Seth Harris

PopCult Podcast – Phantasm/Phantasm II

It’s spooky season. This episode Ariana & Seth watched the first two installments of a cult horror franchise that delivers a lot of unexpected & unique terrors.

Movie Review – Insidious: The Last Key

Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
Written by Leigh Whanell
Directed by Adam Robitel

Much like the continuity of Saw or the Fast & Furious franchises, Insidious became a tangled-up non-linear film series. This particular film takes place after Insidious: Chapter 3 (the earliest film in the timeline), though The Last Key starts with a flashback that is the furthest point back in the timeline thus far. That honor used to belong to the prologue of Insidious: Chapter 2. The Last Key takes place around a year before the first film and focuses entirely on the backstory of Elise, the film’s somewhat main protagonist. As I have said in all these reviews, stating unequivocally who the main character or villain is in these films is utterly impossible as they flail around from picture to picture.

Movie Review – Insidious: Chapter 3

Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
Written and directed by Leigh Whanell

After the conclusion of the second film, the story of the Lamberts & their haunting seemed to be over. Yet, Blumhouse wanted another installment. Leigh Whanell returned to write this script, while James Wan moved on to direct Furious 7. A few months into production, it was decided that Whanell would make his directorial debut with Chapter 3, and I can tell you it didn’t inspire confidence in me to learn this fact. Whanell would go on to direct The Invisible Man remake in 2020, which, aside from some clever ideas, just failed in the execution. For a person who has devoted so much of his career to horror, you would think Whanell might just once pull off something actually scary instead of the same level of horror you find in your local seasonal haunted house attraction.

Movie Review – Insidious: Chapter 2

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
Written by Leigh Whanell
Directed by James Wan

The first Insidious felt like it was always made with a sequel in mind. It makes sense that James Wan & Leigh Whanell had a lot of success with the Saw franchise, so they wanted to repeat it with something new. Insidious Chapter 2 picks up exactly where the first film ends and never feels like it’s creating a story where there is none. Loose ends from the first picture are continued and resolved, so the conclusion is an excellent place for the series to stop. Of course, that won’t happen, and three more movies will come later. I didn’t enjoy the first entry in this series, and it won’t surprise you that I enjoyed this picture even less.

TV Review – My Brilliant Friend Season Two

My Brilliant Friend Season Two (HBO)
Written by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo
Directed by Saverio Costanzo and Alice Rohrwacher

The subtitle of this season and its source material that the story is derived from is The Story of a New Name. This reflects the changes in Lila Cerullo’s (Gaia Girace) life and how one makes a name for oneself in transitioning from childhood into adulthood. Lila goes from being a Cerullo to a Carracci, and economically, she moves from poverty to comfortable working-middle class. For Lenu Greco (Margherita Mazzucco), she can leave their Neapolitan neighborhood but finds her roots as a child of poverty evident to her new acquaintances, causing others to view her as perpetually unrefined enough to ever achieve a higher status. Season Two is about the child’s transformation, whether having their dreams snatched away or transformed into something new.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Frontier Scum: Lonesome Drifter Part One

Frontier Scum: Lonesome Drifter (Chacolypse)

Download Lonesome Drifter for free here.

Purchase the base game Frontier Scum here.

Read Part Two here.

Directly based on the rules-lite Mork Borg system and its bold graphic design sensibilities, Frontier Scum is a wild, psychedelic take on a classic genre. Like with Mork Borg, the world is painted with broad strokes, just enough detail to evoke your imagination into filling in the rest of the details. Almost immediately, the book explains that it has no interest in bringing up the racist tropes that have been long interwoven in American Westerns, so this takes place in a fictional reality where none of that exists. This makes it much more like Red Dead Redemption, where you can have wildly different environments close together to capture every flavor of Western. There’s a blasted wasteland where prospectors dig for gold, a bustling city run by the Incorporation, a swamp where the dead rise, and a desert where horrors hunger.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Six

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Six (2014)
Reprints Swamp Thing #57-64
Written by Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette
Art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala

As Alan Moore’s Watchmen maxi-series was making waves in comics, he was also writing the final issues of Swamp Thing. The writer was interested in connecting the elemental hero with the space/cosmic elements in the DC Universe. While the delve into the occult was successful because Swamp Thing’s character lent itself to that genre, this foray into science fiction is a more mixed bag. Moore is clearly being more experimental, and that causes the series to lose some of the humanity that made it so compelling in the early collections. These aren’t poorly written stories, but I could see them turning off some readers because of how Abby gets sidelined for a big chunk.

Movie Review – Insidious

Insidious (2010)
Written by Leigh Whanell
Directed by James Wan

I’ve never seen one of the Saw films, and I probably never will. Just doesn’t look like my thing. However, I remember being curious about the stylized world of James Wan’s follow-up franchise, Insidious. I saw the film at the time of its release and remember being somewhat entertained. I decided to watch the whole series this year because the fifth film was released. I found that the things I remember liking about this first film had aged poorly. In fact, I am confident in saying I think Insidious is the most boring, least coherent horror franchise I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched all the Halloween movies, so that’s saying a lot.

Movie Review – The Exorcist III

The Exorcist III (1990)
Written and directed by William Peter Blatty

Exorcist II: The Heretic was a disastrous flop for Warner Bros. During the premiere, the original novel’s author recalled laughing out loud moments into the film starting. It seemed he would have his response in the form of a third film only years after the comical sequel. Even the first film’s director, William Friedkin, was on board with Blatty’s concept and how it would continue the story. Then creative disagreements broke out and came to the point where Friedkin left the picture.

Movie Review – Exorcist II: The Heretic

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Written by William Goodhart
Directed by John Boorman

Warner Brothers knew they wanted another Exorcist film after the success of the first picture. However, screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin had no desire to revisit this world. They told a complete story in the first picture, and the sequel would just be a silly idea. At first, the plan was to cut/paste the plot, but things quickly spiraled into unhinged territory when playwright William Goodhart was hired. He would retroactively add a backstory to Father Merrin from the first film by including the theories of a Jesuit priest who had some views about why demon possessions occurred and why some people seem to be targeted by them. Linda Blair would return as Reagan MacNeil, and even Max Von Sydow reluctantly returned to cameo as a younger Merrin. Kitty Wynn, as Sharon, the friend of the MacNeils, came back, but Ellen Burstyn flatly refused to come back as the girl’s mother. Not a great start.