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.

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.

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.

Cover art “Moccus” by Stanley Morrison

My First Published Story

Who would have thought anyone’s first-ever short story submission would end up becoming their first published work? I’ve been working on the novel Evil Looks Good for years, and something that I ran off as a fun side project ends up in the limelight.

You can read more about how I took some time off from the novel Evil Looks Good to write a short story called Big Game, and my surprise when it was selected to be published in the anthology, The Blackness Within.

About the Book The Blackness Within Compilation

Apex Publications is proud to announce the release of Stoker Award-nominated editor Gill Ainsworth’s latest anthology, The Blackness Within: Stories of the Pagan God Moccus.

From Africa to Australasia, from Europe to the US, take a terrifying journey led by world-renowned and up-and-coming authors of horror. See how Moccus, the Celtic God of fecundity, brings His barbaric brutality to the twenty-first century.

From: http://www.apexbookcompany.com/the-blackness-within-stories-of-the-pagan-god-moccus/

About the Story Big Game

Big Game is a modern dark fiction story combining corporate espionage, an eerie secluded cabin in the Canada wilderness, the hunting trip of a lifetime, and the Biggest Game of all.

You can read more about my story Big Game at this link.

What does it all mean?

Well, what this means is that I am now officially and forevermore a PUBLISHED AUTHOR!

Now, it’s time to work on the “bestseller” title prefix…

Ordering The Blackness Within:

You can order the paperback of The Blackness Within on Amazon, and the Kindle version is here, last time I checked.

Check out the official Big Game page here on conradzero.com for all the latest info about the story.

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.

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:

Alice In Wonderland turns 60

Believe it or not, we will soon be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the classic tale of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Disney has the combo DVD/Blu-Ray all set to launch on 11 Feb 2011.

It’s not surprising that this story manages to keep us entertained after 60 years.  The dark, childish flexibility of the mythos lends itself to endless disturbing and fascinating reinterpretations. Here are several that I’ve enjoyed and highly recommend:

• A fun and twisted mini-series called Alice released in 2009, in which a 21-year old Alice (now a judo instructor) finds her way back to a futuristic, industrialized wonderland. Tim Curry stars, and Kathy Bates plays a deliciously evil Red Queen.
• A long-running series of gratuitously sexy and gratuitously bloody comic books released under Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales started back in 2007 and continues to this day. It covers several generation of Alice’s family and their ties to Wonderland.
• A series of books called the Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.His retelling has a cool twist – Alice told the story of Wonderland to Lewis Carroll, not the other way around as we believed. Not only did he think it was fantasy, he also got the story wrong. Alice is actually heir to the throne in Wonderland, the place where ideas come from. The Hatter is actually her personal bodyguard,  the Cheshire Cat is an assassin with nine lives working for the evil Queen Redd.
• There’s an accompanying soundtrack to Frank Beddor’s Looking Glass Wars which is quite good.
• Of course, there’s the 2010 feature length Disney movie starring Johnny Depp. Tim Burton? Yay! Disney? Boo. Adequate, but could have been better.
• For many many more, check out the wikipedia listing for Works Based on Alice in Wonderland. Add your favorites to the comments section below.

Do not ask Alice. Do not mess with Alice. This cover of the game was later replaced with a less-disturbing version.

A Dark Reimagining of a Classic

Of all the reimaginings of Alice in Wonderland, none were as entertaining to me as the video game American McGee’s Alice, an overlooked masterpiece released in 2000 that mixed interesting puzzles, weapons and baddies in a breathtaking, disturbing and cleverly-designed world (Well, breathtaking for games rendered on the Quake 3 engine back in 2000.)

American McGee’s Alice starts with a teenaged Alice institutionalized, the scars on her wrists and the hollow look in her eyes tell us that she hasn’t adjusted well to her parents dying in a house fire. You can watch the game intro (and entire game walkthru) on youtube.

A casebook packaged with the game, (handwritten by her psychologist) added a spooky level of realism. The cover of the game box got the mood right – Alice wielding a cold stare and a blood-stained butcher knife, her apron covered in blood and runes. The Cheshire Cat  is a caricature of a caricature – scrawny and hairless, sporting an earring and evil looking tattoos, and a deep rich voice in the game that I just loved.

The game was wicked fun. Disturbing and entertaining. Creepy atmosphere both visually and the audio score. Fun, problem-solving sections were buffered with cut-scenes and bosses that were problems to solve in themselves – each boss had a distinct weakness, and you’d have a hell of a time beating them unless you figured it out.

I’d give the game a 9 out of 10, and the only thing stopping it from being a ten was the lame-o ending cut scene that screamed, “OK, we’re out of time and money now, give us a quick Hollywood ending!”

Good thing that’s not where the game really ends…

A Dark Extension of A Dark Reimagining of a Classic

Soon, the mythos of Alice in Wonderland will be extended even further. The man who thought enough of himself to include his own name in the game title is back. Yes, American McGee is working with EA games to release another Alice video game called Alice: Madness Returns. This game picks up right were the original game left off. From the previews, we can expect another dark and disturbing retelling of Alice that I wished Tim Burton would have made. You probably won’t want the kids to watch this one.

IGN released a short trailer on youtube, and here is the official teaser trailer from EA games:

I can’t wait.

• Alice: Madness Returns – Official Site
• Alice: Madness Returns – Facebook
• Follow the @thewhiterabbit on Twitter

The Arkham Nights Convention in Roseville, MN

I’d tried to play Arkham Horror once before, and the game host was hoping to figure out the rules on the fly. Unfortunately, the rules for Arkham Horror would drive the sanest of people barking mad, so needless to say, Cthulhu was victorious on that day.

So when I heard about Arkham Nights at Fantasy Flight Games in Roseville, MN, I figured I would have to be insane to pass it up. The part-gaming-conference, part-product-placement event offered people the chance to sign up for all the different variations and expansions of Arkham Horror, as well as the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, and the Call of Cthulhu card game, and a board game called Mansions of Madness that hasn’t even been released yet. Some of the games were being run by the game designers themselves. There was also a panel discussion with the game designers and a costume contest.

Friday I attended “How To Play Arkham Horror”  (See if you can find me in this pic.) On Saturday I played the Call of Cthulhu role playing game with one of the Fantasy Flight game designers.

Review of the Arkham Horror Board Game

For those who haven’t played it, Arkham Horror is preposterously complicated. In fact, if it bears any semblance to the struggle we’ll have to go through when Cthulhu finally does awaken…we’re fucked.

That said, the game is also preposterously fun to play. All players work together to kill monsters, close gates to strange dimensions with bad geometry, and at best, just keep the peace until the Ancient One hits the snooze button and goes back to sleep. If you’ve never played before, it’s good to have a moderator there to hold your hand, answer rules questions and give you sage advice. By the end of the game (5 hours, and we did win btw. Take THAT Elder Wimp!) the five of us noobs could have run a game without a moderator.

Review of the Arkham Nights Gaming Event

Facilities

The facilities were really nice, and just the right size for the over hundred people who showed up. I understand you can rent out table space and there are rooms in the back for those who want to run their campaign against the ancient ones in secret. Fantasy Flight Games offers a membership that provides discounts on game rental and table/room use. Yes, you can rent the games to play right there at the facility. And if you’re planning on actually getting into games like Warhammer 40K you’d be foolish to pass up that member’s discount. Just the core rulebook will set you back $75. But casual gamers won’t balk at the few bucks it costs to rent space for gaming.

No outside food is allowed, but there is a local pizza place that they will allow delivery. Pop, chips and other snacks are available in the facility.

Price

Asking people to pay twenty five bucks to play games you’re trying to sell them is steep. For the price of three people going to this event, you coulda pooled your cash, bought the game and figured it out over the course of several years. And $25 was the pre-registration price – the door admission was more. The real value in the Arkham Nights convention was the ability to play all the variations of the game, with all the expansions, (some of which are as expensive as the core game.) You also got to play with the game designers and with other enthusiastic fans of Lovecraftian Mythos. I’d say $25 was… almost worth it.

Conventions like Minnecon and Convergence charge  more than $25, but the offer way more content. Fantasy Flight Games could have offered a ten dollar Fantasy Flight Games  gift certificate with each paid registration, free membership, or better yet, knocked ten bucks off the admission price.

Programming

The discussion with the game designers and the costume contests were a nice touch, but really there could have been a lot more depth to this event. Focusing on the mythos of HP Lovecraft instead of the games (only) offered by Fantasy Flight would have made this a better event. How about a table for a local book vendor with a selection of Lovecraft’s books? How about local artists Lovecraft-inspired works? How about panels/discussions of the Chtulhu mythos? How about other vendors besides Fantasy Flight Games?

A convention with these things would pull in hundreds if not thousands of interested fans, instead of the hundred or so people who attended.  Perhaps they are building up to that. If so, this was a good start.

Scheduling

Strangely, the event organizers waited until the doors opened for people to register for game slots. This means people who showed up at the door had the same chance as someone who pre-registered to get in on the limited games. I was one of the first people in line and signed up at 6:10 for a game that started at 6:00. As you probably guessed, several games filled immediately, and other scheduled games had no one sign up for them.

Not cool.

The event coordinators should have taken game-slot registrations as people signed up. Then, the supply of available games would have been in-line with the demand of people who wanted to play them. Forcing people to fit into their ‘schedule’ didn’t really work. For example, I wanted to try out the Cthulhu card game, but Sunday was the only day I had available for it. There was only ONE Cthulhu card game on Sunday, which booked up immediately. As a person who pre-registered and paid a more-than-modest admission price, I was disappointed.

Hopefully, the administrators of Arkham Nights will take what they’ve learned from this event and use it to make future iterations of Arkham Nights even better. By offering a little more for a little less, and fixing the scheduling issues, Arkham Nights could really take off and become something to look forward to each year.

How can any fan of HP Lovecraft not pick up a book with a title like “The Mall of Cthulhu”? For those who aren’t familiar with Lovecraft’s work, one of his more famous writings is called The Call of Cthulhu, and deals with a tentacled monster from another dimension that’s so mind-numbingly horrific that to even describe it would drive you mad, mad I say, so as I public service I won’t describe it.

The cover art is top-notch, causing the book to damned near leap off the shelf at me. So with a quick run through my nearly foolproof book pre-screening system, and I was ready for some tentacle-laden, Lovecraftian, horror-comedy.

Publisher’s Synopsis

A decade ago, college student Laura Harker was saved from a fate worse than death at the hands (and fangs) of a centuries-old vampire priestess and her Satanic minions. Her rescuer, an awkward, geeky folklore student named Teddy, single-handedly slew the undead occupants of the Omega Alpha sorority house, spurred into heroic action by fate itself, inexorably intertwining his and Laura’s destinies.

After navigating her way through law school, Laura is now a junior FBI agent assigned to the Bureau’s Boston office. Unfortunately, she finds her job involves more paperwork than adventure. Ted, on the other hand, has spent the past decade perfecting the ultimate latte, and works as a barista in a nearby corporate chain coffeehouse named for a character in Moby Dick.

When Ted stumbles onto a group of Cthulhu cultists planning to awaken the Old Ones through mystic incantations culled from the fabled Necronomicon, calling forth eldritch horrors into an unsuspecting world. He and Laura must spring into action, traveling from Boston to the seemingly-peaceful suburbs of Providence and beyond, all the way to the sanity-shattering non-Euclidian alleyways and towers of dread R’lyeh itself, in order to prevent an innocent shopping center from turning into… The Mall of Cthulhu.

-From http://nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=119

My Review

At 235 pages, The Mall of Cthulhu was a quick read. The pace was snappy. The writing was clean and error-free.

The plot flowed well, although there were a couple leaps of faith that require you to not suspend your disbelief as much as tie it up in a rubber gimp outfit. I know Providence, Rhode Island isn’t very big, but running into a Cthulhu cultist (one that you are looking for, no less) buying bayberry spice candles at Ye Olde New England Candlery in the mall isn’t a stretch, it’s a tear in the space-time continuum. However, running into a Cthulhu cultist buying bayberry spice candles at the Ye Olde New England Candlery is damn funny. Seamus does a good job of using comedy as an effective plot-patching, hand-waving, rubber-chicken-waving tool. When the plot jumped, I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get mad about it.

The story is written from 3rd person limited POV, bouncing back and forth between two protagonists: Ted, the scruffy and emotionally damaged barista with the inner resources to lop vampires heads off with an axe when necessary, but not the ability to cope with the memories of his actions, and Laura, the hot and proper, emotionally damaged, lesbian FBI agent. The dynamic between these two is great, and the way it changes through the story (when a little red pepper is added…) is well done.

Those expecting a HP Lovecraft clone may be disappointed. This is a parody. However, fans of Lovecraft will get more laughs out of this story. The part where Ted is stuck in R’lyeh and ponders “…his own reality with its comforting, Euclidean geometry…” had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt. And the name dropping of August Derleth and such… well, if you don’t get it, it won’t ruin the book for you, but it adds to the humor if you’re in on the jokes.

Yes, HP Lovecraft was a Racist

Many of the reviewers on Amazon.com gave this book poor reviews because of references to racism and politics. The Mall of Cthulhu has plenty of references to HP Lovecraft as a racist / white supremacist. There’s no question that he was racist in real life. If there was any doubt, a little poem discussing the Gods creating African Americans should clear this issue up:

“…A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure, Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.”

- HP Lovecraft ‘On the Creation of Niggers’

Q.E.D. HP Lovecraft. Racist. But we can all agree that he wrote some amazing stories, and I don’t understand why it’s such a task to separate the artist from the art. Walt Disney,  Wesley Snipes, and Phil Spector might each have some whacked-out values that few sane people would agree with, but do we need to disclaimer all their art: Warning – Contents created by a nazi / tax dodger / psychotic, homicidal maniac! Of course not.

Seamus had the opportunity to show us by example that he didn’t approve of Lovecraft’s views by leaving that kind of segregation and hatred out of his own work. Instead, he chose to “hate the haters” and he created bad guys who weren’t bad enough because they were trying to destroy the world, they also had white supremacist pamphlets in their bathrooms, and called those opposed to their plans “Race traitors” (Huh? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call people trying to destroy the world “Species traitors”?)

Whatever. I would have enjoyed the story more without the racial and political undertones. They were unnecessary and took away from the plot and humor of the story. But they didn’t ruin the story for me as they did for some people. If you are sensitive to these issues, beware. If you are secure in your political and racial views, then this book won’t upset you.

The Author – Seamus Cooper

You won’t find much online about Seamus Cooper. This interview of Seamus Cooper on brendanhalpin.com makes him out as a Luddite when it comes to the internet and a Harlan Ellison-ite about most everything else. But he seems to have come around since then, since he can now be found on Twitter and Facebook:

• Seamus Cooper on Facebook
• Seamus Cooper on Twitter

Free E-Book Sequel

Seamus has posted a free e-book sequel to The Mall of Cthulhu called Dog Walk Of The Dead, and depending on interest in the free e-book, he just might write/release more material for The Mall of Cthulhu mythos.

Free E-book of The Mall of Chtulhu

Due to a falling out with his publisher, Night Shade Books, Seamus decided to release The Mall of Cthulhu for free on Scribd, and for $2.99 on Amazon’s Kindle, in an attempt to undercut his unpaying publisher.  I can’t find either version now, 17 July 2010. This might be related to Seamus and Night Shade Books coming to some resolution, which you can read about here.

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero