Blubber

This is my first viewing of The Blob and I was surprised I liked it quite a bit. I will admit, the title is pretty boring, like The Thing, so I was turned off to it. I was expecting some silly slime ball movie more funny than scary. In the end, I think there were more good qualities than bad from my perspective.

I’ll start with my criticisms. I stated the first one, which is the title. Pretty uninteresting. It was released a year before I was born, so I really had no reason to want to watch it when I got a bit older. I was all about aesthetics on covers and fantasy titles. The only other really big complaint I have about the film is the predictability. I mean, it could just be because I (we) study stories and the art of storytelling, but the first few moments of the story told me right away that... 

And it is the answer! 

It’ll be cold so your bike is useless, but not really because it’s small and concealed and right next to the crash site, and hey that guy has this snow machine behind him that he likes to keep beers in! What a strange thing to have in a ski tourist town. I guess, if I was a standard movie goer, all these set ups are fun gems in a rewatch. For me, it just felt like I always knew what was going to happen.

And Drew Barrymore had it right in opting to kill her character right away in Scream. I knew who the protagonists were just by their fame, but this is also 2019 me saying this about a movie from ’88, and I haven’t seen any other Blob movies. At first, I thought Brian was Matt Dillon but turns out it’s his more baby-faced brother, Kevin. I’m just happy the jocks died early on, even if Paul wasn’t a bad guy. It set the stakes and showed that not just the perverts or baddies are going to get swallowed. Nomnom.

The last criticism I have is the reactions of the characters to events was unrealistic. I think everything was shrugged off too easily. Why would the cops think that the town’s punk massacred the people in the hospital like that? Wouldn’t they wonder why there was a juicy arm sitting on the floor and a gelatinous truncated old homeless man? Why didn’t the blob eat Meg when she passed out? I also didn’t see a point where Meg went from being the scared girl to the tough girl counterpart to Brian. I feel like seeing someone melting inside Flubber would put an average person into total shock, especially if she pulled his arm off. Fran’s reaction felt the most real to me, and I was surprised she and the sheriff died. That was pleasantly unexpected, and I may have laughed.

To counter my own criticisms, I think it was fun that I knew what was going to happen a lot of the time. For example, I think it is obvious for everyone who watches it that the crystals the Reverend puts in the jar would have a call back at the very end. It lets viewers watch the movie and yell at the characters for doing obviously stupid things. The predictable archetypal characters worked well so we knew who to cheer for and be sad for when they met their end. The satisfying deaths also help with the horror enthusiast’s desire to see the monster work its magic when the main characters get to survive/monster gets defeated.

Overall, I thought the film was entertaining and fun. I liked the little jokes thrown around, the constant danger, and the multiple threat angles (the monster itself, the cops, the reverend, the biological warfare team, even the jocks.) Plus, everything was set to be an obstacle: The nurse, the condom scene/father of Meg, the underage movie goers, the doctor, the homeless man, both jocks. And how could you not love a horror movie that doesn’t kill the animals? I think it was well plotted and wrapped up nicely.

Cult of Lovecraft

This is not the first time I’ve read these stories by Lovecraft, but I will say I definitely got more out of them the second time reading them. I want to love Lovecraft, but his writing style is just not something which holds my attention. First person is also not one of my preferences, but I do think it works very well in horror and suspense. I adore the stories he creates, the monsters he makes, but I don’t like the process of obtaining the information. I just have to fight my way through the story to get the stuff I like out of it. I spent years reading Victorian and American Lit, so I got this!

That being said, amidst the monstrous blocks of text, there are some descriptions and phrases which catch my attention. These moments in his writing I only saw in, of the three stories, “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Outsider.” They appear generally at the end of a section when the result or conclusion of a part of the story is about to be revealed. In “The Outsider,” it was when the switch in my brain flipped so I knew the narrator was the monster. In “The Call of Cthulhu” it was pretty much any moment where the cultists were being described, and I think this is partly because I knew so much about Cthulhu before I read it the first time. It is such an influential piece; I pretty much was gifted visuals from my video game which were then described to me through the original text. I didn’t realize how closely they followed the designs in the writing. That’s confusing, so I’ll just post some samples. My favorite part would have to be the warped room with everything out of place.

“Pickman’s Model” was something I had forgotten I’d read previously until it concluded. I don’t get any suspense from this story, I don’t particularly enjoy reading it, and I find the ending unsatisfying as well as predictable. The descriptions of paintings are weak at creating a sense of suspense, probably because I don’t find pictures frightening even if they’re realistic, and it was kind of odd to hear him nonchalantly talking about how he let out a scream. I don’t have much else to say about it. A part of me thinks I may have disliked this one because I read it last, and I was tired of reading giant globs of text.

Overall, I can appreciate Lovecraft’s writing, his excellent descriptions, and his creations. I find it hard not to be awed by what he has done for science fiction and fantasy and the amount of influence “The Call of Cthulhu” alone has on literature and entertainment.  The writing style from his era is certainly not one of my favorites, but he is one of the writers from that time which I would prefer to read. It reminds me a lot of Tolkien, because many people adore Middle Earth and the stories he created, but they dislike the process of obtainment. (I did really enjoy reading “The Hobbit” though.) Tolkien is another critical must read, I think, for anyone writing fantasy.

Gogira

Godzilla (2014) was pleasantly entertaining to me. I’ve never cared much for the original Godzilla films, but I did like the Godzilla (1998) that everyone hates so much. I just love dragon monster things and she was very dragon-y. I didn’t really care that it didn’t follow any of the Godzilla rules or whatever. I didn’t have an interest in watching the 2014 version mainly because I just don’t crave some Godzilla, but after seeing it I would recommend it to people who enjoy some fun monster action.

I was disappointed, but already made aware, that there was not much shown of Godzilla in the movie. I enjoy the movie for the monsters, not the story or anything else going on outside of Godzilla killing radiation eating bugs. I hear the second one is much better for monster fights.

The biggest problem I had with the film was how ineffective the story they were telling was because the audience knew Godzilla was the answer. Godzilla will come. Godzilla will win. It kind of has the Superman feel to it. If we watched the film and Godzilla failed and the world became a big giant muto breeding ground, no one would watch it…probably. I personally thought the muto were visually more appealing and better developed in terms of how they work than Godzilla. From my understanding based only on the information I got out of the film, Godzilla is just an earth guardian that helps keep the earth’s balance. He doesn’t look like he could be amphibious to me, and I don’t understand how he exists or where he came from (I get the whole radiation thing they montage, but I don’t get how Godzilla is still alive.) This is where I start to nitpick instead of enjoy the movie because the muto felt more well defined than him. I guess I wanted a bit more than whatever Dr. Ishiro Serizawa was going on about.

As soon as the muto hatches and Ford’s father die, I feel the story dies with it and from there on the only thing interesting is the monsters. It could just be that I cared more about the father than I did the son, and I didn’t really feel the need to connect to Ford or his family. Once the father died, I was more interested in Dr. Ishiro Serizawa. Unfortunately, all he did the entire movie was rave about Godzilla and wanting to see Godzilla. Godzilla will fix it. And that quote from the trailer I remember seeing over and over, “Let them fight.”

On the other side of things, I love how every effort made by the humans just makes the problem worse. Their involvement basically makes the audience shout at them like hecklers in a scary movie shouting at the person going down the dark alley. It was very obvious they were trying to get the point across that human interference with nature just makes things worse. I might actually say it is social commentary on humans trying to fix problems that should just be left alone.

I know it seems like I just ranted about how I disliked it, but I really did enjoy it and I think I’d watch it again given some time. I would also like to see the new one, especially if it has more monsters and less annoying people.

Spirit alien zombie puppets disguised as snow!

Snow has been my favorite read so far. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, and although I’m not a huge fan of more than a couple head hops, I think the way it was executed in this book progressed the story in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if it were done with only one or two perspectives.

I remember my “I bet so-and-so will die first” moment occurring when the head hop swapped to Fred instead of Nan, and Malfi emphasized Nan as a weaker character. I really thought she would be the first one to go, so when Fred died first out of the “hero” cast I was surprised. I also liked him much better than his wife. Overall, I think all the characters were well flushed out. I liked Todd and Kate’s relationship throughout the story, and I know some of the group felt it was cringy, but I think it seemed pretty standard for an initial attraction. They were like the male and female versions of the same character. They were both clever doers with a morbid sense of humor. I say morbid because they’re cracking jokes to lighten up the mood when essentially the world is falling apart around them. I think I related to these two the most out of the lot.

The snow didn’t really do anything for me creativity-wise. I think the monster was too random, too unknown and underdeveloped. We talked about revealing too much about a monster, but I think one of the big questions I needed to have an answer to from this story, at least in my own version of the reading, was why? This question just grew bigger with the ending and Todd shrugging it off as “to feed, to take over” wasn’t good enough.

I do, however, really like the ending. I like that it isn’t over, but we’re left with the impression that, at least for the moment, Todd and Kate made it. I think the actions and survival part of the story was far more important than the actual monster. It could have been another zombie or vampire story and I don’t think it would have to change much. Actually, I think this was just a zombie story where the zombies are reanimated by some snow spirit instead of a bacteria or parasite in the brain.

Another aspect of the storytelling that stood out to me right away was the way the answer to the threat and the danger of the threat was interwoven. Every time the heroes learned something new, the monster became more complex. It was like in a video game when you unlock a cool new sword but the level of the monsters, you’re fighting increase.

Even if I didn’t think the monster was the greatest, I still don’t think it does anything to harm the story. I really enjoyed reading it. I will say that if I wrote this story, my ending would have involved Molly being possessed by one of the snow spirits and have the fetus rip out of her body because the spirit couldn’t figure out what body to puppeteer. But that’s just me.

The Thinnng

I'm going to start off with how much I love the spider head.

 

And it reminds me a lot Krum from "Ah! Real Monsters."

I have never seen this film and it sure was a treat so close to Halloween. I thoroughly enjoyed it: the setting, the monster, the cast.

I will admit I felt a few scenes dragged on a bit long, and the choice of sound effects in the long scenes made it feel a bit longer. For example, I don’t think the howling wind in the beginning with the helicopter chasing down the malamute was engaging or interesting, and I was starting to get confused as to how these guys were failing to shoot it and it was off-putting. I suppose it is an example of how I was not buying into the “danger” of the situation. In hindsight, I really like how it all plays together and how the beginning shows how the whole story panned out for the Nords. It also shows how the Nords were also just trying to stop the Thing from spreading. I still think the beginning could have been presented better with the same effect.  I also could not figure out why the dog was over at the Norwegian camp in the first place, or if it was one of their dogs that just decided to run in the direction of the next closest camp. The American camp protects the dog like it is one of their own. I think this ended up being one of the plot holes for me, and it was one that the story could do without because they end up looking for and bringing back the frozen Thing to the camp. I don’t think the dogs needed to be in the story at all, really. But I will say that the dog part of the monster was my favorite. It also reminded me of the Xenomorph baby when it pops out of the chest.

We discussed what it takes to depreciate the scare factor of a monster, and I think the Thing is an excellent example of a monster that just stays a scary monster. Its M.O. is to adapt and change, so really we’ve never seen the Thing’s final form. It learns and hides. The potential for the monster is limitless and I think that is the biggest scare factor for this monster. I just want to know what it would look like after it has devoured and adapted to every living organism on the planet. Probably a really badass monster. End of the world type of scary.

Another thing that I really liked about this story was that the ending is rather open. It isn’t a happy ending for anyone, including the Thing, and the audience is left wondering whether the Thing has really been defeated. I like to think that it wasn’t, and that the Thing is just diddling around waiting for the next living thing to come by. It’ll happen eventually. We all know it! I also like that the last two standing hate each other, don’t trust one another, and we’re not really sure if they’re both Thing-less.

 In the end, I really enjoyed this movie. I felt it was fun to watch, the monster makeup and design was excellent, and the scare was left to the monster and the feeling of “what’s going to happen next.” I think this is a movie that is best left alone, although I know there is a remake or sequel of some sort, mainly because one of the reasons I feel it is effective is because of the unhappy/open ending. It is a good example of how we know there has to be more to the story, but the ending still acts as closure. Even if the Thing is dead there, it might be somewhere else out there.