31 in 31: Eight Down

A week into October, and the count stands at eight. Counting our preseason pick, Night of the Living Dead, Helen and I are right on pace. We finally hit all 31 last year, so the bar is set, and so far we’re keeping up. Here’s how the first stretch went.

The Darko double feature

We opened October with Donnie Darko on Donnie Darko Day, then followed it the same night with S. Darko. Helen wanted to finally see the sequel, since we’ve watched the original many times.

It was awful.

Like its predecessor, though, the music is great. That’s all it had going for it. Specifically, it introduced me to the Cocteau Twins. “Heaven or Las Vegas” drifts in with those delightful, dreamy shoegaze melodies, and for a few minutes the movie almost earns its runtime. It’s been on loop in my car since that night.

Idle Hands

Next up was Idle Hands, a fun, schlocky 90s dark comedy about a stoner whose right hand gets possessed and goes on a killing spree. It’s packed with familiar faces: 90s heartthrob Devon Sawa, Seth Green, Jessica Alba, and even Elden Henson for you Daredevil fans.

I love the soundtrack and the vibes. It’s wall-to-wall punk and nu metal, to the point that Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” music video literally plays on the TV at one point. Any movie with The Offspring covering “I Wanna Be Sedated” at a Halloween dance knows exactly what it is. The camera angles and lighting make the whole thing feel like a 90s commercial, in the best way.

It’s a classic for me, even though Helen and my friends seem to detest it. They’re wrong. They can go make their own blog if they got a problem.

Videodrome

The Cronenberg triple feature got an early start with my Criterion copy of Videodrome. Pre-crazy but still crazy James Woods plays a sleazy cable TV programmer who stumbles onto a pirate broadcast, and the movie uses that premise to explore the dark side of media. I would have liked more Debbie Harry and it got a bit heady at times with the hallucinations, but it was still good all the same.

The final 30 minutes are what stick with you. That’s when it goes full Cronenberg, with flesh tapes and an abdomen that doubles as a human VCR. Rick Baker’s makeup effects still hold up, which is either impressive or deeply upsetting, depending on how you feel about pulsing videocassettes.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum was a first-time watch and a pleasant surprise. The setup is simple: a horror web series crew livestreams their trip into an abandoned psychiatric hospital in South Korea, chasing views. You can guess how that goes.

It doesn’t invent anything new for found footage, but it plays to the craft very well. The scares are earned, and the livestream angle gives it a modern spin. I also didn’t expect to see Wi Ha-joon, Squid Game’s Detective Hwang Jun-ho, as one of the leads. It turns out this was his first lead film role.

Buffet Infinity

Buffet Infinity was another first-time watch. It was solid, though it got a bit long in the tooth. The whole story is told through cheap local TV ads from a fictional town in Alberta, where a hometown sandwich shop is locked in a rivalry with an ever-expanding buffet. All that hopping between commercials made the pacing drag.

Having been to Las Vegas, it reminded me a lot of Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart (please go if you’ve never been, it’s fantastic). Both start as a layer of consumerism that quickly dissolves into something much more complex and eerie. It’s a clever idea that probably works best in shorter doses.

Zombie

Then came Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. Pedantic note: in Italy it was released as Zombi 2 and positioned as a sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which had been released there as Zombi. That gave it a fun bit of lineage after our Night of the Living Dead kickoff.

I can see why it was so influential. The effects are fantastic, and the ending is brilliant, following the same grim footsteps as Night of the Living Dead. However, it also might have the most braindead protagonists I’ve ever seen. I was rooting for them to die by the end of it all.

An intermission at Freddy’s

One night I took a break from movies to play FNAF Online with my friend John (LunarSketch). It’s a co-op take on Five Nights at Freddy’s where each player runs their own office in the pizzeria with a different role. One player watches the cameras, another manages the power, another keeps the systems running, and someone hides in the Golden Freddy suit. You coordinate over voice chat to survive the night.

It’s a shockingly good multiplayer adaptation, even if I’m trash at it. I died on plenty of nights, and John carried our run to the sixth night before we called it.

Thanks buddy, clearly I’m not Pollos material.

Twenty-three to go (or so)

“Death to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh.”