A Date With Death

He sat nervously at the table, checking his watch. He was new to this online dating thing. He’d never thought of himself as particularly handsome nor possessed of much of a personality. He was pretty much a boring fellow. The most exciting thing that had ever happened to him was missing a flight.

Even his “narrow brush with death” stories were dull. He had been booked to fly aboard Flight 392 to Cincinnati for an insurance conference when he got inexplicably but violently ill. He spent the next two hours in the bathroom, puking his guts out. He’d wound up missing the flight which was a good thing because one of its fuel lines had ruptured and soaked the engine with gasoline and the plane had exploded, killing everyone onboard.

Except for Milton, who was at first erroneously reported as one of the dead. Nobody had noticed, even those who knew he was supposed to be on that plane. That had been a few months ago, and things had pretty much settled back to normal, which for Milton was an epic shitfest of craptastic proportion.

Milton had always had trouble meeting girls. Not only was he not a looker he had the extra added attraction of being insanely shy. In his mid-30s, he hadn’t had a serious girlfriend ever nor had he ever been laid unless you count a hurried handjob that he’d gotten from a friend of his sister in high school in exchange for writing all of her term papers senior year.

Since the plane incident he’d been loath to leave his apartment. He felt as if he’d cheated death and death might have his eye on him. He felt this odd sensation as he walked around the apartment like something was watching him. He chalked it up to jitters and decided finally he needed to get out. On the spur of the moment, he signed up for an online dating service.

It was all kind of confusing and the questionnaire was rather personal. He debated as to whether to lie about his experiences and at last chose not to – Milton was honest if not experienced; he felt any date would know that he was inexperienced right away and best not to waste their time with false expectations

So imagine his surprise after a week of nothing he got a response. And not from just anyone but from a gorgeous blonde that would make Nicole Kidman look homely. She said she was interested and wanted to meet for dinner; Milton had chosen the bistro but pretty soon the nerves began to set in. It was all he could do to get himself ready and tying his tie had been a nightmare.

Still, he went out to the dinner optimistic. Maybe even a homely fellow like him could find happiness. So I showed up in a suit and tie, waiting patiently as she was fashionably late.

Then she showed, her golden hair offset by a jet black dress, elegant and yet sexy; off one shoulder, deep cleavage and short showing plenty of leg. Her eyes were full of merriment as she crossed the room, her eyes full of joy and delight. Milton rose and reverently took her hand and kissed it European-style. She looked a little surprised but pleased.

“So what’s good here,” she asked taking the menu. He was dumbstruck for a few minutes but found his voice. “I don’t know. I’ve never been here before” She laughed, a silvery sound and tossed her hair back, Rita Hayworth-style. “Then we’ll explore together.” She ordered a filet mignon rare, while Milton ordered a roast chicken dish which was about the limits of what he could afford.

They made small talk over salad; when the main course arrived, she dug in with great gusto while Milton picked at his chicken. She was way out of his league and he knew it but if she didn’t know it then he wasn’t about to tell her. Things were going so much better than he ever expected they would.

They began telling stories of their lives together; she talked about her job which took her all over the world and left little time for herself; she didn’t specify but it sounded like some sort of executive position, or at least something in acquisitions. He told her about his recent luck, which she listened to, eyes glued to him as if there had been Krazy Glue involved.

She asked a lot of questions about how he felt about surviving; good, he supposed but there was a lot of guilt. Why had so many died and he was spared? She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know,” she said, “It almost sounds like there was a mistake in accounting, don’t you think?” That took him a little bit aback but he shrugged, not wanting to disagree when things are going so well.

“Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if you’d made the flight?” she asked him. He was going to say no but something about her made him completely at ease, as if telling the truth was all right no matter how horrible. “Sometimes,” he admitted, “I imagine sitting in my seat, hearing the explosion and seeing the flames approaching. It all seems so real but then I wake up at home in my bed. There are days when I’m so lonely I wish I had made that flight.”

She gave him a sympathetic look. “You haven’t tried to kill yourself have you?” He shook his head vehemently. “Oh no, no, no, no, no. When I was younger, yeah but not really seriously. I took a bunch of pills but just threw them up. I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” She looked at him strangely but said “Yes Milton, for everything there is a time, including dying.”

Again, a strange answer but Milton found himself answering “I guess it just wasn’t my time yet.” She laughed, but there was an edge to it Milton didn’t like. He wondered if he liked where this conversation was going. She responded “And how would you know that it wasn’t?” She shook her head. “It’s not like you get an e-mail telling you that you’re going to die next Thursday. No phone calls saying death is going to visit between two and four pm the next day. Death comes when death comes and that’s all there is to it. But sometimes a few people fall through the cracks. They get a bit of extra time. Do you follow soccer Milton?” Milton couldn’t say that he did.

She went on, “In a soccer game after regulation time ends, time is added for all the stoppages – penalties, injuries, that sort of thing. The game doesn’t end until that extra time is over. That’s what it’s called Milton, extra time. It sounds to me that you’ve been living on extra time.” Milton shrugged. “I suppose so. Of course there’s no way to really know.”

She shook her head. “Oh but there is. Let me see….” She picked up her purse and started rummaging through it. Finally, she found what she was looking for. “Here it is! Take a look” and she handed Milton what looked like a computer printout.

On it there were some of the facts of his life; his date of birth, where he went to school, how old he was when he lost his virginity (that field was blank), where he worked, how much he made – his whole life reduced to a single sheet of paper. He shook his head ruefully…and then turned pale.

At the bottom it read “Date of Death: 07/22/12.” The date of the plane crash. He looked up at her quizzically. “I don’t understand.” Her eyes rolled. “For a smart guy Milton you can be pretty dense. It’s right there in black and white. You were meant to be on that flight. So were a bunch of teenagers returning home from space camp and I have to tell you, it’s been insane chasing them down.”

She got up and Milton took another bite of his chicken, swallowing the piece before he’d thoroughly chewed it. Abruptly he felt something scratchy going down his throat – and lodging there. He couldn’t breathe. He began to gag, trying to expel the object. “A chicken bone, Milton. Not the most glorious way to go – I’m sure you’d have gotten more sympathy from dying in the plane crash but I promise you, this is less painful.”

As he choked, he gasped out “H-help. Please. Hit my back…do someth….” he was losing air fast.  She shook her head sadly. “I have a tally to keep Milton. All must be accounted for but sometimes some slip through the cracks. I have to find them and I really don’t have the staff for it. It’s a big world, after all. But now, with you, the balance is restored. Everything is as it should be again.”

He tried to get up but Milton felt numb everywhere. He fell to the floor. She stood over him, sorrowfully. “It’s not like the movie Milton. I don’t make these elaborate, sophisticated accidents. It just causes too much attention. I find simple is better, don’t you?” The fields of his vision were turning black. She picked up her purse which he swore looked like a scythe, pausing thoughtfully to leave cash for the bill and a tip. She bid him a jaunty farewell as she walked away into the night. His last thoughts were to wonder why his dates always went so badly at the end.

Final Destination 5

The eyes have it.

(2011) Horror (New Line) Nicholas D’Agosta, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Arlen Escarpeta, David Koechner, Tony Todd, Courtney B. Vance, P.J. Byrne, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes-Wood, Brent Stait, Roman Podhora, Jasmin Dring, Barclay Hope, Chasty Ballesteros. Directed by Stephen Quale

 

By now most filmgoers are at least aware of the movies in the Final Destination series. Starting in 2000 with Final Destination and continuing up to 2009 with the first 3D installment, The Final Destination the formula hasn’t varied much which has been both good and bad. Obviously audiences haven’t tired of it yet for here is the fifth installment of the series.

Like all the other movies, this one begins with a major disaster – in this case, a bridge collapse. Young Sam Lawton (D’Agosta), who works for a paper company whose employees are off to a corporate retreat (but really wants to be a chef which he does part time in the evenings) has a vivid premonition about the event and becomes so hysterical about it that he gets most of his friends off the bus just in time to avoid the catastrophe which happens pretty much as he calls it.

This gets the attention of Agent Jim Block (Vance) of the FBI who wonders how anyone could have foreseen the event without having a hand in it. It also gets the attention of Death who is mighty pissed off that he was cheated of the six or seven souls (out of hundreds) that Sam saved. Apparently Death is a greedy bastard.

The rest of the movie progresses pretty much the same way most of the other movies have – with each of the survivors being whacked by death but not in conventional, easy ways. No, when you piss of Death you have to go in an elaborate, gruesome demise that Rube Goldberg might have loved. How boring would it be if Death just gave them all cancer?

Make no mistake about it, you go to these movies (or rent them or stream them or watch them on cable) for the death sequences. Here the producers literally handicap themselves by telling you that the deaths will occur in the same order they did in Sam’s premonition. So when it comes down to it, his best friend Peter (Fisher), his comely ex-girlfriend Molly (Bell), Peter’s young hot gymnast chick Candice (Wroe), the office Lothario (Byrne), the head honcho (Koechner) and the bitchy secretary (MacInnes-Wood) are all set up for their last rites and you know that each one is coming. The trick is to pull them off in such a way that the audience doesn’t see it coming.

And at that Quale and company excel. The set-ups are not only sufficiently elaborate but also throw lots of red herrings at you; is the gymnast going to be squashed by an air conditioning unit that looks like it’s about to fall? Or be electrocuted in a puddle of water that is forming below the a/c? Perhaps the upturned screw on her balance bar will make it’s way into her eye? Or will it be none of the above.

In almost every death sequence the last applies. The deaths are gruesome yes, but there’s also an element of comedy to some of them and quite frankly, the mis-direction had me again and again. That’s a pretty good feat for any horror film out there.

As with the other films in the series, the cast is pretty much done for looks alone. The young cast are competent enough but none of them really stand out which you would expect since their sole purpose is to be ground up like sausages. The trick is to keep the audience not just entertained but invested and they accomplish that here.

There’s also a nice twist at the end which will have fans of the series having a complete a-ha moment (sharp-eyed viewers might be able to figure it out but you have to look hard because the filmmakers were awfully crafty about it). For my money, this was one of the best films in the series and it left me not minding at all if there’s a sixth installment down the line. Whether there will be is still up in the air – the movie was still nicely profitable but it’s U.S. box office take was significantly down, a troubling factor that might cause the producers to quit while they’re ahead.

This one shows that there is still life in the series given a creative writer and director. However if this is to be the swan song of the series, at least it would go out on top

WHY RENT THIS: One of the best in the series. Nifty twist at the end.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Doesn’t deviate from the formula – except in one significant way at the end.

FAMILY VALUES:  While there’s  bit of foul language, it’s the death scenes – as marvelously inventive and elaborate as they are – that are gruesome and violent. No kids, in other words..

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The company that most of the cast works for is called Presage Paper. Presage means “a sign or warning that something, typically unpleasant, will soon happen; an omen or a portent.”

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There are some featurettes on the death scenes and how they were created, which you would expect. Otherwise…nada.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $157.9M on a $40M production budget; this was a hit but curiously an international one; the U.S. take of the box office was only $42M.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: My Soul to Take

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: The Final Day of Six Days of Darkness 2012!

Remote Control

It’s just a job. Any trained monkey can do it. I sit in a room and watch security monitors. That’s it. I don’t even have to get my ass out of my chair other than to head to the vending machine to grab some Mountain Dew.

I’m not even anywhere near the place. Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital is in rural Maryland. I’m in Vancouver, part of a security company that monitors large abandoned buildings in the hopes of keeping out squatters and vandals for the property owners until such time as they either restore, rebuild or demolish. Since the State of Maryland is responsible for Collingwood, I doubt if any of the three are going to happen anytime soon.

The State installed our security cameras after a TV crew disappeared while filming there in 2011. An extensive search of the building and grounds failed to find anything of them except for traces – a cooler full of rotting sandwiches, camera and audio equipment and a woman’s shirt. They haven’t turned up a trace of their bodies.

Night after night we watch, myself or other employees. We all rotate on different buildings – that way we keep fresh eyes on things. Tonight I was assigned Collingwood. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Sometimes weird shit happens – cameras blank out for no reason then just turn back on as if nothing had happened. It’s annoying as fuck. Also there are instances of pixilation in the feed. Digital distortions – ghosts in the machine my supervisor calls them. We’ve repaired and replaced the cameras there several times over with no improvement. We think there might be some sort of magnetic rock vein in the bedrock, but so far nothing tangible has been turned up.

Usually there are a lot of people here at night – that’s when we do most of our monitoring. However today was a little different. We’re moving into a new building near Stanley Park which suits me just fine. However not all of the stations were moved in time – some sort of scheduling fuck-up – so I’m alone in the old building. They haven’t moved the day shift’s stuff there yet – they won’t until the weekend – so I’m thankfully not in an empty office – but it’s still kind of creepy.

I stretch, looking at the various camera positions. All quiet on the Western Front. Part of me wants to find a place to curl up and sleep but if someone discovered me I’d be fired on the spot. So I just stretch and yawn and drink Mountain Dew, eating Snickers bars and Hot Pockets and texting my girlfriend on my iPhone. A 20th century job for a 21st century life.

I’m looking down at a particularly racy nude pic she’s sent me (she’s lonely, the little minx) when my eye is caught by some movement on the edge of my vision. I look up at the monitors. Nothing. Nothing on Camera 1. Nothing on Camera 2. Nothing on Camera 3. Nothing on Cameras 4,5,6,7,8….hell nothing on any cameras.

I stare for a bit then go back to perving on my baby’s picture. Then movement again. Like an itch I can’t scratch. I look up annoyed. Nothing. I keep my eyes on the monitors. Nothing happens. Nothing moves. Finally with a sigh, my girlfriend awaits me. I look down.

A door slams shut. Not like it was shut slowly – it was slammed. I saw it. No breeze through the hallway would have shut a door like that. It was like an angry child flinging the door shut. No way that was air pressure. I saw it.

I peer at the cameras. I see nobody. Nothing. Some digital distortions start to pop up. Then dozens . Then hundreds. I could hardly see the interior of Collingwood there were so many. Then, abruptly they were gone.

Everything was quiet again but I had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like this was the calm before the storm.

I hate it when I’m right. All the doors on all the cameras started to open and shut, open and shut, banging against the jams. They’re flapping like wings on some hideous bird. I stand up, my chair pushed back and rolling away. I think I might have even screamed. I’m not one to believe in ghosts but what else could be causing this? I go to my alert phone to call my boss and the line is dead. Figures. Just my luck that it’s going to get worse.

I saw them. Hideous humans, or maybe once they were human but they aren’t that now. Impossibly thin and spindly with legs that went on and on. Dead black eyes. Mottled skin. Open mouths, impossibly wide. And teeth. And teeth.

One comes right up to the camera I’m looking at, grinning at me maniacally. The eyes are wild and knowing, impossibly wise and incredibly old – and evil beyond measure. He reaches out and I am a deer in the headlights, unable to move. Unable to scream. My phone drops to the floor from nerveless fingers.

Hand reach through the monitor and grab me. Now I find my voice but it’s too late. I’m dragged closer to the monitors, closer and closer. I struggle, I dig in my heels but these hands are incredibly strong. He drags me closer and closer to the edge. I scream again in despair. I don’t want to go to Collingwood. I don’t want to go there. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. Mommyyyyyyyyyyyy and it all goes dark.

Grave Encounters

The best thing about zombie sex is the cuddling afterwards.

(2011) Horror (Tribeca) Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Juan Riedinger, Merwin Mondesir, Mackenzie Gray, Shawn Macdonald, Arthur Corber, Bob Rathie, Ben Wilkinson, Alex Sander, Fred Keating, Luis Javier, Michelle Cummins, Eva Gifford. Directed by The Vicious Brothers

Be careful when you go looking for something, you just might find it. If you’re the host of a paranormal activity television show, that could just be fatal.

We are told at the beginning that there once was a television show named Grave Encounters (think “Paranormal State” for those who are familiar with it) starring Lance Preston (Rogerson) as the host. Lance and his team – Matt (Riedinger) the tech guy, Sasha (Gryzko) the occult expert, Houston  (Gray) the psychic and T.C (Mondesir) the cameraman. They filmed five episodes and were working on a sixth when they mysteriously disappeared.

Later, this footage came to light. It shows the team at Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital in rural Maryland (with Vancouver subbing) where they are investigating rumors of paranormal phenomenon. It’s an old hospital with lots of tunnels and endless hallways. During its heyday, one Dr. Arthur Friedkin (Corber) had developed a sinister reputation or the excessive amount of lobotomies that were performed at Collingwood.

The hospital caretaker (Rathie) shows them around and gives the crew an interview about the things he’s experienced, but it turns out that he was urged by Lance to exaggerate and make up things in order for the hospital to seem more malevolent. In fact, in some candid “behind-the-scenes” footage, it becomes clear that the team doesn’t believe in the paranormal at all and are mainly a bunch of charlatans looking for a paycheck.

Of course, you can guess what happens next. They get themselves locked in for the night and set up cameras to “document” the unexplainable phenomena that occur, which they don’t expect to. Then things start to occur, harmless at first but soon growing more and more disturbing. They are quite thankful when the appointed hour comes for the caretaker to arrive and unlock the doors – except he doesn’t. Matt, out to retrieve the cameras, disappears. Thing start to get much more dire – their food supply rots away. They see gruesome apparitions with malevolent intent. And they start feuding among themselves. They try to break out – but the doorways out lead into hallways. There is no escape…can they find their way out of this nightmare?

Sure, I grant you that the found footage genre has probably outstayed its welcome but this film actually uses a pretty good backstory – if you’ve seen paranormal TV programs with smarmy hosts, you’ll get a lot of the in-jokes here.

More importantly, they deliver on the scares. The demons and ghouls that populate the eternally dark landscape of Collingwood are well done and the stuff of nightmares. Sure, some of the set-ups are of the been-there-done-that variety but they’re still effective. The last third of the movie is a definite express train to Hell.

Like a lot of these movies, the acting is pretty rudimentary. Rogerson gets most of the attention and as the puffed up host who thinks he’s all that, does pretty well. Still, you’re not seeing this for future appearances on In the Actors Studio with James Lipton. You want to be scared and shocked and thrilled and this delivers on all of that. I was pleasantly surprised; I thought it would be like a lot of tired found footage films we’ve been seeing of late. Yeah, I’m a little tired of the concept but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for good movies within the genre

WHY RENT THIS: Nice creepy vibe. Some real awesome scares. Like the TV show conceit.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Kind of been-there done-that with the found footage.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some pretty intense scares, a bit of bad language and some violent and terrifying images.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The Vicious Brothers are known to their parents as Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $5.4M on a $2M production budget; this movie was profitable.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Paranormal Activity

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Day 5 of the Six Days of Darkness

A Walking Tour of Hell

At the side of the road, the Jeep sat, steam and smoke rising from the engine. Fuck. Double fuck. I didn’t have to pop the hood to know that my reliable Jeep had run its last mile. Fortunately, the road was clear as far as I could see in both directions but it wouldn’t stay that way. Night would fall.

I had my backpack and my canvas bag full of what I needed just in case the worst happened – and it just did. I had plenty of fire power and as much ammo as I could carry, as well as my trusty katana sword for when the ammo ran out. The sun was high but night would come. Night was when they hunted.

I began walking north, always north. The probe had fallen in the south, two and a half years ago. It had crashed in the jungles of Central Mexico. NASA had sent it into the Dickering-Piedmont comet to pick up samples from the comet halo for reasons nobody fucking cares about except some science geeks who’d never gotten laid and were compensating by bringing in some alien biological material that fucked things up big time on the guidance system of the probe, causing it to malfunction and land thousands of miles from where it was supposed to. And that same biological material began interacting with the flora and fauna of the rain forest of the high plains, mutating them into hideous monsters each more ravenous than the last. Soon most of Mexico was overrun as mankind moved down a notch on the food chain.

At first the 100 foot high steel wall on the American border kept all the monsters in Mexico but the aliens were clever adaptors. Wings were sprouted an aggressive intelligent plants sent tendrils slithering under the walls, toppling them in some cases or popping up on the other side in others. The Southwest was an alien stronghold in less than 30 days.

But there was a limit. Apparently the aliens thrived only in a narrow temperature range. The cities in higher elevations and northerly latitudes survived. Elsewhere….let’s just say that those that didn’t leave the cities got eaten.

Yes, that’s right. These completely alien life forms that managed to survive in a comet halo found a taste for human flesh. It took a lot of biologists by surprise too (although not as much as the inhabitants of central Mexico who wound up as brunch for broodmares and psychobabblers – the names these things got were facetious at best and disrespectful at worst – but nonetheless it didn’t matter if you died in the fangs of a Gibbering Idiot or at the claws of a Razorslash. Dead is dead.

I kept my eyes open and my gun cocked and loaded. Although the visibility was excellent here – it always is along the Roads – there are things that can charge at 100mph like a Hell’s Pegasus or a Demonspeed. There are things that hide and things that adopt the shapes and forms of other things, like the Lurker and the Chameleon Beast. There are a million ways to die in the Infested Zone and here I was 50 miles from the nearest border.

I’ve walked in the Zone before but only with armed columns of men armed with big time bang bang and aerial support. The common school of thought is that a lone person in the Zone won’t last 24 hours. I’ve never heard of someone who walked 50 miles alone through the Zone and lived  to tell about it. Inside, I was screaming in fear but that wouldn’t do me any good. The only slender chance I had at survival was to stay calm, stay along the road and hope for the best.

I hadn’t gone 500 yards before the sweat began to pour. It wasn’t just the sun but deep down I knew that the odds are that I wouldn’t be around too long after the sun went down – and there were plenty of beasts that would do me in during daylight hours as well. I felt the shakes coming on – I’d seen a lot of good men die horribly at the hands, claws, stingers, fangs, pincers and venom of these things. I gave my own face a hard slap. I couldn’t afford panic. Panic makes people dead in the Zone, even in the company of highly trained soldiers. It was a fact that no matter how large, how well-armed the party that went into the Zone was, there would always – and I mean always – be at least a 10% fatality rate. Some battalions went in and were never heard from again.

I kept going at as fast a clip as I thought was safe. Part of me wanted to panic and sprint and keep sprinting but that would be fatal. Sooner or later I’d tire out and when that happened I’d be easy prey. My best defense was to be alert and focused. I scanned the horizons, keeping a hundred count on my steps and on one hundred I’d check the horizon behind me to see if I was being stalked. I kept that vigilance going for at least six miles.

It paid off, too. About 15-20 minutes in I heard a tell tale “ting-ting-ting” sounds coming from my eight o’clock. I turned to my left and saw it flying low over the hill. It was close enough that I could hear the buzzing of its wings. The Ting Ting knew I was there long before I knew it was there. It resembled a dragonfly with a kind of Dr Seuss-looking head  that had a long protuberance (kind of like a lily stalk) with a bell-shaped chitinous mass growing out of its end. It was from here that the ting-ting sound emanated from. For some reason the acoustic properties of the mass were stupendous – you could hear it coming from a mile away. Literally.

Ting Tings are impressive flyers but not really fine hunters – they really can’t sneak up on things. Humans can easily evade them and I did. It made a lazy pass in my general direction and rather than dive to the ground (which will get you killed; once you’re on the ground for any creature you’re not getting up) I waited until the last moment and leaped aside, a game of Infested Chicken. It went buzzing off, the ting-ting-ting of its bell ringing in my ears – Edgar Allen Poe, eat your heart out!

In fact, that’s how it immobilizes its prey; the sonic wave that it produces can actually cause temporary paralysis on certain smaller animals. On a human it can cause temporary deafness if the animal is large enough. This one was more of an adolescent sized which explains why a single one of them would take on a human male. This one had about a six foot wingspan – I’ve seen Ting Tings with spans twice that. It was making another pass at me which wouldn’t do at all – I couldn’t waste all day with a teenaged monster while there were other things lurking nearby that wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of tired-out prey.

I pulled out my trusty 12-gauge shotgun and took aim. Either this creature was too stupid to realize it was in danger or it was incredibly desperate. In either case I waited until it came close enough for a can’t-miss shot. BLAM! Ichor everywhere. Dead Ting Ting. Keep moving.

I did pick up the pace a little. The noise and the stench of the dead monster would bring others, including some Mama and Papa Ting Tings and those were large enough to kill a human adult. If they came at me one at a time I could pick them off all day but a swarm of them would be more than I could handle. I kept moving.

The Jeep, like any vehicle that is permitted in the Infested Zone, had a GPS system that keeps track of the local infestations. As the sun began to move further and further west, I heard the voice activated system in my ear – I’d removed the GPS and put it in my pack, linking it to my Bluetooth receiver. “Entering Ainsworth, Nebraska zone. Bad Emmetts and Devil Walkers detected here.

I cursed. Bad Emmetts were bad enough but easily avoidable; they hung out in trees and liked to drop down on their prey. They made little nests about the size of coconuts and secreted an acid out of their mouths that melted the bottom when they detected prey coming. They’d drop down onto their prey and burrow into them. They lay their eggs and as they do they secrete another liquid, this time causing full paralysis in the victim. Three days later their eggs hatch and a thousand Bad Emmetts eat their way out of the victim who is alive and fully conscious while it happens. It’s a real awful way to go and while I’m not exactly sure why it got the name, they are bad news indeed.

A Devil Walker is worse news. They are like a centipede on radioactive steroids. A Devil Walker is about a mile long and is all legs and teeth. They walk like a centipede but each segment has a mouth with mandibles that are sharp enough to cut through a tree trunk. Once spotted by a Devil Walker, a lone human is toast. They are far too big and far too fast to get away from and killing them is a waste of time; they can be killed but you have to kill every segment, not just the head and for full-grown adults it takes a rocket launcher to kill a single segments and an adult can have anywhere from 75-450 segments.

Needless to say, I’m not eager to run into one of those. The one advantage that I have over a Devil Walker is that they’re so big I can see them from far enough away to avoid them, but if I miss one and it crosses the road in front of me or behind me and it’s smell receptors (located just above their mouths) will detect me and I’ll be spending eternity being digested.

With the sun going down I had to be careful. In the dark Devil Walkers are much harder to spot. Still, keeping to the road would be the only way I could survive this and if I could keep to the road, I might live through the night. The problem is that there is no lights on the road – lights attract critters. For the same reason I couldn’t use a flashlight or a torch; for many of the creatures that’s just like ringing the dinner bell. I do have night vision goggles but they aren’t always helpful with far-off objects. Indeed, I’ll just have to keep my wits about me and hope I can walk the 50 miles before dusk of the second day.

Much of why patrols are still sent out is to pick up human stragglers like me and to make periodic “herd” thinning inroads so that the population didn’t get so large that the food supply would dwindle, forcing them to come north where the remaining people are. They don’t like the cold but it doesn’t kill them. At least, not as far as we know.

It was with a lot of relief I saw the river in the distance and realized I was approaching the Platte. I hadn’t seen any Bad Emmetts and only one Devil Walker but it was behind me, moving away thankfully. I hadn’t seen any up close and I wouldn’t mind keeping it that way.

The smugly emotionless voice of the GPS intoned. “Exiting Ainsworth, Nebraska zone. Now entering Platte-Keller Zone. Killfish, Deathshead Wolves, Yellow Terror, Lobstermen and Decapitators all detected here.” I swore quietly to myself. All of those were night feeders and it was well past dark.  I didn’t dare stay where I was – I was on flat prairie land and there was really no way to know if a Devil Walker was approaching.

But there was more forested land here. Trees. Places for things to hide. However I’d rather take on a thousand Lobstermen than one Devil Walker. However, my odds for survival in both cases were almost Nil. With a sigh I started my way into the Zone.

My hair was standing on end. I felt an unreasoning fear. I knew I was going to die and I was a sitting duck out on that road. Maybe if I got in amongst those trees I’d have a chance. They’ll offer some cover and…

I whirled around and started firing my rail gun into the trees. They exploded with a fiery bang and a shrieking Yellow Terror flew out and ambled away from the road. The monstrous creature had shaggy yellow fur and a half-formed face with large saucer-like black eyes, It had appendages but no recognizable hand or feet.

Yellow terrors aren’t physical specimens but they have powerful psychic abilities. They can project fear and curiosity and all sorts of emotions designed to get their victims to come to them. They really aren’t physical specimens but once their victims are near enough they have a spike like appendage in one and sometimes both arms that they stab their victim with which contains a toxin that stops the heart of their prey. They then drag their victim back to their lair and consume them at their leisure. They are easily frightened off.

I heard a bone-chilling howl and picked up the pace. Deathshead Wolves are the most dangerous predators that aren’t 50 feet tall. Like North American wolves, they hunt in packs. But Deathshead Wolves are far more vicious and deadly. Their skulls have no skin or fur – only gone with sunken eyes that are protected with a strong membrane that allows them to see much farther than terrestrial wolves.

They have razor sharp teeth that can tear chunks of flesh and entire limbs from their victims. They have powerful legs with sharp claws which they rarely use in an offensive capacity. No, they prefer to attack with their tails which have giant scorpion-like stingers which can be used as a sword and go clean through an adult body, or as a toxin which causes an agonizing feeling of pain that simply incapacitates their victims before being eaten of course. All these damned things eat us.

The woods were beginning to get closer and closer to the roads. Forested areas are far more dangerous than the plains. The trees can shelter and hide; things can attack without warning and the element of surprise can finish  you off. I looked at them nervously, dreading an explosion of fur and fang charging from the woods. I’m a pretty accurate shot but at night it is far more dicey to hit a charging animal than it is during the day.

Nothing came charging out though and I continued to move at a steady pace. Fatigue would be setting in; I took brief 5 minute breaks and sometimes slowed the pace a bit when there was more distance from the treeline. I had a long distance sniper rifle loaded with phosphorous tipped tracer bullets. Those were pretty lethal to anything that lived in this hellhole.

When I got to the Platte River it was nearly 2am and I was cold even in the warm clothes and armor I was wearing. I could see Killfish wriggling in the river from the bridge. I kept in the middle of the bridge – Killfish could leap high enough to grab someone from the side of the bridge and pull them down into the river. Also Lobstermen liked to hide under bridges and attack. I thought I could hear the clicking sound of their claws but so far none o those horrors had made their way out onto the bridge.

Crossing the Platte was nerve-wracking and twice I saw movement which led to shots being fired. I knew there were all sorts of things just under the bridge, but the sound of gunfire made them a bit more wary. However, near the end of the bridge I saw three of them emerging from under the side of the bridge. They were bipedal with large claws, two additional arms, a red carapace and a flat head with eye stalks protruding from the top. They were close so I pulled out my 12 gauge and blew off the heads of the first two. The third was on me before I could reload and was far too fast to outrun so I dropped the shotgun and pulled out the katana. The creature didn’t feint but came straight at me as most of these monsters always did.

I swung head on and severed one of it’s secondary arms. It shrieked, an unearthly sound but I’d been trained to ignore their noises. It came after me again and lost a claw for its troubles. When I took one of its eyestalks as well it decided to cut its losses and ran off but I knew its cousins would be making an appearance soon. Fortunately, I was close to the end of the bridge and crossed without further incident. When I looked back I saw a swarm of creatures including lobstermen feeding on the corpses that I’d created. Better them than me.

Daylight broke as I was passing from the Platte area and the terrain reverted to prairie. It would be a scorcher for sure. I began to think that I had a shot. After the bridge I’d seen a couple of Decapitators gibbering and lurching along like they usually do but I knew enough not to approach them. They lull their prey into thinking they weren’t a serious threat but once the victim came close enough they’d pounce and pull off their heads with terrifyingly lethal speed. They didn’t come any closer and I continued on my way.

The border was within reach. My feet ached and I was bone weary; I’d been walking for nearly 24 hours straight and I was conserving energy as much as possible. I was OK on supplies – my 12 gauge was gone but most of my other weapons were available, but that bag was getting heavy. I might have to lighten my load soon.

This was some of the more dangerous territory. Unkels roam this territory – ant-like creatures the size of a grizzly bear with a caustic acid that secretes from their mandibles. Not that hard to kill one at a time but they hunt in groups of hundreds and thousands.. You run out of ammo sooner or later and once that happens, they take you down to the nest and let the queen digest you. While you’re still alive from what I understand although how they figured that out I have no idea.

Some of the bigger monsters were out here, 50, 100 feet tall some of them. So tall they barely took notice of us humans but they could still crush us like a bug without even noticing. Many of my compadres have ended up a squashed bug on the bottom of their feet. And there were a few of the big ones who could be counted to take on a human battalion just for shits and giggles.

The day wore on and I was running low on water. I’d seen a few Pickle Groovers, little green buggers that love to find unprotected skin and burrow in. Get enough of them in you and that’s all she wrote but thus far none of them have been able to find a spot on me (thank God for head-to-toe body armor) and I was dripping sweat. I knew dehydration could be an issue but there was hope; on the horizon I could see the wall. I set my locator beacon on and hoped that someone was listening. Maybe they’d send a car out to pick me up. I started walking faster.

That’s when I heard it. The sounds of a thundering herd except it was no buffalo I was hearing. It was Unkels and from what I could see there were thousands of them. Heading my way, too. I said a few words that my mother were she still alive wouldn’t have approved of and started off at a gallop. I knew it wasn’t going to save me but there was a little rise a few hundred yards off. I could make my last stand there.

I wondered if the bastards watching this were enjoying the show. I figured there’d be no aid from the fuckers on the wall. I hope my horrible death would give them some entertainment.

I made it to the rise and ran up it, turning to watch the tide of Unkels heading towards me like a living carpet. I took out my Laws Rocket and clipped it into the shoulder launcher. I’d get only one of these before the herd reached me. I aimed it carefully and fired. A moment later fire and dirt and Unkel parts rained down from the sky. Calmly I dropped the launcher and pulled out my AK-47s, two of them and started firing. This was going to be some last stand. I didn’t let up and the pile of Unkel corpses had to be daunting for the Unkels although who knew if they thought anyway.

They were getting closer. 300 yards. 150. 100. 75. 50. I could smell the acid and I was down to my last clips on both the AK-47s. Then something amazing happened. The bastards turned tail and ran. I was so surprised I didn’t fire into the backs of the departing horde. I started to laugh. Maniacally. I was going to live. I was going to live! Then the earth shook and  I turned around and there was a Sentinel behind me, 150 feet high with a scythe like tail that was swinging for my head. Oh Shi–

Monsters

Whitney Able discovers that blonds don’t always have more fun

(2010) Horror (Magnet) Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able, Mario Zuniga Benavides, Annalee Jefferies, Erika Morales Yolanda Chacon, Javier Acosta Rodriguez, Victor Manuel Martinez Tovar, Walter Hernandez Col, Kennedy Gamaliel Jimenez, Romeo Arista. Directed by Gareth Edwards

The only monsters worth fearing are those of our own making. I don’t know who said it first but maybe it should have been Victor Frankenstein. If not him, maybe a politician we can be proud of.

Speaking of non-existent creatures, Mexico is full of aliens. Not the illegal kind – although they kind of are – I mean the E.T. sorts, the ones who get transported to planet Earth by a faulty NASA probe that crashed in Northern Mexico and hatched some extraterrestrial octopus-looking thingies that proceeded to take over Mexico. As if they didn’t have enough problems.

Samantha Wynden (Able) is the daughter of a wealthy American publisher. That publisher is the boss of Andrew Kaulder (McNairy), a reporter whom the publisher feels can safely escort Samantha through the infested zone back home (there are a few lapses in logic here but we’ll just smile and pretend it all makes sense). He’s loathe to do it but if he doesn’t he’ll be unemployed at a time where that’s not such a good thing to be. Not that there’s any era when it’s a good thing to be unemployed.

So of course they meet and they dislike each other. So yes he turns out to be a screw-up and deeply distrustful of rich people. So yeah they fall in love and wind up in bed. And of course this happens while their happy little trip collapses around them.

Gareth Edwards, the first-time director of this movie, does an impressive job with a pretty slender budget. He employs guerilla filmmaking techniques – shooting on location without permission with locals as extras and even actors. That makes this as authentic a movie as you’re likely to see.

While the concept isn’t particularly new, it is done in a pretty smart manner. This is a universe of corruption and desperation with the innocent people caught in the middle. You can say it’s an allegory of American immigration policies, although I think if so the references are ham-handed. This is not, despite the title, not a monster movie although you do see them from time to time. I think the thought was to keep them in the background for greater effectiveness but this sure could have used a little more monster and a little less romance.

There are only two actors with any experience in the movie and so they pretty much carry the movie and while they don’t disgrace themselves, neither do they seize the opportunity to deliver a career-making performance. I grant you, that can be hard to do when much of their performances are ad-libbed. Able is cute though and has enough charisma to lead me to believe she has a future ahead of her in the business.

The monsters, when seen, are mostly seen in grainy TV footage but they occasionally make devastating appearances. I wish they had a greater presence, but at the end of the day the real monsters weren’t necessarily from outer space. That’s what really makes the movie worthwhile.

WHY RENT THIS: Feels real. Every cent is on the screen.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Weak acting in places. Underutilizes monsters.

FAMILY VALUES: The language here was alone responsible for giving this an “R” rating.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The only two professional actors in the film are Able and McNairy; the rest of the cast are locals who happened to be around when Edwards was shooting.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There are several Q&A sessions with various members of the cast and crew at various conventions and festivals.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $4.2M on a $500K production budget; I’d call it an indie hit..

COMPARISON SHOPPING: And Soon the Darkness

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Day 4 of the Six Days of Darkness 2012

Caught on Tape

The newsgathering industry has been as dead as Bela Lugosi for a long time. Decades. It just didn’t realize it was among the walking dead until the bitter end.

I’m a vid operator. Sort of a cross between the paparazzi of old and the video journalists of even older. Vids are digital; they are available through any device that is capable of showing a moving image. My grandfather remembers YouTube but that was the difference between the Wright Brothers plane and the moon rocket. The one on Virgin Spaceways.

Cameras are everywhere. Privacy is a thing of the past; you are constantly recorded either on security cameras, traffic cameras, personal cameras or vids. People dress better now than they used to and they take better care of themselves. After all, you never know when you’re going to be on the Brother – remember when they used to call it the Internet? – now it’s called Big Brother. After some obscure book from like 100 years ago. Nobody really knows. Nobody really cares.

Everything must be documented. Everything. It’s, like, the law. To make sure everyone obeys the law tiny eye-cams are implanted in our blinkers at birth. Receptors are planted in our brains, giving us instant and complete access to all the knowledge in the world. That means there are no more stupid people, you cog? No crime either – only a Gary would be crazy enough to attempt one when everything is recorded.

There are the professionals like me, out looking for things to record. We have state-of-the-art equipment, much better resolution and less graininess than the older model eye-cams. Because everything is uploaded instantly, events unfold from around the globe and into the off-planet colonies with only minor delays. Government censors review the footage of everything to make sure there isn’t anything sensitive. If an airship crashes, nobody wants to see some kid smashed into a million pieces. Just the hero who saved half the flight with his quick thinking. Nobody wants to be reminded about the other half of the flight.

I seek stories people might want to tune into. Brother doesn’t only watch, you cog? Brother shows truth. Brother has raw footage but nobody’s allowed to see it. Only the censors see the raw-raw. And the vid ops who filmed it of course, but we’re licensed employees of the gov. We violate the agreement we all sign, we disappear. For good, like. You can trust a vid op to toe the line baby.

Most of what vid ops get is celebrity shit. Actors at parties. Sports stars at restaurant openings. Politicians at community events. Criminal executions although those are mostly for sedition. Nobody, like steals anything. Why bother when you can get whatever you want with a thought – taking what isn’t yours, that’s a Gary thing.

Not everything is roses and rainbows. There is an underground anti-gov movement that periodically has demonstrations and basically pisses everybody off because traffic gets, like wrecked when they do anything. Still, it isn’t technically treason to say there’s room for improvement. It’s just not a good idea. Mostly, people just disappear. Some come back though. What’s left of them.

It was a riot that I was covering. It was supposed to be a demonstration. Peaceful. Lots of granolaheads making the happy-happy talk about peace, love and Justin Bieber. Hey, I know who he is – I listen to classical music too!  Anyway, some granolahead took exception to one of the copbots getting too close and there I can’t blame them. Copbots are always going ballistic and unleashing Chryon lasers and  mini-nukes on the wrong people. Best to stay well clear of the things.

Well, apparently someone didn’t and he smashed it with a trash can. Must have been some trash can because within ten minutes Epping Square was filled with amateur Vid Ops all keeping their eyes on the granolaheads and the copbots fighting it out for control of the square. Brilliant fucking strategy but what would you expect of a Granolahead? They’re all severely whacked out on drugs and alcohol. They all smoke that wacky weed.

Of course, I don’t buy that last part. Hell even I go wrong sometimes. Occasionally I smoke a roller packed with my favorite variety, Rain Forest Red, with hints of Macintosh apples in the blend. Officially it’s illegal but it’s one of those things the gov turns a blind eye to. Smokers are generally more relaxed and happy. The gov used to burn down weed farms but their everywhere now and the gov collects taxes on the stuff. It’s not technically legal but it’s legal enough. The gov gets paid, the copbots leave the supply alone and everyone’s happy-happy.

Well, someone’s nipple got twisted and suddenly copbots were being smashed into paces and people were shouting and pumping their fists in the air. “We rule the streets!” one granolahead screamed, oblivious to the ten thousand copbots that were entering the streets right then. The bots in blue quickly emptied out the square of GeeCees (good citizens, you cog?) and a few granolaheads were cracked in the nog with…oh, I mean the noggin - I love your oldspeak, it’s so quaint.

That wasn’t even the good part, or the bad part if you prefer. While vidding a bunch of dumbass Granolaheads some enthusiastic muncher, high on something, went careening through the crowd like a pinball. I didn’t see him coming – usually I have a sense about these things – and he crashed into me and down we both went.

He got up and ran off, giggling maniacally. I was a little moofed at first; I’d hit my nog hard on the pavement. But when the rot cleared, I saw to my horror my camera was toast. These things are as you might expect expensive. I would probably be charged for this one. Shit, how was I going to make a living? I had the party downtown to cover, the technogeek one. Without a pro-cam, I’m just like everybody else – and I’m not getting into the party. My boss would fucking kill me. No really – that’s legal now. Employers have the right to summarily execute their employees for gross negligence of duty. This would qualify.

I knew a guy though. Sten Ten. No, we don’t have stupid ass names like that like they have in old sci-fi books. We’re not  idiots. Sten Ten is short for Austen Tennenbaum. Good Jewish boy. Great with tech. Absolutely the best at getting black market equipment for reasonable rates. I helped him by sending him shutdown codes for localized sec-cams. He in turn gave me discounts on shit I needed – and I’d never needed shit like his before.

I was in a hysterical fit when I got to his flat. “I need a pro-cam Sten. I have to have it today or I’ll be in violation. I can’t afford one from the company store.” I was babbling. Sten let me ramble on before holding up his hands. “Chill mighty Tark.” Now my name isn’t Tark either, it’s Terrence Clark. We do a lot o that kind of thing with our names. We’re the clever generation.

Sten was smiling that laconic, easygoing grin that was both annoying but in this particular instance, the face that launched a thousand hydro-transports. OR something like that. “We just happened to get in a pro-cam this morning. Pris con.” I must have looked at him funny. “Pristine condition, man. What are you, a thousand years old?”

The relief was tinged with suspicion. Like everyone who worked for a living, Sten wasn’t above stretching the truth a bit to get an edge. I didn’t blame him but I didn’t trust him either. “Show me the merch baby” I said with a bit more confidence than I felt. Entering into negotiations with an expert obtainer of rare things as Sten was could be the worst kind of ego check. Fortunately, Sten owed me a few so I could reasonably expect a courtesy discount. Maybe.

He went into the back of his flat and brought out a cam that was certainly in much better shape than mine. I looked at it critically and didn’t recognize the model. Sten shrugged. “It works. It vids. It uploads. What do you want from me?” I knew the playing dumb thing was a ploy. I knew how much I had to spend. I didn’t dare give him that figure. I’d be leaving without a pro-cam and I had to have one. “Two hundred.” I said, which was about half what I had to spend. Most brand new pro-cams run about eight grand.

He looked at me quizzically then came back with “Four fifty.” I shook my head, frowning. It was all an act, asking my desperation. He scowled as I replied “Two twenty five.” I heard him mutter “No black mozzie’s gonna make a chump out o’ me.” The paparazzi were sometimes referred to as Black Mosquitoes both for their black leather jackets and the sounds their cameras made. Plus, I suppose due to the annoying nature of their jobs.

He frowned again.  He said “You do know that’s less than I paid for it.” I was getting desperate. “Half now, half later?” Sten looked at me and frowned. Sten’s a tall, skinny guy  with a curly mop of hair. A hundred years ago he might have worn glasses. He’s no threat; if anything, I could kick his ass up once side of the room and down the other but that would be the end of my preferred customer status and I needed his acquisitional skills from time to time.

However as I was weighing my options I had no doubt that Sten was as well. He knew full well that I could out-physical him. With my gov connections I gave him access to material and clients he couldn’t get ordinarily and besides, I used him a good deal to get upgrades for my system that helped give me an edge on the competition. He made the decision. “Four fifty; half now, half in 30 days?” I nodded that was reasonable. He picked up the pro-cam and handed it to me.

I was surprised at how light it was, even though it looked to be about the same size as my old one. I checked the features menu and saw that it was pretty standard, although it had a couple of effects buttons that I was unfamiliar with. I took a little test footage and was please at the clarity and depth o the image. All in all, a nice upgrade.

I went to the party that night, confident that my vids would be better than ever and so they were. There were plenty of celebs at the do and I got some pretty intense pictures. My bosses were pleased with what they got, so much so that I got a pretty hefty raise and promotion. I also got a couple of calls from publicists who told me their clients were thrilled at how they’d been captured.

Things were all up from there. I got plum assignments, got some amazing vids and soon was in demand for a number of vid vendors. My bank account soared and my prospects looked endless. I was even getting laid regularly. I had everything I’d always dreamed of. It never occurred to me that there was a price to be paid.

It was a year to the day and I was covering a major art gallery opening at the Goog – the Guggenheim, you cog? I was taking vid of the rich and shameless in New York lording it over the masses – you know, another Wednesday night in Manhattan. I was taking a vid of an installation, a kind of white window-looking thing on the floor when I noticed a similar looking green window on the wall behind it. I hadn’t noticed it there before and the green was shimmering, as if underwater.

I don’t do this often but for some reason I pulled away from the viewfinder and was started. The wall behind was blank. But when I looked through the viewfinder again, there was that green underwater window. And there were things coming through it.

I fell backwards in shock. What was that? How could it possibly be there? And what were those things coming through? One of the security guards saw me fall and came over, looking concerned. “Are you all right sir?” he said with the practiced obsequiousness of someone trained in the art of pretending to care. “I’m fine,” I said somewhat warily. I looked through the viewfinder again – and everything was gone. Just the art that had been there all along. I rewound. Still nothing.

I finished the shoot and went home, very disturbed. Had I imagined everything? I’d rewound the footage but saw nothing. I couldn’t understand it. I knew it had been there. I’d seen those things – I’d only gotten a glimpse of them but they were like nightmares; faces like the creature of the black lagoon, tentacles for arms, dorsal fins on the back of their necks, hideous and deformed.  They had mottled skin and webbed feet. They were horrors straight out of Lovecraft.

I chalked it up to an overeager imagination and too many free cocktails. I went home and didn’t think about it until I saw the news the next morning that the Chairman of the Guggenheim, one Bao Ling, had passed away unexpectedly. Chairman Bao was only 54 and had died taking a shower.  A heart attack where was no previous heart condition.

People don’t just die for no reason in the 22nd century.  There’s always a cause but when someone that high-profile pushes up daisies like that questions get asked. Especially when your vid is the last thing the victim watched before croaking

So I got a call from the copbots, ya cog? And they weren’t all that polite. It was three hours in the hole with the ‘bots but there was nothing even remotely suggesting that the cause of death was my vid. Death by vid! *snort* Right. I suppose killer underwear might be their next theory. I know having copbots is better than having humans in law enforcement because they can’t be bought but death by vid?

I went home in a silly mood and decided to shoot some man in the street vid outside my high rise. I pulled aside an elderly gentleman for an interview named Camden LaShame.  I asked the usual assortment of fluff questions about celebrities and current events. He was a good sport, giving a lot of joke answers but also some thought-provoking ones. It turned out he had been a paranormal scientist, a scientific discipline that had been the rage in the late 21st century when certain phenomenon were studied scientifically. He really was the kind of man on the street vid ops lived for.

I was wrapping things up but on the spur of the moment I was suddenly struck by the memory of that strange green window and asked on kind of the spur of the moment if he believed in extra-dimensional windows. The jovial man’s expression changed. Hardened a bit. Then he told me a very strange tale.

Apparently LaShame had been working for Pennsylvania Tech University in Pittsburgh, which at one time had been called Miskatonic University. They had been working on a kind of camera that could capture extra-dimensional windows and hold them open so that probes might be sent in to explore.

They couldn’t get the technology to work but had built several prototypes, one of which had been retro-converted into a pro-cam. And that’s when the dots were connected and my knees went week.

For directly in the back of LaShame I could see one of those creatures hovering in the air, a vicious grin on its face. And I knew what happened and what became of the vid op who’d owned it before. I hit stop play and tried to stop the footage from being released but it was no go. It was all over Big Brother before I could even dial the number.

Billions of people with instant access saw the footage and every one of them died in an instant. Worse still, it turned out that the creatures in the footage found ways to migrate to other vids as well. Within 16 hours 90% of the human population was dead.

Big Brother was shut down. People went back to being stupid again. Nobody knew how to do anything because all our knowledge was on Big Brother. The books had all been scanned in and stored somewhere, forgotten. We still haven’t found them. We’re having to rebuild civilization on our own without any help. We’re fucking doomed.

So be careful what you watch. That window that was opened to my knowledge has never been closed. Who knows, these things could make it to the printed page. Wouldn’t that take the cake me lovelies?

VHS

All in all, you might have been better off using Match.com

(2012) Horror (Magnet) Calvin Reeder, Adam Wingard, Lane Hughes, Hannah Fierman, Mike Donlan, Joe Sykes, Drew Sawyer, Joe Swanberg, Sophia Takal, Norma C. Quinones, Drew Moerlein, Chad Villella, Matt Bertinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Paul Natonek. Directed by David Bruckner, Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Radio Silence, Glenn McQuaid and Adam Wingard

 

While technology improves, some things stay the same. We can upgrade our recording systems but the images don’t change much. One vacation video is pretty much the same as another, whether it was taken in 1982 or 2012.

But these are anything but vacation videos unless you have a peculiar idea of relaxation, but let’s start from the beginning. An unknown party hires four small-time criminals who are known for making videos of women that they catch in parking garages and brutally show off their naked breasts. These make tons of money on the Internet, but their mysterious employer isn’t interested in boobs. He wants the gang of four to enter a house that’s more or less deserted (and it turns out to be less), and steal a videotape.

Break in they do and they enter the house to find a dead body and a pile of videotapes. As one of the group checks out the tapes to figure out which one is the right one, the rest of the group goes to investigate a series of mysterious noises – and you know that is going to end badly.

The first tape concerns a trio of frat boy-sorts who attach a spy-cam to one of the lad’s glasses and they go out hoping to get him laid. After some trial and error and enough alcohol to prove that these boys (save the one with the camera) are pretty much assholes when drunk, they manage to pick up a couple of girls. One of them passes out quickly but the other, named Lily, takes a shine to the cameraman (“I like you” she says repeatedly) but apparently one of the frat boys likes her a lot and decides to horn in on the action. Lily doesn’t seem to mind at first but, well, she’s a very special girl.

In the second, a newly married couple visit a southwestern tourist attraction – a wild west ghost town and do some hiking in the mountains. They are followed by a young woman who seems a little creepy, particularly to the husband. He really doesn’t know the half of it as some of the minor annoyances on their trip are her doing. But what are her intentions and why is she doing this?

In the third, a quartet of friends visit the home town of one of them who once they enter the woods around the town begins to act strangely. It turns out that there were some inexplicable murders there a few years earlier and that their friend knows more about the subject than she’s let on. As her creepy pronouncement that they’re all going to die there looks more and more likely, they’ll discover that the killer is still around and a creature like him they’ve never seen – say hello to Glitch Man.

The fourth is mainly the Skype conversation between a doctor and his girlfriend, who is convinced that the house she is in is haunted. He, being a rational sort is skeptical but he begins to see things too. Soon he’s more concerned about her situation than she is – she’s convinced that she can reason with the spirits and send them on their merry merry. But she may have miscalculated their intentions, particularly in relation to the mysterious bump on her arm.

The final tape shows a group of four friends who are invited to a Halloween party at an isolated house on the edge of town. Sounds like fun so the high-spirited boys and off they went to a very nice house in the middle of nowhere. When they get there, nobody’s there even though the house is unlocked and all the lights are on. While they speculate that this might be a Halloween attraction of some sort. However, it’s not the sort of attraction you’d want to spend money on and when the boys make it into the attic, all hell is going to break loose.

Anthologies are a horror film mainstay. It’s an effort to tell shorter stories that might deserve a telling without devoting an entire movie  In this case, each vignette is directed by a young up-and-coming filmmaker in the underground and mainstream horror genres (West is the best known, having directed the sequel to Cabin Fever (which actually wasn’t all that bad for a direct-to-video effort) and a really fine horror movie from last year called The Innkeepers. The rest are not as well-known to me so I didn’t really know what to expect. And pretty much as you might expect, the efforts here run from really good (the first tape) to not so much (the fourth).

The acting is as you also would expect rather uneven as well, although there are some finds. Hannah Fierman as Lily in the first movie is genuinely creepy. Her transformation from meek party girl to…well, I don’t want to spoil it but trust me it’s pretty spectacular and Hannah has a lot to do with it. If you see her in a bar near you walk on my friend, walk on.

The glitch man in the third vignette is also pretty nifty although the constant noise and jumpiness in the film gets really old really fast. In fact, one of the conceits of the movie is that they are all from videotapes so the quality of the images is pretty weak but that doesn’t mean the cinematography is bad, if that makes sense.

There is a gratuitous amount of gore and bare breasts, so if those things offend you my guess is you wouldn’t be interested in seeing a movie like this anyway. Everyone else, this is a solid and spectacular in places horror anthology that won’t completely win you over (the weak portions can be pretty boring and the movie at a little over two hours is about 20 minutes too long for my taste – a whole vignette could have been eliminated and they would have been much better off. Short of that, it’s available on VOD right now so if it isn’t playing near you, you can still check it out.

REASONS TO GO: Lots of gore and lots of boobs – mainstays for an excellent horror film.

REASONS TO STAY: Some of the vignettes are more successful than others.

FAMILY VALUES:  A load of strong and often gruesome violence, lots of nudity, a fair amount of bad language, some horrific images and a bit of drug use. Oh, and some sex

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Ti West brew up in Delaware and went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/27/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 52% positive reviews. Metacritic: 54/100. The reviews are as mixed as you can get.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Videodrome

HORROR FILM ANTHOLOGY LOVERS: This comes from a tradition of horror film anthologies, several tales (often with different directors) linked together by a single story; among the more recognized anthologies include Twilight Zone: The Movie, Creepshow, Tales of Terror, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Trilogy of Terror, Cat’s Eye and The House That Dripped Blood.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Day 3 in the Six Days of Darkness 2012

The Dead Survive

One foot in front of the other. Heavy, heavy feet in heavy, heavy shoes. Dust covers me. Dirt. The dirt of the grave. The dirt of death. I’m dead. Gone. Kaput. But the dead survive. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t care. I’m just…tired. Each step is agony. I want to lie down and go to sleep but my body doesn’t know how.

Once I was living. Once I slept. Ate. Fucked. I had friends. I was happy. Content. But that’s all faded away to nothing. There is nothing but hunger and the need to keep moving. One foot in front of the other. I can’t help myself.

I know that I have changed. A part of me mourns, the part of me that still feels but that shrinks by the day, a small light of humanity that has dimmed and almost gone out. I know this is Hell. It must be. Where else but Hell  could there be such cruelty, such torture? Hungry all the time but nothing to eat. Forced to move, to walk when all I want to do is sleep. Sleep is denied me. Oblivion is denied me. If I had tears, I might weep.

This isn’t what it was supposed to be. I thought that when we died, we’d sleep. We’d go to heaven. We’d be reincarnated. Not this. Not this agony of walking and hungering. I’ve walked…hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. My brain can no longer comprehend numbers and distance. It’s been years since I died. Years since I began walking.

Food was plentiful once. The living were everywhere, like ants. One small child was a meal, a small adult a feast. Their blood and brains gave us sustenance. Their still living tissue was sweet. But like everything else we did, we over-harvested the food supply. Like the fish in the ocean, the food grew less plentiful. We tried eating other living things – dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits but it wouldn’t do. They walk with us now, no longer in fear although our scent disturbs them. They are not our food.

I haven’t seen a living human in a long, long time. They have gotten adept at hiding, maybe. Or maybe they’re all gone. This might be a dead planet with the reanimated corpses of the dead all that remains. How long can we live without food? Can we die, at last? Will our rest finally come when we all simply drop, too tired to walk,  no food to sate our hunger?

I no longer have the ability to answer such questions. I no longer have the ability to ask them. It is a thought, quick as lightning that passes through what was once my cortex and is gone. I shuffle my feet. One step. Another. Another. Moving forward, ever forward. Others of my kind are nearby but nothing living. Nothing human. We all walk, aimlessly. We are pointed in one direction and will walk until we can’t. What will happen when I reach the ocean? I have no need of breath; I will doubtlessly walk beneath the waves until I come to another beach, somewhere else.

It doesn’t matter. I’m merely a reanimated piece of meat, going nowhere and accomplishing nothing. My mind is flickering out and soon even these brief flashes of thought will cease. I don’t remember my name. I don’t remember my life, only a vague recollection that I was happy once. Now I don’t feel anything – not even pain. All is compulsion; compulsion to walk, compulsion to eat.

The dead don’t have lives. The idea is contradictory. We merely survive, one day into another and on and on it goes into infinity. The road stretches out before me. Grass grows through the pavement. The sun shines and butterflies flit across the landscape. Birds sing in the trees and a soft cool breeze rustles the leaves. It’s a beautiful day but I don’t notice it.

I must keep moving. One step. Another. Another. Walking, always walking. Never running. Never stopping either. Just an aimless, ceaseless journey on an empty stomach that has no meaning and no value. Reduced to bare functionality, sheer instinct the only motivation. I shuffle my feet. I stumble. I fall. I get up. My legs don’t work very well. My arm is broken but I don’t know it. I wouldn’t care if I did. The dead feel no pain. Only compulsion.

Hell. This is hell. One step. Another. Another. No bed at journey’s end. No soft pillow to lay my head on. No sheets to cover me in the night. No rest. No redemption. Just one step. Another. Another. My stomach growls. It doesn’t matter. I will walk until this planet is no more. I will walk until the end of time. I am dead and death is eternal. Death is walking. Hell is walking. One step. Another. Another. Another. Another.

George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead

Hellllllllloooooooooo handsome!

(2009) Horror (Magnet) Alan van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Devon Bostick, Richard Fitzpatrick, Stefano Colacitti, Athena Karkanis, Steano DiMatteo, Joris Jarsky, Eric Woolfe, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, Josh Pearce, Michelle Morgan. Directed by George A. Romero

And in the end of days, the dead shall rise and walk the Earth. We just didn’t think that was meant literally. However, George A. Romero took it one step further yet.

Eight days after the dead begin to walk, the army quickly realizes they are fighting a losing battle. There are far more dead than living and the living may be turned dead not just by dying but by getting bitten. One company led by Sarge Nicotine Crockett (van Sprang) sees that this is a hopeless cause and determines to head somewhere remote where the people are few and the dead are fewer. Fewer people means fewer reanimated corpses to kill…again.

Sarge and his guys Tomboy (Karkanis), Kenny (Wolfe) and Francisco (Colacitti) as well as young Boy (Bostick) make their way to a dock which, Boy informs them, has a boat that can take them to Plum Island, just off the coast of Delaware. This land is inhabited by two families only – the Muldoons and the O’Flynns who have been feuding ever since anybody could remember. These days it’s about how to deal with the zombies. The O’Flynns think the zombies should be destroyed, since their animating spirits are departed. The Muldoons believe the dead are merely diseased and should be treated with compassion and chained someplace meaningful so they can go through their lives…er, afterlives with some sort of comfort until a cure can be found.

In the middle are caught Sarge and his crew and it won’t be long before the crossfire starts creating more problems than it solves; after all, every new corpse creates another zombie for them to deal with.

Romero is one of those directors who is legendary among the demographic he serves – to wit, zombie lovers. Most of the mythology of zombies in general in modern literature both graphic and traditional was evolved by Romero in Night of the Living Dead and its succeeding films. Romero’s contribution to the horror genre in particular and film in general cannot be understated.

This is not Romero at the top of his game. The story is pedestrian and a bit disjointed. Romero is known for making social commentary thinly veiled as a horror film and this could easily be construed as a parody of the two party system. However, the characterizations are so cliché and the plot so thin and quite frankly, the acting so uninspiring that if Romero’s name wasn’t on this you might easily be persuaded to give up on the movie early on.

But this being Romero, he knows how to kill zombies and the zombie kills are at least interesting but at this stage of the game you really need more. It is kind of sad that the real innovating in the zombie genre is being done on cable (although Zombieland introduced a nice comedy element into it).

Still, it’s George Romero and watching even the weakest work by a master of that magnitude beats the best days of thousand of lesser talents out there. This isn’t his most entertaining work by any stretch of the imagination and there are plenty of zombie films that are better than this one. There are also better films to start with if you are unfamiliar with Mr. Romero’s talents. While the score it’s getting is poor, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a watching – it’s just you probably won’t want to give it any more than that. And that is not normal for the film catalogue of George Romero.

WHY RENT THIS: It’s George. Effin. Romero.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: It simply doesn’t measure up to his previous work.

FAMILY VALUES: It is a George Romero zombie film, so it comes as no surprise that there’s a surfeit of gore. There’s also no shortage of bad words, a smattering of sexuality and yes, all the violent zombie goodness that only Romero can deliver.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first film that Romero has used major characters from a preceding film as leading characters.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There are a couple of interviews with Romero as well as a fascinating featurette on how to create your own zombie bites on a reasonable budget.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $143,191 on a $4M production budget; a certain box office disappointment.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: “The Walking Dead”

FINAL RATING: 4.5/10

NEXT: Day 2 of the Six Days of Darkness 2012