is extremely rare to see because of their species’ impervious skin. There are also traces of interdimensional energy, energy from the Dark Dimension in the lab. The Sphinx uses her postcog powers to see a half a dozen alien soldiers emerge from the gateway and leave Xion a bloody mess. Once they were done with him, they spread out through Mag Island.

A check of the island’s security feed finds them in the hangar bay attempting to commandeer a Gravinian shuttlecraft. Black Hoodie hacks the island’s security systems and uses the Warthog’s atomic ray to make quick work of the alien cyborgs. They rush to hangar bay to make sure it’s secured, just in time to witness explosions going off on the AEGIS city skyship that was over Halcyon. Apparently, sleeper agents belonging to the cult of Golgotha were onboard and are bringing the ship down over the city to perform a mass blood sacrifice to their god. Mag Lad calls on some guardian drones that patrol Mag Island and they rocket off to steer the crashing ship to the waters off the coast. Kid Atomic, Silver Arm, and The Phoenix rode in the Warthog while Black Hoodie and The Sphinx took the Gravinian shuttle.

 

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The soldiers of the Dark Dimension

The crashing ship was dropped roughly in the bay, but the sleeper agents began a weaponized assault on the AEGIS agents who were losing ground due to still being in shock from the surprise attack. Silver Arms extends his constructs as tendrils to wrest the weapons from the sleepers but the air is cracked by a sonic boom and Magnificent Man comes flying down. However, he is transformed, turned into a twisted shadow version of himself. Acting quickly, Silver Arm unleashed a giant winged dire wolf that swallows Mag Man and hurtles into space to take the ultra-powered hero out of the action. The tide turns between AEGIS and the Golgothans, which allows the Junior Elite to pursue the wolf and Mag Man.

 

They find Mag Man shredding the wolf construct and then turning his rage back towards Silver Arm. Black Hoodie, her powers boosted with help from Kid Atomic, grabs Mag Man’s mind and lets Mag Lad speak to his father in an attempt to bring him back. Cracks form in the demonic hold, but Mag Man crashes himself into the moon as his mind and body go to war. Mag Lad talks his dad through it and destroys a device that seems to be phasing his father back and forth between this world and the dark dimension. When the device is damaged, Mag Man is back, but his powers are gone.

 

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Gehenna, devotee of Golgotha

Returning to Halcyon, the Junior Elite finds a rift in space and time over the Eon Institute flooding more of the alien soldiers through. Also returning to action are Apollonia, Doctor Atomic temporarily recovered from his PTSD, and Mag Man piloting the Gravinan shuttle. They rush to Eon and muscle their way past Dr. Conway Claremont who wants to preserve the gateway in his lab. Waiting for the Junior Elite at the gateway is Gehenna, Golgotha’s second, with her pet, the twisted demonic version of adult Silver Arm. The Sphinx gazes back and sees the Gehenna uses a control rod to force adult Silver Arm to bend to her will. Junior Silver Arm unleashes his dire wolf construct again who pins Gehenna to the wall. The Phoenix wrests the control rod but she and her twins’ power go haywire due to the presence of the gateway. Multiple rifts in both time and reality are torn open. Through one of them, the team can see the young Phantom Spider, the man who would grow up to the guidance counselor at the high school. He can apparently see them and steps through the rift only to be killed by the manipulated adult Silver Arm. This pushes the team to return Gehenna and her soldiers through the rift and then destroying the gateway.

 

In the wake of this battle, a few things becomes apparent to The Junior Elite:

  • Adult Silver Arm, like Mag Man, has lost his powers, the silver arm sloughing off as an inert shell
  • Magnificent Woman and Vanity Fair are still lost
  • Phoenix and The Sphinx encounter a being that exists outside of time and tells them the death of their mentor, Phantom Spider, outside the normal path of time is being added to a list of charges past, present, and future. He warns that one day they will be prosecuted for these time crimes, but for now, they are safe.

Movie Review – Nina Forever

Nina Forever (2015, dir. Ben & Chris Blaine)

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Holly is in love with Rob. They both work at a local grocery store, and she learns he recently tried to kill himself out of the pain and guilt he still feels from his girlfriend, Nina’s death a couple of years ago. Holly is attracted to the angsty darkness of Rob, and the two find themselves hooking up in Rob’s bed a few days later. They don’t seem to notice the large, bloody stain forming on the sheets but take note when the specter of Nina manifests in the bed. From there we get a unique take on dealing with past relationships while attempting to forge a new one.

Nina Forever could have easily become a farce, but there is a concerted effort to maintain a tone that acknowledges the absurdity but takes the relationships of the three characters very seriously. The concept: a new lover haunted by their love’s old dead partner is not an entirely new idea. It’s been the subject of many romantic comedies, but this story doesn’t take the route you might expect. There is the proper reaction from the two leads to Nina’s arrival, shock and disgust, but after a few days, they begin to accept her. This moment is where the film gets truly interesting in the way it explores the haunting.

Holly becomes incredibly proactive in making Nina a part of she and Rob’s relationship, believing this will heal Rob’s pain and allow Nina to pass on. Her first attempt is to make the best of Nina interrupting she and Rob’s lovemaking by incorporating Nina. The ghost informs her that the only thing she feels is the persistent pain of her injuries from the car accident that killed her. Holly is a very persistent character while Nina seems only concerned with ensuring that Rob remains her property.

I particularly liked the incorporation of Nina’s parents into the narrative. Rob has grown even closer to them in the wake of her death, but his relationship with each is very particular. Nina’s father acts as almost a guiding father figure to Rob encouraging him to return to his Master’s degree in mathematics while sharing his amateur attempts at novel writing. Nina’s mother has a much more intimate relationship with Rob, while not sexual, there is this ever present tension when they speak.

One of the core themes of the film is Holly’s frustration with how others perceive her. One of the first scenes of the film is her boyfriend breaking up with her citing Holly as being “Just so nice.” She is determined after this to embrace her dark side and make sure Rob knows how dark she is. The film never plays this up for laughs and lets us see Holly struggle with shaping her self-perceptions. Where her character ends up may be surprising for the viewer, and it’s played for an interesting contrast with how Rob closes out the narrative.

Nina Forever is a nicely done, independent horror drama. It has plenty of gore for the fans of that, but it also has an engaging and thoughtful storyline. Characters feel fully dimensional, and the directors trust us to disseminate information about them through off the cuff remarks and little glimpses of moments. This is not a feel-good movie where love conquers all. The Blaine Brothers are telling a story about a relationship, and it’s a very honest story that brings us to an inevitable conclusion.

Hypothetical Film Festival: All of Them Witches!

I’ve thought there was something intriguing about witches. I’m not talking about the nature-worshipping Wiccan kind, but the obscene primal worshippers of ancient dark gods. Few films provide us with great, scary witches. Instead, we get the Wicked Witch of the West archetype or Willow from Buffy; not there is anything wrong with those. This list showcases some scary, creepy, terrifying witches.

 

The Lords of Salem (2012, dir. Rob Zombie)

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I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Zombie’s film work. House of 1000 Corpses was grotesque in all the wrong ways, and his follow up just never got me interested. I was quite surprised by the trailer to this film. It was full of strikingly beautiful and horrific imagery. It had an air of mystery, and that vibe the best horror flicks of the 1970s oozed. Heidi, a radio DJ, receives a vinyl record that plays a strange chanting song. Soon after she starts experiencing hallucinations and the landladies of her building seem up to something. Soon, Heidi is descending into the pits of Hell as her role in an ancient rite becomes apparent.

 

Suspiria (1977, dir. Dario Argento)

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The most iconic witch film on this list and a beautiful example of Giallo, a hyper-stylish Italian horror genre from the 1970s. The opening scene of this film is, in my opinion, one of the most terrifying and gorgeous film sequences. An unseen killer stalks a young woman who runs for her life through the halls of a massive mansion. She meets her end in a terrible way, and this begins the story of a ballet school in the woods where the dancers are being picked off by an evil witch. 1970s starlet Jessica Harper stars as the lead, and her look matches the almost fairytale surroundings of this classic horror story.

 

The Woods (2006, dir. Lucky McKee)

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The Woods is the second Lucky McKee film on a Hypothetical Film Festival this month. He’s just one of those directors who knows the genre incredibly well but doesn’t always construct a winner every time. The Woods is one of those films that hovers in that middle space between fantastic and campy. It’s the 1960s and Heather has been dumped at a girl’s school in the woods of the Northeast by her parents. Heather begins having nightmares about students she’s met who have been killed. With some investigation, she learns there is witchcraft going on at the school. The highlight of the film is Patricia Clarkson as the school’s headmistress. Clarkson is enjoying herself in the role and is quite menacing. This film would make a perfect double feature with Suspiria.

 

Drag Me To Hell (2009, dir. Sam Raimi)

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Drag Me To Hell is the big stand out on the list because of how insane and extreme it gets with its witch’s curse. Christine is a loan officer at a bank who is pressured to deny an elderly woman an extension on her mortgage. The woman becomes irate and curses Christine which leads to an absorbing metaphorical examination of eating disorders. Drag Me To Hell pulls out some incredibly gross visuals playing with food and having disgusting things in your mouth (no, not like that!). Actress Alison Lohman is put through the wringer in a film that showcases how dangerous it is to cross a witch.

 

The Witch (2015, dir. Robert Eggers)

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The Witch is probably the best film about witches ever made. Director Eggers shows what a master of the craft he is by building the perfect mood of dread. Every image is carefully framed, and the soundtrack underscores the growing horror in the woods. A Puritan family is banished from their village and end up building a home near the edge of some dark woods. First, the infant son is taken and then accusations between the family members begin to fly. From the opening shots, The Witch is clear it is going to be a sensory shaking experience. Composer Mark Korvin’s haunting score with its hellish choir takes us to the very edge of the evil that is stalking the family in the woods. The film’s finale is simultaneously beautiful and evil.

Movie Review – The Blackcoat’s Daughter

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The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015, dir. Oz Perkins)

FEBRUARY

A weekend break is here for the students at Bramford Academy, a girls’ boarding in the Northeast. It’s a snow-covered February weekend, and Kat and Rose find themselves stranded with neither of their parents showing up to collect them. The headmaster leaves them under the watch of two sisters that look over the school, but for the most part, the girls are left to their own devices. Kat has been having strange dreams about her parents dying and is convinced that is why they haven’t shown up. Rose has bigger things on her mind, worried about a possible pregnancy from a local young man. All throughout the school, though, there is a strong presence evil. And who is the mysterious young woman Joan who is hitchhiking her way towards Bramford?

I was floored by how good The Blackcoat’s Daughter turned out to be. From the opening frames, there is a concerted effort to build a dark atmosphere, anticipating the coming horror. The director chooses to spend time developing the characters and not through heavy exposition. Perkins understands that often spouted film advice of “Show, don’t tell.” While some reviewers are expressing their dislike of the movie due to its slow burn nature, I see it as the same structuring that made The Witch so lucky. We learn who Kat is, not some facts about her life, but about the core of her character and her values through her actions and interactions with Rose.

The plot of The Blackcoat’s Daughter is not anything beyond a traditional horror film or short story, but it is the way that the aspects of production build that horror through lighting, cinematography, and music that draw you in despite knowing that this story is going to end up in some incredibly dark places. The music, in particular, composed by Osgood’s musician brother Elvis Perkins, is heavy with low strings and the faint pained echoes and chants of humor voices layered underneath the despair.

The acting is quite superb and is a style I personally see as a great litmus test for the quality of an artist’s talents. The performances demand a certain quiet and subtlety and Kiernan Shipka as Kat stands at the front of the cast with a performance that is powerful beyond her years. Having come of age on Mad Men, a show I often cite for cultivating a more controlled and nuanced style of acting, she has definitely learned a lot about what a powerful tool the face can be, with some expressions conveying tons of emotional weight. Lucy Boynton as Rose is tasked with a difficult role, carrying most of the film’s dialogue and could have easily come across as a cliched “cold ice queen/bitch”. Instead, she bring complexity to a character who is going through a difficult time, worried about the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy and what they would do to her life.

The film is not something that will appeal to all viewers and rewards one who chooses to be patient and thoughtful while meditating on images or sounds. When the nature of the horror is finally revealed in the last act of the film, it doesn’t flinch from showing realistic depictions of violence, in this instance with a kitchen knife. The final image of the film is haunting one, a figure in deep psychic pain and someone we are left asking so many questions. Parsing through the events of the picture and asking what was real, what certain gestures meant, and what happens next for this lone survivor of the events who appears to live in an unending nightmare.

Movie Review – At the Devil’s Door

At the Devil’s Door (2014, dir. Nicholas McCarthy)

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A teenage girl caught up in a new relationship plays a dark game where she barters away her soul. Decades later, Leigh, a real estate agent gets a new property with a dark history. At the same time, her angsty younger sister Vera is busy at work on her upcoming gallery show. Woven throughout these women’s lives is a demonic presence that seeks to use one of them to bring itself into the world through a vessel. Where this story ends up is surprising and how it gets there can be incredibly frustrating.

The work I saw from director Nicholas McCarthy was his 2011 short film The Pact and then his subsequent feature film adaptation of that short. I was very impressed with the surprising direction that movie took, the way it subverts audience expectations while telling a story from multiple perspectives. McCarthy’s most recent work was the Easter short in the Holidays anthology which was one of the more enjoyable pieces in that incredibly flawed collection.

At the Devil’s Door is an interesting concept that ultimately fails in its execution and commits the worst crime a horror film can: it’s so boring. Conceptually we have a very ambiguous demonic possession story that doesn’t hit all the familiar tropes. There were moments where I was genuinely hooked and the film did a great job reeling me in, only to plod on with dull and shallow characters for the next 20 minutes. The idea of a fragmented narrative could work in the film, but it’s handled in a confusion and ultimately distancing manner. We never get enough of a sense of who any of these characters are so it’s hard to care. I saw a comment that summed it up, this is a trilogy that has been compressed into one film. As a novel with the ability to get have an omniscient narrator the story would be something I’d eat up. It just fails as a film.

The positives are that McCarthy knows how to frame a shot. He loves to evoke and build atmosphere and the film is dripping with it. The atmosphere just doesn’t have a strong enough plot to take it anywhere. McCarthy has a love of suburban homes and lights them in ways that play up the creepiness of hallways and bedroom corners. The demon is very obscured and we get two glimpses of it throughout that are masterful. Once it is in the background, out of focus and the second is a quick glimpse as it hides in a cabinet. The design isn’t what you would expect.

At the Devil’s door biggest problem is that it doesn’t understand how to make a good ambiguous horror film. You need details in the world while the horror is kept ambiguous when you don’t have those world and character details the story never feels alive.

Movie Review – Ghostbusters (2016)

Ghostbusters (2016, dir. Paul Feig)

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Erin Gilbert is a physics professor on a tenure track a Columbia University but hits a road bump when her past as a paranormal investigator comes back into her life. She ends up working alongside her old partner, Abby, and a new one, Holtzmann, to investigate hauntings in New York City. They recruit Patty, a subway token operator with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city and Kevin, a ditzy secretary to take on an overflow of angry and vengeful spirits that seek to reclaim the land of the living.

Ghostbusters is arguably the most written about film of 2016, inspiring very polarized reactions online. It’s no surprise that the announcement of an all-female cast drew ire and admiration from the camps you would expect. In the lead up to its release, it was difficult to find any conversation that didn’t devolve into an online shouting match. I can’t say I was excited about the remake, but I hadn’t been a big Ghostbusters fan since I was a kid. They are enjoyable movies but nothing that hooked me and brought me back on a regular basis.

I’ve been a big fan of Paul Feig since his work on Freaks and Geeks. I was a senior in high school when that series came out, and it immediately caught my attention. I am a huge fan of Bridesmaids, one of the few films I’ve paid to see multiple times in the theater. It was one of those instances of an entirely perfect cast and well-written script. I enjoyed his follow up The Heat quite a bit but wasn’t too warm on his action-comedy Spy. Bridesmaids still stands as my favorite of his films and a hard movie to top.

If you look at the five highest grossing comedies of 2015, the list goes as follows: Minions, Pitch Perfect 2, Hotel Transylvania 2, The Spongebob Movie, and The Peanuts Movie. My tastes in comedy and the mainstream audience’s comedic preferences are not aligned in any manner. Just a matter of different taste, neither is better than the other. Major film studios are most interested in making broad, inoffensive comedies that they can sell to international audiences. Comedy is very hard to translate because so much of it is based on language play. To dodge that problem modern comedy has adopted even more of an emphasis on physical humor. Look at trailers for comedies; it’s a litany of people falling or getting hit in the head. This isn’t new; it’s just becoming more prevalent as studios look to broaden their revenue streams.

Ghostbusters, due to studio influence, rather than letting comedic minds work without hindrance, ends up being just another mediocre big budget comedy. It’s not an affrontery to humanity as the MRAs would have you believe, but it’s not a revolutionary beacon to womankind either. It’s a seed for a possible franchise as Sony seeks to recover from its failure to do so with Spider-Man. Set pieces are emphasized over interesting and potentially funny character interaction, and the finale is another cut and paste special effects deluge.

After watching the Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder films and reflecting on my love of improv comedy, I’ve come to realize that less is better when it comes to ad libs. You need a very talented comedian to pull off good improv. The success of films like Anchorman has convinced some studio execs that just letting the funny people riff results in comedy gold. It only works if the structure around them is strong enough. I don’t think Kate McKinnon is untalented, but she doesn’t appear to have the support of a strong script and editing, so her comedy feels very shallow and not as intelligent as I know she is. The direction she seems to be given is “make a silly face and contort your body.” I found Leslie Jones to be the funniest character in the film because she is more grounded and if she was improv-ing than she does it in a very nuanced way.

Ghostbusters was never a piece of cinematic art. It was a studio comedy that picked up traction over the years. The newest film isn’t a failure, but it’s just another middle of the road movie with a couple of light chuckles. What’s most annoying is the push to intentionally grow a franchise. Sony seems to believe that by plugging Paul Feig and his acting troupe into a film will result in The Funny. They fail to recognize that the reason why a movie like Bridesmaids was so funny in the first place was the freedoms the creative talent was given to structure a funny story and that is was something new and so the direction of the story was unexpected. Ghostbusters is a fine film for a rental and watch, kids would enjoy it, but it’s not very memorable.