I am legally required to tell you that “I was invited to a pre-release screening of The Devil Inside by Paramount”, which is how I’m able to review it before it’s technically released in theaters. Good thing too, otherwise you might actually have gone to see it.

I am not legally required to tell you that I actually watched the movie as research for the story I’ve been working on about Demons and Demonslayers, called Evil Looks Good.

I feel ethically required to tell you that the movie is a joke, and it actually makes The Blair Witch Project look good.

Review of The Devil Inside

Believe me, before seeing The Devil Inside, you’ll want to get a few spirits into your own body. I recommend Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey. One quart should be sufficient.

First of all, for a movie about demonic possession, it’s about as frightening as tepid queso dip. Here’s a hint to producers wanting to make a horror movie: if you feel the need to have something jump out (be it person, car, dog, cat, bird or whatever) to keep the suspense up… guess what? Your writing sucks. Try adding suspense to your script, and you won’t have to rely on stuff-jumping-out-at-you tactics as a crutch for your lame writing.

Also, is there some law that requires indie films to be shot as a “documentary”? Sure it worked great for Trollhunter, but no one fell for that bullshit with The Blair Witch Project, and no one’s falling for it with The Devil Inside. This story would have been much, much scarier if it were scripted, filmed and cut together like a regular horror film, using the exact same resources. Remember, there’s not much difference between a “documentary” and a “mockumentary”.

The heart of the story was not bad, but parts of the story were so bad that they were able to actually detract from the movie and scream “SCRIPTED”. For example, why did the cameraman follow the priest to a baptism which had NOTHING to do with the plot of the movie? Ah, that’s right, otherwise we would have missed an [IMPORTANT PLOT POINT]. Wow. Good thing the cameraman was there, or the screenplay writer(s) would have had to write that plot info into the script some other way. Who has time for that?

Why did a mom have to move her daughter to the basement of the house before calling the exorcists? Guess her daughter’s bedroom had too much lighting and not enough grungy textures and peeling paint in it for an exorcism. No, I’m not kidding. Moved her demonically-possessed daughter to a bed in middle of the fucking basement. Wow, good thing, because that dingy, poorly-lit basement was much creepier than any kid’s bedroom.

And the ending? The audience laughed out loud. And I heard several people actually say out loud: “Oh no they did-int!” and “Aw, hell no!” and there was even one “That’s it? Really? You gotta be shittin’ me!”  Wish I were kidding. It was the cheapest, “We’re out of time, so let’s wrap this up! Cut! Print! Where’s the Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey?” that I’ve ever seen. And the end credits were an exercise (pun intended) in patience, crawling across the screen slower than the credits in Pray For Daylight, and that had to be a challenge.

This Review of The Devil Inside Is Not, I Repeat, NOT Sanctioned By The Catholic Church

So much for the review. The movie sucked. But what I really want to talk about is the marketing genius of the promotional/street team who were on hand to introduce the movie The Devil Inside, because they were far, far more intelligent than the screenplay writers.

Just before the film started, three prim, young people stood up in front of the audience and made an announcement. A clean-cut kid dressed as a priest, wearing a banded collar and flanked by two Polly-pureheart-puritan girls. He produced a notecard, and in a head-down, self-conscious monotone, (soliciting some “louder” and “we can’t hear you” responses from the audience) he read off some gibberish about how he did not condone the film, and he would be available for discussion after the film.

Now these three were even more fake than film itself, if that were possible. He never said he was a priest, but that was obvious. No priests are that young, and they aren’t shy in front of crowds. They introduce themselves by name, and by religious branch, including the location of their place of worship. They know to project their voice. And they don’t read off notecards.

And the Polly Purehearts? They ain’t that pure. I checked.

But, the very idea of having people dressed as religious authority stand up in front of the entire theater audience and tell them that they DID NOT CONDONE your decision to watch the movie? That they did not endorse the movie content?

Sheer marketing genius? Definitely. But I can do better.

Here’s a Million Dollar Idea:

If you want people to remember your movie, you should have “plants” in the audience – members of the street team disguised as regular theater patrons, who scream, puke, and/or pass out at strategic moments during the film. I could have slept through The Devil Inside, but if someone near me barfed or passed out? Now there’s something to blog about!

Remember, you heard it here first. Drop me a thank-you if this idea works out for you.

And don’t waste your time with The Devil Inside. If you want to see a real horror movie, check out The Thing remake instead.

A Christmas gift straight off my Amazon Wish List, Leather Denim and Silver: Legends of the Monster Hunter is a compilation of modern writers tackling the subject of those who fight back against the darkness. The Van Helsings of the world who stand up against creatures that we hope do not exist.

The  compilation is divided by the type of monster being hunted:  Werewolves, Vampires,  Spirits, and Monsters. The book is a monster in itself by today’s standards. At 9.7 x 7.4 inches, the 271-page book packs 29 stories.

Overall, the compilation was well-written and bloody fun. The first story, Reasons to Kill by Shelley Ontis, sets the tone for the book nicely by presenting a werewolf hunter from the American Old West. Whiskey and whores! Revolvers and revenge! Gritty, dark and dirty! And that’s just the hero…

Alderwood and Old Lace by Jaleta Clegg is a great story about an old widow named Rose wearing fuzzy, pink slippers and wielding a feather-duster. But don’t be fooled. When a powerful vampire and his followers come to finish business started years ago, they discover that this retired vampire hunter still has some fight left in her.

Other favorites include Capitol Vices by Lina Branter, Tentacles and Petticoats by T.W. Garland, and the impossibly-epic story Finally, the Source by Christopher Nadeau, (H.P. Lovecraft would be proud) but this compilation contained many other great stories and interesting heroes.

Unfortunately, there was one poorly-written story, and the editing was dodgy throughout. I’m not an editor by any stretch of the style manual, but all the proof you need that editors cannot be replaced by a computer are here. Actual editors reading this book might burst into flames, but none of the issues kept me from enjoying  fighters, slayers, and hunters squaring off against real monsters.

Issues aside, Leather, Denim and Silver: Legends of the Monster Hunter delivers on its promise, with stories of heroes who load up and head out into the night to look evil in the eye and fight it to the death. If you’re tired of Monster-Soap-Operas, then you need this book.

The CDC Releases A Practical Preparedness Guide

Conrad "Zombie Dude" Zobmouski sez, "Be Prepared, Man!"

Let it not be said that the CDC doesn’t have a sense of humor. (Sorry, double-negative. Let me try again.) The CDC definitely doesn’t lack a poor sense of non-humor. Check this out:

CDC has a fun new way of teaching about emergency preparedness. Our new graphic novel, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” demonstrates the importance of being prepared in an entertaining way that people of all ages will enjoy. Readers follow Todd, Julie, and their dog Max as a strange new disease begins spreading, turning ordinary people into zombies. Stick around to the end for a surprising twist that will drive home the importance of being prepared for any emergency.

For those who’ve slogged through the Minneapolis Zombie Pub Crawl, you’d agree that the inevitable zombie apocalypse won’t be so bad. And anyone who lives in America might already think the Zombie Apocalypse has already occurred.

Whether you look forward to it or not, an Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse is, by definition, Inevitable. So you might wanna consider reading through the CDCs preparedness guide.

More Tools To Help You Make The Best Of The Upcoming Zombie Apocalypse

Another tool to get you in the spirit of the Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse is the board game Pandemic, in which four players work together to stop the spread of four deadly diseases before they take over the world. After you play (and lose) this game a few times, you’ll have a new appreciation for the people who work to stop the pandemic.

You’ll also want something to read while you’re hiding beneath the stairs. I recommend this lovely dark fiction compilation.  You’ll probably want the paperback version, or a lot of batteries for your e-book reader.

Two more musts are hand sanitizer and keyboard/mouse cleaner. Get in the habit of using them now. Even if the Inevitible Zombie Apocalypse is years away, your IT guy will thank you.

Of all the re-imaginings of Lewis Carrol’s classic, Alice In Wonderland, my favorite is a video game released in 2000 called American McGee’s Alice. The game took the Alice mythos and gave it a dark and disturbing twist.

In 2011, American McGee released a followup game: Alice – Madness Returns. Either Mr. McGee has grown less conceited or more tasteful, because he left his own name out of the game title this time.

Wonderland Revisited

Without a doubt, Wonderland is the star of the show.  The game designers definitely milked every last pixel out of the Unreal engine. The characters of the Real World are exaggerated caricatures, that made Wonderland seem more real in comparison.

Visually, the level design is beautiful, and disturbing in a good way. Highlights are the Mad Hatter’s domain, where Dormouse and March Hare have taken over and turned everything into a steampunk nightmare.

Chapter 4 has you running around a bizzare realm made of body parts. You slide down giant tongues, doorways are mouths, and hallways look like the inside of intestines, the whole level feels like playing through something from the medical channel.

Another interesting section has you entering a Japanese painting and playing a suddenly two-dimensional Alice side-scroller. There are even a couple disturbing levels where you play as (I’m not kidding) a detached doll’s head, rolling around an obstacle course.

The occasional puzzles and riddles are a fun break from exploration and fighting, but you will get bored of invisible, moving platforms and timed race games.

Characters

The characters you expect to find are there, but not in the quantity/quality you would expect. The Cheshire Cat is a mood accent, showing up to make cryptic and unhelpful remarks (in an awesome deep voice.) At one point, he actually shows up and says “Be careful, Alice.” Really? No shit. The Mad Hatter seems to waffle between friend and enemy, but the truth is, he’s just mad.

The classic characters of Wonderland get watered down with new oddities: Shambling blobs of oil wearing doll masks, Samauri Wasps, “Bitch Babys” made of doll parts, and more weirdness abound, while characters that were main staples of the Alice in Wonderland mythos hardly show up at all. The White Knight makes an appearance (as a door) long enough for you to shatter him to gain entrance to the next section. Caterpillar, Mock Turtle, Carpenter, Walrus and the Red Queen all have little more than cameos in cutscenes.

The Jabberwock doesn’t show up at all.

Not entirely sure how we missed out on Alice’s older sister, Lizzie. from the first episode… oh wait. That’s right, she didn’t have one. Oops. Not sure why Lizzy was added, because the plot didn’t require her either. Double Oops.

Gameplay

Gameplay is more or less reminiscent of Tomb Raider in terms of exploration, puzzle-solving and fighting. You jump, you shrink, you explore, you fight. Collect teeth (yes, teeth) to upgrade your weapons. Finish special side-quests to receive increased health. There are plenty of variations in gameplay, but you may still get bored of some puzzle repetitions.

The Unreal engine looks good, but glitches galore. There are plenty of places that look like you can jump to them… but you can’t. Die and retry. Other places look like you can walk to them… but you can’t. Jump over those cracks in the ground, and continue on your way. These glitches are exponentially more frustrating if you’re in a hurry, which you often are.

The controls make this game feel like it was created for a button-mashing console and converted to PC as an afterthought. Button presses will occasionally fail to register (no matter how hard you mash the button, believe me) and this will kill your timing, requiring you to experiment until you find the button timing the game engine requires. This alone will ruin the game for some, when you can’t even make a simple double-jump because the second button-press does not register… die and retry. Thankfully, “deaths” are little more than colorful setbacks as Alice explodes into a burst of butterflies, and is instantly reborn on the previous ledge. The game is autosaved at checkpoints. There is no manual game save.

When the game shifts between the real world and Wonderland, the controls change. This is an absolute Forbidden, Please God, Do Not Ever Ever Ever Do This, but they did. Why can you switch to first-person view in the real world, but not in Wonderland? Worse yet, directional controls and camera angles will change instantly in-game after certain events, even during timing tests that require the reflexes of a hummingbird on crack. At times I felt I was actually playing against the game engine instead of the game.

But the biggest buzzkill in Alice was the combat. All the fun ran out once the monsters became impossible to kill. I switched the game difficulty to Easy, and still couldn’t make it past a boss fight in chapter 2. I went online and looked up enemy weaknesses. Turns out some enemies are puzzles in themselves – some can only be attacked at a certain time during their attack sequence.  For others, you have to deflect their own attacks back at them to break their defenses before your attacks have any effect. Some enemies are immune to certain weapons unless they are a high enough level. This means that if you spend your weapon upgrade points incorrectly, you’re screwed.  (But see my game-hack solution below.)

Even with knowledge of enemy weaknesses, my fun meter with Alice still dropped to zero. I considered calling the game a loss, filing it under “Meh” and waiting for Skyrim to be released. After a few weeks on the shelf, I was torn enough that I looked for a hack or cheat code that would allow me to get past the area where I was stuck. I couldn’t find one, so I hacked the game myself.

Alice – Madness Returns Game Hacks

These hacks allowed me to have fun finishing the game, and they also helped justify my Computer Science student loans:

1 – How to Increase Weapon Damage

Open the DefaultGame.ini file at …InstallFolder\Game\Alice2\AliceGame\Config\DefaultGame.ini

Find these lines and change the end number to 100. This makes all your weapons really powerful.

• AliceWeaponDamageMultiplier[0] = 100
• AliceWeaponDamageMultiplier[1] = 100
• AliceWeaponDamageMultiplier[2] = 100
• AliceWeaponDamageMultiplier[3] = 100

2 – How to Upgrade Your Weapons For Cheap

In the same DefaultGame.ini file, find these lines and change all the end numbers to 1 as shown. This makes all your weapon upgrades really cheap, you’ll be able to instantly upgrade your weapons to the maximum level 4:

• WeaponUpgradeToLevel2XPCost[0]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel2XPCost[1]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel2XPCost[2]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel2XPCost[3]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel3XPCost[0]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel3XPCost[1]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel3XPCost[2]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel3XPCost[3]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel4XPCost[0]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel4XPCost[1]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel4XPCost[2]=1
• WeaponUpgradeToLevel4XPCost[3]=1

With these cheats in place, combat wasn’t a problem anymore, and I considered this upgrade an even trade for putting up with the game glitches.

The Story

The story starts in the real world, ignoring the happy ending of the first game. Alice’s family (including bonus older sister) died in a mysterious fire, and poor Alice has been in a mental institution, slowly becoming stable enough to venture outside. Disturbing hallucinations begin to crop up, as well as a cat, who leads Alice to Wonderland, where a gigantic train is heading toward the heart of Wonderland to destroy everything.

The story shifts back and forth between Wonderland and the Real world, but spends most of the time (I’d say 90% of the time) in Wonderland. Throughout Alice’s adventures, she picks up clues and cutscenes that reveal the backstory of what happened to cause Alice’s madness.

The overarching story is really a who-done-it, but don’t bother trying to solve the mystery from the clues. The story will be revealed to you through the major cutscenes of each of the five chapters of the story.

While the ending works in a technical way, it’s fairly tasteless and reminded me (in a bad way) of the movie Sucker Punch. It’s like eating an entire box of Pop Tarts for lunch – satisfying in a way, but not really.

The Short Version

In the end, Alice – Madness Returns is a flawed gem. The levels are beautiful and Wonderland is a joy to explore.  But it will take a strong love for the mythos to tolerate a weak game engine, weak game design, weak weapons, repetitive gameplay, the minimal face time / absence of staple characters, and an overarching story that involves pedophilia.

In other words, unless you’re really sold on experiencing a dark and twisted fantasy Wonderland.. you can do better. In fact, you might be better off tracking down a copy of the first American McGee’s Alice.

 Dark Fiction Author Carole Lanham allowed me the opportunity to preview her upcoming collection of dark fiction short stories titled The Whisper Jar.

From the Publisher

“I do not know what you have done, but put your mouth right here. Confess your crime to this fruit jar as though it were God’s ear.” ~ from The Whisper Jar

Some secrets are kept in jars — others, in books.

Some are left forgotten in musty rooms — others, created in old barns.

Some are brought about by destiny — others, born in blood.

Secrets — they are the hidden heart of this collection. In these pages, you will encounter a Blood Digger who bonds two children irrevocably together; a young woman who learns of her destiny through the random selection of a Bible verse; and a boy whose life begins to reflect the stories he reads…

Most importantly, though, if someone should ever happen to offer you a Jilly Jally Butter Mint, just say “No!”

Review of The Whisper Jar

The Cover

The cover shows a red eye peering through an ornate door/windowframe. This looks great, and a touch unnerving. Definitely fitting for a work of dark fiction, but I was disappointed that it wasn’t more directly related to the title itself.  I would rather have seen a visual of an actual Whisper Jar.

The Content

Overall, there were nine stories

• The Whisper Jar
• The Good Part
• Keepity Keep
• The Blue Word
• Maxwell Treat’s Museum of Torture for Young Girls and Boys
• Friar Garden, Mister Samuel, and the Jilly Jally Butter Mints
• The Reading Lessons
• The Adventures of Velvet Honeybone, Girl Werewuff
• The Forgotten Orphan

The running theme of this collection is secrets, and none of the stories capture this theme more succinctly than the first story/poem, also named The Whisper Jar. This is a riveting story-poem written (in rhyming couplets) about people capturing their secrets in glass jars, and the troubles that follow…   A quick and fun read, this first story definitely piqued my interest in reading the rest of the book.

Another delightful poem/story is The Adventures of Velvet Honeybone, Girl Werewuff  - a short, rhymed couplet that gives a new twist to the classic Red Riding Hood mythos.

The stories Keepity Keep and Friar Garden, Mister Samuel, and the Jilly Jally Butter Mints both have a Brothers Grimm feel to them. Keepity Keep is about a fairy discovered by two brothers.  (Or two brothers discovered by a fairy, if you like.) The contrast of this innocent fairy and these two nearly-innocent brothers is fun to explore. I enjoyed Friar Garden… but it was tough for me to put my finger on exactly what was real in the story and what was imaginary. Actually, I think I enjoyed Friar Garden… because it was tough for me to put my finger on exactly what was real in the story and what was imaginary.

The Good Part is the highlight of the collection for me. A wicked, incestuous story reminiscent of Let Me In but set in the deep South. The story highlights the relationship between coming-of-age teens and coming-of-age vampires.  The Reading Lessons is another awesome addition of teenage angst, lust, and doubt about who-is-really-in-control.  These two stories work so well because Carole’s writing really sells the characters. They are disturbingly real, and so are their actions.

The Blue Word is a post-apocalyptic genre tale with a clever twist. But I don’t want to tell too much here, lest I spoil the surprise. Suffice to say, the story twist in The Blue Word would make this story a  great Twilight Zone episode.

Overall

Carol Lanham’s stories flirt with relationships, sexuality, paranormality, brutality and even reality.  The stories are glimpses into dark places and alternative realities which never go to full-on Horror, but there is at least one implied death.  Plenty of sexuality, but very little actual sex.

The Short Story

The Whisper Jar blends dark and sometimes paranormal situations into the really-real everyday world with clever writing, an Edgar Allen Poe sensibility, and a splash of Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things. Carole Lanham writes in her own carefree but intuitive voice. Audiences will slip into these short stories as easily as they would a warm bath, only to be surprised at how quickly the waters deepen.  Those looking for a variety of dark character studies, whimsical situations and disturbing relationship dynamics will enjoy The Whisper Jar.

The Whisper Jar will be available from Morrigan Books on 31 October 2011.

This video game trailer is amazing. Its actually heart-wrenching. It’s better than most movie trailers.

Most astonishing of all, it’s also very violent and disturbing.

It’s a trailer for a zombie shooter video game called Dead Island, by company Deep Silver. Looks like a cross between Far Cry and Left 4 Dead.

I’ve never seen a trailer for a shoot-em-up game that made me want to cry. Don’t know if the game can live up to the trailer, but nice work.

The breaking of my Dark Fiction virginity - Dark Forces #1 - The Game by Les Logan

Early Books That Inspired My Path Into Dark Fiction

Someone recently asked me what books I read while growing up that influenced me to write the kind of stories I do. I was a fairly voracious reader in middle/high school, and fully capable of devouring one complete paperback book per day. (It was a long bus ride to school and back.) I was also lucky to have parents who valued reading, and although money was tight, books were considered a necessary expense, like food and clothing.

Much of my early reading was non-fiction, but filled with elements of horror: Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle, The Loch Ness Monsters, Witchcraft, Aliens and my favorite subject – Sharks. I decided after seeing the movie Jaws and reading the story, I decided I was going to become an oceanographer, although I didn’t even know what an oceanographer was. But I knew they got to hang out with sharks. Cool.

My taste in fiction took a while to gel. I enjoyed the Encyclopedia Brown series of mystery books, and I have fond memories of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I remember reading a Hardy Boys adventure and thinking it was utterly lame. Ditto for Nancy Drew. Ugh.I don’t recall why I read the first 35 volumes of  the Trixie Belden series of mystery books, but I can safely say that Trixie Belden was my first fictional love.

I latched onto a mystery-adventure series called Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators, the first of which was The Secret of Terror Castle. A cool cover led me to read A Clockwork Orange at far too young an age to appreciate it. And I enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings when the only people who read such things were the social outcasts who played Dungeons and Dragons.

Most of the fiction I read was dark, but it was all mystery or fantasy.  The very first book I can recall that I would classify as horror or dark fiction would be the first in the Dark Forces series of books, The Game by Les Logan. I hadn’t even finished the book and was looking forward to the next in the series. No doubt if I read any of the Dark Forces books today, I’d find them filled with enough cheese to keep a Taco Bell in business for a month.

I quickly graduated to modern horror classics by Stephen King and Clive Barker. Reading Alan Dean Foster’s Alien late at night in bed with a flashlight was a bad idea. Soon, I found myself branching into older horror classics by authors like Edgar Allen Poe and my all-time favorite horror author, H.P.Lovecraft. And it wouldn’t be until years later that I decided to write dark fiction myself (a blog post for another day) but these are the roots of my love affair with horror, paranormal and occult fiction.

How about you? Any early books, movies or inspirations that set you on the author’s path you find yourself on? Drop your experiences in the comments below.

Seriously, would *you* write a bad review about these girls?

Can Hot Chick Fight Scenes Triumph Over An Abysmally Dark, Female-Unfriendly Plot?

Full Disclosure: I liked the movie Sucker Punch before I saw it in the theater. Here’s the invitation I sent to my friends to catch the release last weekend:

Sucker Punch is out, and if you don’t want to see it then you are gay. And I don’t mean “gay” as a derogatory term, I mean gay as in homosexual. And even then, you should still want to see it.

The preview for Sucker Punch was completely accurate. So if you saw it, you should have a good idea of what you’re getting into: hot chicks in skimpy outfits and glittery make-up kicking ass against dragons, monsters, robots, and steampunk nazi stormtroopers.

Sells itself, eh?

Needed: Fanboy Fan Reviews

Unfortunately, the opening weekend of Sucker Punch turned into open season on writer/director/producer Zach Snyder. Making fun of Sucker Punch turned into a pissing-contest-media-frenzy that I haven’t seen since Gigli was released. Steven Rea from the Philadelphia Inquirer called Sucker Punch “hands-down the most nightmarishly awful film of the year.” Ty Burr at the Boston Globe called it “Inception for dummies.” Steven Zeitchik at the LA Times highlighted the bad reviews, which he suggested were reaching ”critical mass.”

Funny thing was, many of the reviewers spent so much time sensationalizing the violence and writing clever derogatory remarks that they forgot to actually review the movie. Many reviews I read dismissed anything good about the film by attaching the words “teen” or “fanboy.”

Guess what? Teens and fanboys go to see movies too. Lots of them, in fact. So do fangirls, so maybe it’s time we dropped the gender and just called them what they are: fans. To say that fans will like the movie isn’t much of a review, is it? In fact, for a reviewer to say that fans will like the movie and that they don’t like it tells us more about the movie reviewers than the movie they were supposed to be reviewing.

I ignored them and saw Sucker Punch anyway. Truth is, the film wasn’t actually as bad as the professionals insisted it was. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t movie-of-the-year by any stretch of the imagination, but users are currently rating it 6.8 on imdb.com and 6.6 on metacritic which doesn’t sound “nightmarishly awful” to me. It was also the #2 film over the weekend (coming in just behind Diary of a Wimpy Kid) pulling in 19 million dollars.

So in my continuing quest for un-professionalism, I’m going to give you a real movie review. Unlike the professionals, I’m going to tell you what actually punches and what actually sucks about Sucker Punch.

What Punches about Sucker Punch

Epicness

As far as hot chicks in skimpy outfits and glittery make-up kicking ass against dragons, monsters, robots, and steampunk nazi stormtroopers goes, Sucker Punch delivers. The movie was written, directed and produced by Zach Snyder, who also directed Watchmen and the ab-laden bloodfest/masterpiece 300. All the good things about the movie 300 are here in Sucker Punch, just replace Washboard-Spartan-Abs with Glittery-Lolita-Eyes.

The costumes, lighting, and special effects were all well done. Like 300, Sucker Punch has a preposterous number of over-the-top fight scenes, but they were so grand, so epic, and so well choreographed/filmed/edited that I didn’t get bored watching them. Sucker Punch’s biggest asset is that Zach Snyder knows how to move the camera through a scene. What to show and how to show it. What to leave out and how to leave it out. His taste in music isn’t bad either.

And seriously, when have you EVER seen a dragon dog-fighting a WWII bomber in a castle courtyard filled with orcs?

Flesh and Blood = Makeup To Cover A Bad Plot

Under the hood, Sucker Punch might actually be more complicated remake of 300 – a series of epic, flesh-revealing fight scenes barely held together by a hint of a plot that simply won’t stand up to any analysis. Not that this is a bad thing, because there’s nothing worse than epic action scenes crowded out by an overbearing (and bad) plot or contrived dialog. Zach Snyder tries to cover his ailing plot with a thick layer of flesh, blood and CG.

Despite a weak plot, Sucker Punch has some clever plot devices. The opening montage sets the audience up with a lot of story in a very short period of time, and all without using a word of dialog. The same technique was used at the start of Watchmen. The feeling is more akin to a music video than a movie. Also, the multiple levels of reality layering Baby Doll’s world (similar to the recent movie Inception) were refreshing and well filmed, complete with color and costume changes to help the audience process how far down we’ve gone into Baby Doll’s abstract fantasy/reality.

Non-Hollywood Ending

I won’t ruin the ending here, but I can say that the twist at the ending of Sucker Punch was a surprise. It actually takes the standard Hollywood formula ending, and gives it the finger. This alone would give movie reviewers enough reason to hate it.

Zack Snyder deserves kudos for having the balls to try this ending, although there were lots of ways this movie could have ended that would have been more satisfying.

What Sucks About Sucker Punch

When Cool becomes Too Kewl

When movies try too hard to be cool, they generally aren’t. Sucker Punch isn’t as pretentious as a Quentin Tarantino film, but it does try really hard to be kewl, which is it’s biggest failing, and no doubt causes reviewers to drop the derogatory version of the word “fanboy.” Much of the pretentiousness in Sucker Punch comes not from bad acting, but a script full of contrived situations that boggle the mind without a hint of an explanation in sight. Who the hell is the Wise Man helping out Baby Doll, and why? Where did Baby Doll’s multiple layers of reality come from? How did so many smoking-hot and non-psychotic chicks end up in an insane asylum together?

And “Baby Doll”? Seriously? The protagonist’s name is “Baby Doll”? Wow. Objectify much?

When Dark becomes Too Dark

Many reviewers called Sucker Punch on its high volume of violence against women, and I have to agree. Good stories need conflict, so it’s common to set up a bad situation for our protagonist to overcome, but Sucker Punch goes too far. There were very few moments that women weren’t being attacked, controlled (by men) or forced to do things against their will (by men).

Speaking of which, did we have to have so many near-rape scenes? And girls being forced to dance and prostitute themselves? Like things weren’t bad enough for them? Despite a PG-13 rating (???) and NO sex scenes or nudity, Sucker Punch still managed to go too far. Parts of the movie are hard to watch, especially the opening montage. And shooting innocent girls in the head just to scare the other girls into submission isn’t funny, or cool, or a necessary part of any movie.

Resolutionlessness

Some wrongs are so bad, they just can’t be righted. Sometimes the story is pushed to such a dark place, there’s no ending that will gratify the audience. Such is the case in Sucker Punch. Did Zach Snyder realize this? Is this why he opted for the anti-Hollywood ending? Did Baby Doll realize this? Is this why she chose the way she did at the end of the movie?

I’m torn about the ending myself. While I’m pleased and impressed that the movie didn’t cop out with some kind of Happily-Ever-After ending, pieces of the story were left hanging. For example, Baby Doll’s evil stepfather never got his due. And there were other ways Baby Doll’s character arc could have resolved that would have been gratifying without resorting to a Disney ending.

And the voice-over at the very end of the movie is just plain silly. People in the audience laughed out loud. Read for yourself:

Who honors those we love for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us. And at the same time, things that will never die. Who teaches us whats real, and how to laugh at lies. Who decides why we live, and what we’ll die to defend. Who trains us, and who holds the key to set us free. It’s you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!

From imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978764/quotes?qt=qt1458130

Executive Summary Review

The flashy fight scenes and revealing outfits in Sucker Punch will amaze in a good way, and the violence against women will amaze in a bad way. Whether you’ll like Sucker Punch (or any movie for that matter) depends on whether the positives outweigh the negatives for you.

If you are able to see the (lame) plot as a device to connect (awesome) fight scenes together, you might forgive Zach Snyder and enjoy the show. If not, then the movie simply won’t be able to raise itself out of its own darkness, and you’ll write it off as a “fanboy’s wet dream” like the professional reviewers did. The ending won’t be the cherry on top, (unless you are sick of Hollywood Happy Endings) although it might just be the nail in Sucker Punch’s coffin for you.

Overall, I liked Sucker Punch more than I liked Season of the Witch, and Faster, two movies that weren’t bad at all. I agree that the situations were a bit childish, and the plot was beyond contrived. But with a little eye-rolling and properly placed restroom breaks, you’ll get more than your fair share of hot chicks in skimpy outfits and glittery make-up kicking ass against dragons, monsters, robots, and steampunk nazi stormtroopers, which is exactly what the trailer of the movie promised. It’s also where Zach Snyder shines. Perhaps someday he’ll realize he should hire a real writer, or switch to making music videos.

Electronic Arts and Visceral Release New Chapter of Horror Sci-Fi Adventure

You start Dead Space 2 wearing a straitjacket. You couldn’t wield a weapon if you had one. Wanna live? Then mash the RUN key and run for your f**ing life, while hideous monsters called necromorphs chase you down, each of them eager to take your body apart in high definition. Good luck.

Dead Space 2 adds to the list of Electronic Arts (EA) Games I’ve raved about (namely Mass Effect and Dragon Age) that make EA the MGM of Video Games. These are more than just video games, they make you feel like the lead character in a movie. The level of detail in every aspect of the gameplay is sick. In a good way.

I just completed the game, and the folks at Visceral should be proud. They really did their homework. Check out this article from Wired that covers their disturbing analysis of anatomy. The writers spin an intriguing story, and the game designers know the tricks of pacing and timing. The musical score would give Howard Shore goosebumps, and I was pleased to hear Russian Circles contributing some audio kick-ass to the soundtrack. Dead Space 2 has an engaging plot, puzzles, environments, characters, conflicts and complications that distract you from the horror, and then… Well, let’s just hope you have a change of underwear handy.

Those familiar with shooters like Doom 3 are in for a surprise. There’s no pause button here. Browse through your inventory for too long, and your body parts are likely to become inventory for something else. Ammo and weapons are scarce, so you can’t just shoot at everything that moves. You eventually inherit a plasma cutter that’s about as dangerous as large Swingline Stapler. You’ll scavenge for clips to reload it, and you better make every shot count. No spray-and-pray here, Choirboy.

No more gentle deaths, either. No more, “Oh I’m floating up into the sky, looking down at my body! How peaceful! Is there a tunnel?” Trust me, watching yourself get pummeled, crushed, dismembered, skewered, decapitated by necromorphs or chopped in half by an airlock is not for the squeamish. One screwup, and you’ll get a lesson in internal anatomy: yours.

And just see if you can make it through a mini-game of running a drill press into your own eye. You need a steady hand for this one. In fact, you probably won’t get it right the first time, and even if you get it right and “win” it still looks painful.

Instead of downplaying the gruesomeness of the game, EA and Visceral Games embrace the horror. Check out www.yourmomhatesthis.com to see Moms’ reactions to this game. Marketing Genius.

More of the Same?

I won’t lie, Dead Space 2 is simply an extended version of the original Dead Space with a multiplayer option and some general improvements. You play the same character, Issac Clarke, and your story picks up several months after the end of events in Dead Space 1. I recognized plenty of graphics textures and sounds from the original game, as well as many of the monsters and weapons. Health monitor, stasis, suits, stores, benches, power nodes, upgrades and more are all straight out of the first game.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The original game was top-notch, and 2 is as good if not better. It’s safe to say that if Dead Space didn’t put you in the loony bin, you need Dead Space 2.

So What’s New?

Multi-horror… er, I mean Multi-player

Dead Space 2 adds in the ability to play with/against others online. I dig the occasional multi-player mayhem, but I certainly did not buy Dead Space 2 to play with/against others. The multiplayer option of Dead Space 2 seems like an afterthought to compete with L4D2 or cave in to fanboy demands, very similar to the way F.E.A.R. handled it.

I’d gladly trade in the multiplayer component of Dead Space 2 for pretty much anything else. More content in the single-player version, or a reduced price. Maybe they could sell the multiplayer component as a separate add-on for people who actually want it?

Zero G x 360

Dead Space 1 had a short section of Zero Gravity, but all you could do was jump straight across the room. In Dead Space 2, you have micro-thrusters built into your suit, so you can maneuver around in zero gravity. The controls are intuitive and you can press “Z” to reorient yourself to the floor. Zero G is unsettling all by its self, but when you add in 3-D 0-G puzzles, traps, necromorphs and a fricking countdown timer that shows how much air you have left before you DIE… well, the results are uberharrowing.

No time for posing, gotta go decapitate some necromorphs.

Story 2.0

The story from Dead Space 1 continues in the single-player version of Dead Space 2. You wake up in an insane asylum long after the events on board the USG Ishimura, and you have no memory what’s happened since then. The military wants you dead for reasons unknown. Religious zealots want you alive for reasons to horrible to mention. There really isn’t anyone to trust, not even yourself, since your exposure to the artifact has left you with hallucination scenes of your dead girlfriend that are possibly the most frightening part of the game.

Oh, and let’s not forget the necromorphs. Lots and lots of necromorphs, who want everything dead. Including you.

Especially you.

Weapons of Gross Destruction

There’s your old friends the line gun and plasma cutter, the assault rifle (my primary weapon), and the force rifle and flamethrower which are made for swarms of necromorphettes.  But one of the new kids on the block is the Javelin gun, which pins bad guys right to the wall. Gotta love that rag-doll physics engine. Use the line gun to sever creatures legs to slow them down, or their arms to limit their attacks, or their heads to limit their lifespan.

Ah yes, and you stomp on corpses to loot them, crushing them into bloody bits. Genius.  And the sound is spot on. [Editor's Note: How do you know this?]

In fact, anything you can pick up is a weapon: chairs, magazines, plants, debris… What the hell are all these long, metal spikes laying around for? Heh. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more disgusting, use your telekinesis power to pick up and hurl body parts as weapons.

Breadcrumbs 2.0

Never thought I’d be comfortable playing an RPG without a map, but the stellar ‘breadcrumbs’ feature from Dead Space made me a believer. Just press a button, and a line on the floor shows you which way to go. No more getting lost or turned around. No more pulling up maps that take you out of the game.

In Dead Space 2, the breadcrumbs feature gets an upgrade. Now you can also use it to find the nearest store, game save location or upgrades bench.

Opportunities for Improvement

Weapons Improvement Matrix

I like the idea of using power nodes to upgrade your equipment, but whoever thought up the weapons improvement matrix should be shot with their own line gun. Power nodes aren’t handed out like Pez, you gotta work for them. Plugging power nodes into a matrix where they don’t actually increase weapon stats is a poor return-on-investment. While you can reallocate your power nodes, it’s still frustrating to have to pick some arbitrary upgrade path just to improve the features you want. Please. Either one upgrade per power node, or make them cheaper/more available.

EA Download Manager = Way Too Little, Way Too Late

Dead Space 2 comes bundled with an optional utility called “EA Download Manager”. Beware. This is simply a poor knockoff of Steam, a utility created by Valve that was released over a year ago and is Far Far Superior:

• Steam works with almost all game companies. EA Download Manager connects you to the EA store, which only sells EA Games. You can actually buy Dead Space 2 through Steam, but you can’t buy Blade Kitten through EA Download Manager. Nyah.
• Steam software keeps your installation media and keys in the cloud, and keeps your game software updated in the background. EA Download Manager only updates EA Games. Supposedly. It didn’t show Dead Space 2 after I installed it, even though that’s the game it came bundled with. WTF?
• Steam offers in-game voice chat and a picture uploader.
• Steam offers social networking. You can find your friends and see what they’re playing, and the lobby feature lets you gang up and hang out ‘backstage’ to make sure everything is working before launching into the game.
• Steam tracks stats and achievements.
• Steam did it first, and does it better.

Business 101 – if you want people to switch to your product, you have to offer something the existing competition DOES NOT OFFER. No one wants to run two gaming clients in the background, and no one’s going to ditch all their existing Steam friends, achievements, and purchased games just so they can run your limited knockoff.

The only thing EA Download Manager might be useful for is updating your EA game software. But shouldn’t this ability should be left built into the game? Don’t separate a necessary component from the game, connect it to your online store and call it a fucking feature.

Usability vs Piracy

The video game industry is still struggling to strike a balance between PC game accessibility and protection against piracy. Obviously, the game makers can’t just leave the game unlocked, but they also can’t have you calling in to their office with a note signed by your mother each time you want to play. Dead Space 2 hits you up for e-mail, username and password each time you start up. Yes, even to play the single-player version. Annoying, but you can cancel past that if you just want to play the single-player version.

Sadly, if that’s what it takes to make the game companies comfortable releasing games to the PC market, then I won’t bitch too loudly about it. Of course, these copy protection schemes doesn’t stop people from breaking the games and dropping them on torrents. Yes, I could probably get Dead Space 2 for free, but I don’t want game companies to drop the PC market for the console market. Notice that Red Dead Redemption is NOT available for PC, which is a shame. The way I see it, my money goes to a good cause, and is also a vote to keep game companies interested in the PC market.

Executive Summary: UberHorror + UberAdventure = UberAwesome

Dead Space 2 is a disgustingly gruesomely horrific masterpiece sure to give you paranoia, high blood pressure, a nervous tic, seizures, a heart attack, and (if you survive all that) post-traumatic stress disorder. In other words, bloody awesome fun, and worthy of the Conrad Zero UberCool Seal of Approval.

Occult Thriller Season of the Witch a decent start to the 2011 movie season.

Does Nicolas Cage ever take a break?  I mean, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was only a couple months ago, and Drive Angry is only a couple months away, and this weekend Season of the Witch is released. Take a look at Nicolas Cage’s filmography on IMDB. Talk about busy.

And why do people rip on his acting? He doesn’t actually act, you know. He’s made a career of being himself on camera since I first remember seeing him in Raising Arizona, waaaay back in 1987.

Season of the Witch casts Cage as Behmen, a Knight of the Crusades who suddenly realizes that killing innocents in the name of God is not the path for him. Ron Perlman is Felson, his good friend and comrade-in-arms. Together, they desert the crusades and go off on their own, only to find a village with a witch problem.

The writing in Season of the Witch was good. A simple plot, but it keeps you guessing about who the bad person really is and what’s really going on. Reminded me of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Not as much sorcery and witchcraft as I would have expected, and the ending had a layer of cheese on it. Although the ending wasn’t a happy one, it also wasn’t disappointing. But the accents were. I don’t know how a New York cabbie got teleported back to Medieval England, but it did make sense that he was their guide.

The filming is gritty and dark, but not quite as dark as the Underworld series. (Could anything be darker than the Underworld series?) Score and soundtrack were good, and at the theater I saw it, the sound was damned loud. Guess I’d rather have the sound too loud than too quiet.

Overall, I rated Season of the Witch a 7 of 10 on IMDB.

Twenty-four years since Raising Arizona, and Nicolas Cage’s character in Season of the Witch isn’t so different from anything else he’s done. But I’m totally fine with that. Although in this film, I don’t recall him freaking out like this: