Film Review: Eternity

Someone ought to speak to the manager

According to Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25 and Luke 20:35, when the Saducees asked Jesus about the eternal legal status of a widow who remarried, he replied that there was no marriage in the afterlife. That was a wise managerial decision; otherwise I suppose Henry VIII’s afterlife welcoming party would have been very awkward.

The movie Eternity illustrates the exact same problem that the Saducees presented before Jesus: a twice widow goes to heaven and meets her dead husbands, and her eternal fate depends on which one she chooses. Standard jealousy jokes ensue.

If this movie aims to convey any message about the nature of love and the value of the prosaic, quiet life, it’s lost amid the tension of its torturedly contrived premise. The version of the afterlife we see in Eternity is an extremely bureaucratized dystopia with rigid rules and arbitrary prohibitions. Our poor lady simply has to make a choice, and she has one week to do it, and after moving to a specific flavor of heaven, she can’t ever change her mind, and if she tries to undo her choice, she’ll be thrown into an eternal abyss of darkness. Because that’s what upper management has decreed. And no, despite all the trappings of corporate culture, you can’t file a complaint, because what passes for customer service makes one suspect that this place is actually hell.

Let’s go into a bit more detail. In the afterlife presented in Eternity, when you die, you’re assigned a handler who will guide you for a week until you pick a flavor of heaven to permanently move to. Competition is fierce: you’re inundated by every manner of advertisement trying to sell you the gardening heaven, the weightlifting heaven, the nail spa heaven, the mountain cabin heaven, the beach resort heaven, the ’70s cocaine party heaven, the aristocratic mansion heaven, the Parisian literary café heaven, and so on. But our lady’s problem isn’t so much which form of eternity to choose, but whom to spend it with.

Her first husband was, as we’re told endless times, perfect in every way (it doesn’t help that for this role they cast Callum Turner, who I can’t bring myself to believe is handsome at all, but the plot requires us to close our eyes and pretend he’s a 10). Alas, he was sent to war and died too soon, and those blissful young memories have stayed with her all this time. Her second husband was rather normal, and she stayed married to him until old age took them. She had a standard family life with him, having children and grandchildren, without much in the way of complaints. But the ghost of that vigorous first love stayed there, overshadowing the ordinary flow of everyday life. Now that they’re all dead and she has the opportunity to choose again, should she remain with the good but unexceptional guy who gave her 65 adequately unobjectionable years, or should she take her chances with the dreamy guy she never stopped missing?

The amount of tweaks that the plot has to make to its idea of heaven in order for the characters to even have this problem in the first place makes it difficult for the story to say anything meaningful to the viewers. If you squint, maybe you can glimpse a stance against naïve nostalgia, but the movie’s happy ending puts our lady in one of the afterlives that were taken out of circulation: the placid suburbia heaven. So it’s not clear how sincerely Eternity is warning us against taking refuge in rosy memories.

Because the afterlife is presented as a top-down system with unquestionable rules, the plot can’t let the characters consider pushing for the rules to be changed. A short line in the script alludes to a solution where our lady gets to live with her two husbands, but the husbands won’t have that. As a result, the completely unnecessary and unjustified constraints of the story lead to a way too narrow range of possible endings. It’s the least useful type of allegory, the one that only works if you accept a thousand artificial caveats.

What does work in this movie is the acting. Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller have to speak and move like old people suddenly put in young bodies, and they succeed, with Olsen taking full advantage of the gorgeous ’50s hairstyles and dresses she’s put in, and Teller milking every drop of his naturally raspy voice. Meanwhile, Turner has a unique assignment: his character is a guy from the ’50s who never grew old, so his mannerisms and general outlook on life have to feel like they’re stuck in time, even though he has existed through the years since. We aren’t told whether dead people can learn and grow in this afterlife, but what Olsen’s character eventually discovers about her true desires reveals a maturity in accordance with her actual age.

Eternity seems to know what it wants to say, but it needs to resort to an absurd scenario for that message to begin to make sense. At least next time you’re forced to choose an irrevocable forever, you’ll know what to do.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

Stunning animation and nonstop action

The long-awaited Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues to break box office records for anime storytelling. Infinity Castle is the latest adventure of the popular anime Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba), which is known for its high-quality animation, likeable characters, and intense action sequences. Demon Slayer tells the story of the pure-hearted, hard-working child Tanjiro, who comes home to find his widowed mother and young siblings violently slaughtered by demons. The lone survivor is his younger sister Nezuko, who has been infected by the attacking monster and has turned into a demon. Initially violent, speechless, and unable to tolerate the sun, she eventually overcomes her murderous instincts and becomes an ally to Tanjiro. He begins a journey to heal his sister and become a formal demon slayer, and trains under a team of elite slayers known as Hashira, who battle violent demons controlled by the thousand-year-old villain Muzan. Tanjiro is joined by other students, including the comically fearful but secretly strong Zenitsu and the loudmouth wild boy Inosuke. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is the latest feature film to present a major story arc in the ongoing epic.

The most recent season of the Demon Slayer anime ended on a dramatic cliffhanger as the slayers’ intense confrontation with their enemy Muzan ended with them falling into an alternate-dimension-style, infinite multi-level structure. Infinity Castle picks up immediately with the falling slayers beginning the fight against the elite demons who are waiting for them in the vast surreal space. Unlike many other anime feature films, Demon Slayer films are directly connected to, and essential for, the primary ongoing anime arc. As a result, if viewers haven’t been watching the series, they may feel somewhat disconnected from the adventure and the emotions underlying the action. Even for those who have been watching, there are some moments that make it seem as if we may have missed something in the continuity. However, Infinity Castle is highly entertaining, despite some shortcomings, and well worth the effort to see it on a big screen.

Demon Slayer has always stood out for its stunning animation and was this year’s winner for Best Animation at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in addition to winning Best Continuing Series. Although the series always excels in fluid, innovative, and intense animation (even when the plot becomes repetitive), Infinity Castle takes high-quality animation to a new level. The titular Infinity Castle dazzles with a perfect fusion of color, light, geometry, and movement as the characters navigate the enormous Inception-like space. Beyond the grand-scale effects, simpler art expressions (such as an airy fall of snow in a backstory, or the fantastical eyes of many of the characters) add to the immersive art style.

While the Demon Slayer anime periodically slows down to focus on human interaction and character growth, Infinity Castle is all about fighting. Demon Slayer often presents a character’s backstory in the form of flashbacks during a fight, and the new film fully leans into that style of storytelling. As a result, characters who are not involved in the main sets of physical duels disappear almost entirely from the story. This is true for lead characters Nezuko and Inosuke, who get very little screen time. On the other hand, the succession of battles with the accompanying backstories (in some cases, very long backstories) makes for a very long film. Among the primary battles is Hashira Shinobu’s poison battle with the sociopathic, murderously polite demon Doma. Another key fight is Zenitsu against his former training partner Kaigaku, whose cruelty is shown in the previous Hashira Training Arc season. Zenitsu is a unique character whose humorously fearful comic relief personality is contrasted with the lethal killer he becomes when he blacks out. The Jekyll-and-Hyde effect is always entertaining. However, in Infinity Castle, Zenitsu arrives in his lethal state and remains consciously engaged with his enemy throughout the battle. Other than a two-second backstory glimpse, we only see the killer version of Zenitsu. This stylistic change makes the battle particularly powerful and creates a significant shift in the tone of the narration.

The primary battle of the film is between the protagonist Tanjiro and the returning upper rank demon Akaza. Instead of being aided by his usual besties Inosuke and Zenitsu, Tanjiro fights with his long-time, stoic, young mentor Giyu, who finally gets enough screen time to lean into his awesomeness. Their battle is a callback to the critical final fight scene in Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, where the demon Akaza battles the confidently powerful and kind-hearted Rengoku. The original battle went beyond the usual tropes and created an emotional connection between the two evenly matched opponents. It left an impact that lasted long after the film ended. In contrast, the key battle in Infinity Castle is characterized by the fighters’ disdain for each other. The normally kind Tanjiro is focused on revenge, and the always serious Giyu is focused on the larger goal of killing Muzan. A traditional element in anime battles is the trash-talking or persuasive arguing that accompanies the physical fighting. However, Tanjiro is too angry to engage, and Giyu (in my favorite line of the film) stoically announces that he just doesn’t like talking. As a result, the film uses a lengthy one-sided backstory to explain Akaza’s personality. The story is tragic and thoughtful, but also very long, and occurs in a climactic moment of the battle. While integrated backstory is standard in Demon Slayer and many other anime, this backstory lasts around forty minutes, creating almost a separate movie. Depending on your storytelling tastes, this may be a welcome bonus or a too lengthy diversion from both the larger story and the momentum of the current intense fight.

While Mugen Train was a cohesive, linear, and complete story, Infinity Castle is the beginning of the long final war between the demons and the slayers with the fate of humanity in the balance. With a large cast of characters and a story that starts right in the middle of the action, Infinity Castle may seem jarring and intense. But the overall effect is entertaining, engaging, and stunningly artistic as we progress to the ultimate battles that lie ahead.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

• Stunning animation
• Lots of backstory
• Intense fighting

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Film Review: The Conjuring: Last Rites

It isn't exactly scary, but it will appease fans looking for an emotional finale for their horror mom and dad

The first Conjuring movie (2012) is an absolute master class in dread, horror, and freaky vibes. It's not only my go-to spooky movie, it's also one of my favorite films just in general. The other movies in the Conjuring universe—the sequels and movies like The Nun and Annabelle—are kitschy at best, and they're ones I'll rewatch only occasionally. But the o.g. Conjuring is near perfect.

Flashforward to my anticipation of The Conjuring: Last Rites. It's meant to be the conclusion to this fictional film series based loosely on the investigations and experiences of famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. I always take the "based on" with a grain of salt, as ghosts do not exist. The cinematic portrayal of them, however, is extremely likable. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are absolutely delightful as tortured ghost hunters, and their chemistry is palpable. It's rare that you see on-screen characters that seem to truly love each other, and Ed and Lorraine do just that.

What sets Last Rites apart from the other films in the franchise is that this movie is about them and their family, not the tortured families who happen to inhabit deeply possessed buildings and their paranormal struggles. Here, we're in the 1980s, and the Warrens' daughter, Judy, is starting to become embroiled in their investigations. Like her mother, she is also an empath and possesses psychic abilities. As the family becomes concerned when she gets engaged to her boyfriend, Tony, the family is pulled into another paranormal case—this time one that the Warrens first encountered decades ago.

The Smurl family lives in a coal-mining-soaked town in Pennsylvania, and their demon origin story begins with a haunted mirror, one that the Warrens have experienced before. It seems like the setup of every other Conjuring story, yet something is missing. The haunting that's taking place at the Smurl house is creepy, to be sure, but it never really feels threatening. The stakes never feel high. I think this could be because the house is small, and its neighbors are jam-packed around it—there's only about six feet between them. I have strong opinions on what houses work well within the haunted house trope, and these babies need room to breathe. They need at least a few acres or so, and they need isolation. It's why you'll never see a haunted studio apartment or a haunted beach condo. You need to be able to climb a staircase and feel absolutely alone, and hear echoes and shouts from across the building that you can't readily identify.

When it comes to the scares in The Conjuring: Last Rites, there are a couple of good ones, but nothing that stands out like the spooks in the original. You learn the routine pretty quickly: A character is alone, the music stops, and then you get a jump scare of some unidentified demon.

We never learn the backstory of the demons in the Smurl house, unlike the tortured witch Bathsheba in the original. I think this greatly detracts from the emotional heft of the haunting. Turns out the demons lived on the "land" that the house occupies, so the lore is downgraded, and you never feel any stakes. Also, unrelated: One day I will write a paper on haunted houses as a metaphor for working-class people and the failures of capitalism, but today is not that day. It will revolve around how even though a family feels physically threatened, being unable to afford a non-haunted house or even to escape the mortgage of a haunted house is truly the most horrific part of this beloved genre.

You do get Easter eggs throughout the film, however, so hardcore fans of the Conjuring universe will appreciate that. At one point, you see the evil doll Annabelle blown up to 15 feet tall in a scene that made me laugh more than anything else. Speaking of laughter, I saw this movie in 4DX, which is the interactive, shaking-seats-and-gusts-of-wind experience. It is not, in fact, interactive, and it mainly just made me laugh. It takes you out of the experience, especially when the man next to you is shaking and spilling popcorn in his seat.

I wanted very badly to love this movie, as I've mentioned before, because I've been chasing the high of seeing the first Conjuring since 2012. Perhaps it was lightning in a bottle, or maybe I've become so much of a horror movie cynic that I'm incapable of being truly scared. There are moments of true high camp in this, and I found myself laughing more than shuddering despite the multiple different pools of blood, demonic jump scares, and priests hanging themselves.

This movie does work as a denouement to the fictional Warren storyline, though. The characters of Ed and Lorraine, and now Judy, are good people, and you're always rooting for them to save another family, even when they're so ready to be retired. When the Warrens are faced with possession and death, the stakes suddenly become much higher. I did find multiple parts heartwarming, especially towards the end, when they look toward the future and a life without ghost-hunting. If you're not into sentimentality for these characters, you'll be extremely bored at multiple points.

Judy and her boyfriend are (seemingly) set up as perhaps the next generation of demon hunters, but I suppose time will tell. In the meantime, I will be watching the original Conjuring every spooky season like clockwork, when the leaves start to fall and the temps get a little chilly.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: The King Tide

What if we were really nice to the kid in Omelas?

Life has proceeded uneventfully on a secluded island of fishermen, somewhere in Canada, for many generations. But one day, during a storm, a boat crashes ashore, carrying only a baby. The villagers are amazed to discover that this baby has magical healing powers, and decide to keep her a secret from the rest of the world. In just a few years, she becomes the center of their faith and the guarantor of their prosperity. As long as she's around, no one gets sick, the boats catch abundant fish, and all goes well. She's a happy child with loving parents and an entire community devoted to her. Sounds like utopia.

Except that the meaning of an "uneventful" life has been warped. In this version of utopia, to keep the miracle to themselves, the islanders have cut off all contact with the mainland. The village doctor is now a jobless drunkard, the school doesn't teach about the exterior world anymore, the men hold bloody brawls for fun because they know any broken nose will be fixed, and the children routinely play with poisonous plants. No risk matters anymore. There are no consequences. But this time, the price of utopia isn't a tortured child: everyone is unfailingly kind to the miraculous girl. They ritually thank her for her gifts. She doesn't have to suffer for their happiness. She just has no clue there's anything more to life.

Among many possible readings, the film The King Tide seems to suggest that one of the dangers of religion is learned helplessness. Why make any effort, when you're guaranteed infinite blessings? Perhaps God is wise to keep his distance and stay invisible to us. We might not want to let him go.

Soon enough, the islanders get a glimpse of what they could lose. One day, while the girl is busy elsewhere, a kid dies. She arrives too late to heal him, and it turns out her gifts don't include raising the dead. The shock is so heavy on her that the magic seems to go away. People's wounds stay open. Hangovers won't go away. The sea carries no more fish. The village doctor may even have to reopen his old clinic. But don't worry: they still love the girl. They love her so much. They keep standing in queue every day to see her for a few minutes. They haven't lost hope. They won't countenance the thought of going back to the way things used to be, when health and prosperity took effort.

It's often said that people reveal their true face when they're given power. At first, you don't feel like the people of this village have changed. They don't think so, either: as far as anyone can tell, they're all smiles and polite words. But just because they don't mistreat the child, as in Omelas, doesn't mean she's any less exploited. That's the most chilling part about this film: until almost the very end, you won't find a sinister attitude in any of them. It's with the most level-headed, measured tone that they discuss the extremes they're capable of going when they discover that the girl can still work wonders when she's sleeping.

The King Tide examines how alarmingly easy it is for people to lie to themselves with open eyes in the name of sincerely good intentions. This time, the price of utopia isn't paid by one child. It's paid by everyone else, once they get used to actions not having consequences. They have so lost themselves that they react to the possibility of having their perfectly normal lives back as if it were the end of the world, and that panic makes them willing to turn their placid, guilt-free luckily-not-Omelas into a totally-definitely-Omelas if that's what it takes.

But there's another angle to this situation: the reason why the sea has no fish left is that industrial fishing leaves nothing for the villagers. They aren't to blame for their suffering. But since the girl's arrival, they've been buffered from it. Of the available strategies to deal with the ills of modern life, they've chosen denial. You don't need to help fix a broken world if you have your own personal Jesus who can multiply fish on demand. Over the years, the island has developed a strong local identity, but there's a difference between proud self-reliance and uncaring isolation.

That's the thorniest question throughout the film: every increasingly awful step these people take to preserve their little magical corner of the world is ostensibly done to protect the girl from what the modern world would do to her. And yes, it sounds reasonable to want to prevent her from becoming a lab rat. On the island, she plays with other kids, goes to school, is lovingly cared for. But the loss of her gifts reveals that love as conditional. The implication is left unspoken, because it burns the tongue: would you still love God if you didn't receive any blessings?

This is not the same question as the one asked in the book of Job; I'm not talking about a miserable life. I'm talking about an ordinary one, where you rely on what your hands can hold. If nothing terribly catastrophic were to happen to you, but you had no promise of eternal, painless bliss, would you be satisfied? Or more poignantly: if you had experienced a brief taste of that heaven, would that be enough for you? In the film, the villagers do have the impending disaster of running out of fish, but the script goes out of its way to highlight several times that at any moment they could simply move elsewhere. The danger isn't inevitable. It's by choice that they don't bother to interact with the mainland and possibly push for a better deal with the fishing industry. They have plenty of mundane options for fighting that injustice. But with a miraculous child, they can afford inaction. And it's very seductive to have a life that allows and even rewards inaction.

The thought experiment proposed in Omelas is usually framed in these terms: Is it ethical for all to enjoy infinite happiness if it requires the infinite suffering of one person? It's less common to find it in these terms: If one person could provide infinite happiness for all, is it ethical for that person to refuse? In other words, would you demand that Jesus die to save humankind?

It's subtle, but you can notice that it never occurs to the people in The King Tide to inquire what the girl wants. On one hand, it's unfair that people take her for granted. On the other hand, it looks like it pleases her to help people. On the other other hand, she's legally a minor who has not made an informed choice on the matter. The film wisely stops before she has the chance to walk into the exterior world, so these questions are left hanging for the viewer to mull over. It suffices to explore what our endless asking does to God. It's up to you to ask yourself what it does to you.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

TV Review: A.A.R.O.

Come for the Paranormal Mystery of the Week, stay for the animist theodicy

To the Western viewer, likely acquainted with The X Files, Fringe, Supernatural and Evil, a show like A.A.R.O. may at first feel like another iteration of the "whodunit, but make it spooky" genre. And the limited series that's been released on Netflix goes for that vibe in its initial episodes: this is a world where people can vanish into thin air, leaving just their empty clothes and bucketfuls of blood; where breaking the shrine of a fox spirit causes a wave of mass faintings; where pieces of an airplane that's been missing for years suddenly fall to the ground out of nowhere; where a shadowy terrorist faction can't succeed at planting bombs across Tokyo because a clairvoyant keeps frustrating their plans.

So far, so standard. But as we gradually get to meet the protagonists, a jaded misanthrope who can cite the classics of Japanese mythology from memory and a wide-eyed newbie with a keen nose for asking the right questions, we discover that the plot lurking under the surface is far more alarming than the occasional unexplained anomaly. It's not just that the monsters and curses from Japanese folklore happen to be real; it's that someone has declared war on the entire spiritual realm and has been extending tentacles at every level of Japanese society. This is a world where someone has been buying mummified mermaids to harvest their flesh; where someone has been running experiments with a spell that causes unending hunger; where someone has created a sound frequency that induces suicide; where someone is scheming to put heaven and hell under new management. What begins as a series of seemingly unconnected cases for a clandestine government agency to investigate turns out to lead to a potentially world-ending conspiracy whose best chance of succeeding is the fact that humans are the worst.

That's a fortunate thing for the viewer's enjoyment, because on the purely police investigation side of the story, A.A.R.O. just isn't very well written. The quiet pleasures of meticulously following the clues and formulating logical deductions are eschewed for impossibly lucky guesses, unprompted confessions, frequent instances of literal deus ex machina, and a tsunami of melodrama that would make Candy Candy blush. Also, the plot plays an increasingly ludicrous game of "guess who's possessing whom" that abuses the bait-and-switch trick with regard to the true identity of the villain four times, including one time it does reveal the actual villain, but still tries to pretend there's a further bigger villain behind. No, this detective/mystery show doesn't stand out because of its detectives or its mysteries. It stands out because of the ideological conflict it dramatizes on the nature of evil and the redeemability of humankind in an era when we've become almost godlike with technology we're too immature for.

It's worth highlighting once more the non-Western nature of this story, because the dynamic between mortals and the supernatural is very unlike what we're used to seeing in Western fantasy. Over here, we're still under the Miltonian spell, conceiving of spiritual power as flowing in a vertical direction, which makes humans either the helpless playthings of omnipotent overlords or the blasphemous rebels who seek to punish heaven for being too harsh on this world. But in the animist mindset, spiritual power flows horizontally, because humans are no less capable than the gods of influencing events in heaven, and if anyone seeks to punish heaven, it's for being too permissive with this world. With enough discipline and study, a determined human may turn into a worthy adversary for the gods.

A.A.R.O. thus twists the formula of the paranormal procedural: this time Earth isn't a means for spiritual factions to play out their eternal battles in; it's an end in itself, where all the spirits are responsible for protecting humans, even as humans grow more and more self-conceited, cruel and treacherous. Instead of fighting demonic incarnations of evil on behalf of humans, the protagonists of A.A.R.O. fight the demonic extremes that human hubris can reach. Instead of treating the gods the way, say, the Greek epics do, as capricious tyrants to fear or to pacify, in A.A.R.O. the gods are long-suffering, overworked benefactors who can only do so much in the face of human self-destructiveness. Whereas a story like God of War treats the quest to dethrone the gods as heroic liberation, A.A.R.O. treats the quest to dethrone the gods as a sad consequence of ignorance.

A case could be made that treating the Shintō gods as the preferrable status quo gives the show a conservative bent, and it would be hard to argue against that interpretation. The story clearly leans toward blaming human hubris for the problems in the world. However, it knows to avoid the extremes of anti-humanism and binary morality. The two protagonists constantly argue for opposite sides about the worth of humans, and a key reason why the good guys (somewhat) win in the end is because a god chose to trust a human. One villain is so strongly convinced that their cause is just that they can fool another character whose superpower is to cast detect evil. Moreover, a spell that reduces a god to human status isn't treated as a profanation every time. A former god reflects on this turn of events with admirable equanimity: yes, dying as a human is horrible, but living as a human can be full of wonders.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: The Parenting

Hell is other people... 's expectations.

You know how conservatives keep saying that queer people are possessed by demons? Well, the new HBO Max horror/comedy/romance film The Parenting turns the tables and argues that the actual demon is intolerance. Picture this scenario: you're nervously introducing your boyfriend to your family, hoping that they'll like each other, and all of a sudden, the loving father you've known all you life turns out to harbor a hateful spirit inside of him, one that spews homophobic slurs and even attacks your boyfriend physically. In our supposedly modern times, that's a nightmare queer people still dread. That's why a jocular title like The Parenting is quite clever: although the format of the story is that of spending a vacation weekend at a remote haunted house, this is really a movie about being terrified of your own parents. While it draws copiously from the usual tropes of the haunted house genre, as well as the meet-the-parents genre, the movie wouldn't work without the queerness element at the center of it. This is a specifically queer fear that can only be faced and overcome through queer means.

The movie starts with a prologue in the 80s, on the night the series M.A.S.H. broadcast its final episode. That's an important signpost: although it was set in the Korean War, M.A.S.H. was widely perceived as an allegory for the Vietnam War and for the heated sentiments it sparked among Americans. The end of M.A.S.H. coincides with the end of an era of countercultural experimentation and the rise, in its stead, of the conservative nightmare that still haunts the American consciousness. And in that prologue, the manifestation of that nightmare is juvenile disobedience, which of course was tied to the Satanic Panic and the cultural anxieties about the fate of the nuclear family. In a deceptively simple scene, we see a mother struggle to get her kids to come to the dinner table, only to be dragged to the underworld by something sinister. It takes the son too, and lastly, the daughter, who until that moment had been locked in her room with as-of-yet unspecified female company. It's a very subtle hint, but yes, this character is definitely queer. A possible reading, given the events that will follow, is that this specific demon is one that consumes families where someone is queer, which is why it's significant that this prologue happens in the 80s. (We learn later that said female company is the quintessential incarnation of everything Reaganites were scared of: a sexually unafraid teenager with a goth-ish/punk-ish aesthetic and pagan leanings. It's this archetypal bogeyman that brings the demon into the house, which strikes me as a fitting encapsulation of the way the conservative mind blames the culturally deviant for the hatred thrown at them.)

Fast forward to the 21st century, and we meet our actual protagonists: two young gay men, very cute, very much in love, and very nervous about the special weekend vacation they've organized for their respective families to meet for the first time. As it happens, the house they've rented is the same one from the prologue. And sure enough, after night falls, things start making strange noises. So far, so normal for a haunted house movie. Except this is too similar to the sound of, as a character puts it, "interplay." Each couple believes the other couple is doing it, and the movie extends this joke for as long as it will give. Here we get our first impression of the precise nature of this form of queer fear: telling your parents about your significant other implies making your parents aware that you are a sexual being. This is true of any pairing of orientations, but parents of straight children have the privilege of not having to imagine other forms of "interplay."

This fear reoccurs later, when one of the couple's parents, already possessed by the demon, starts throwing around the kind of hurtful remarks that people with little imagination use against queer people. And bring up the problem of having little imagination because, truly, it seems to break queerphobes's brains to think about a gay couple having a sex life. In a curious reversal, other scenes in the movie push the two young gay men to think of their parents as sexual beings, in awkward reenactments of the Freudian Urszene where children happen upon their parents' naked bodies. In themselves, these scenes are well executed jokes. But in the context of the implicit sexual humiliation that the demon inflicts on our protagonists, the choice to cast the same gaze back at the parents exposes the absurdity of the intended attack.

So how do you defeat this demon? To complete this analysis of the movie's themes, I'm going to have to spoil the ending. One of our protagonists, saddened by his father's deteriorated state, decides to invite the demon into himself and then ask his boyfriend to kill him. Let's untangle what this choice means. As I said above, the actual demon is intolerance. Inviting the demon into yourself for the purpose of taking it down with you is the movie's way of representing a case of internalized queerphobia leading to suicide. Now let's take the metaphorical eyeglasses off for a moment, because this is the core message of the movie. In the nightmare scenario where you take your boyfriend to meet your parents and they react violently, internalized queerphobia leading to suicide is one of the possible outcomes. It has happened and keeps happening in real life. Fortunately, in the movie this plan does not succeed. As our protagonists discover, the true way to destroy this demon (of intolerance) is to starve it of a human host to invade.

You shouldn't expect any new tricks from this movie, either comedy- or horror-wise. But it works. The performances are enjoyable, the leading couple has a sweet chemistry, and the dialogues ring true to the everyday dynamics of a queer family. Only a content warning is warranted for dogs that die of slapstick shenanigans during the movie. Otherwise, you'll spend a fun time laughing and/or screaming at The Parenting.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

TV Review: Dead Boy Detectives

An entertaining horror comedy packing a lot of emotion into a short series

Hidden away in Netflix’s YA fantasy section, Dead Boy Detectives is a feel-good horror comedy that has already been cancelled. Fortunately, the sole existing season is enormously satisfying and the plot wraps up nicely in its quick but entertaining eight episodes. The show follows the adventures of two dead teen boys (Edwin, who was killed at the turn of the century, and Charles, who was murdered in the 1980s) who form an investigative agency to solve mysteries for other ghosts. Things change when they cross paths with Crystal, a psychic teen girl with amnesia and a stalker demon boyfriend. Later they ally with Niko, a spiritually sensitive but lighthearted student grieving the death of her father. Although it exists in the same universe as the broody Sandman television show, Dead Boy Detectives takes a much lighter tone. It has intensely likeable leads, refreshingly diverse casting, and a clever mix of the tragic and the very funny, with twisty plots to keep viewers engaged. I haven’t enjoyed a dark comedy this much since season one of Russian Doll. Like Russian Doll, Dead Boy Detectives has emotionally wounded main characters caught in outlandish situations that ultimately lead them to inner growth and leave viewers with a satisfying story arc.

In the early 1900s, Edwin (George Rexstrew) is attacked by his classmates in an occult ritual at his British private school. The prank summons a real demon who (apologetically) traps Edwin in hell until he finds a way to escape years later. The deceased Edwin returns to Earth as a ghost and meets Charles (Jayden Revri), a 1980s high school boy who has just been murdered by his classmates after he protected another student from bullying. Instead of moving on to the afterlife, Edwin and Charles hide from Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) when she comes for them, and decide to start a detective agency to help other ghosts resolve mysteries or other injustices related to their deaths.

In the first episode, they are approached by a young Victorian-era ghost girl who asks them to help her psychic human friend Crystal (Kassius Nelson). Crystal has started behaving erratically and seems to be possessed but, as the ghost girl notes by way of another explanation, she is also “American.” In the process of helping Crystal regain control of herself, the three become involved in the mystery of a missing child and travel to an isolated New England town, Port Townsend, to investigate. While there, they connect with Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), a Japanese exchange student who becomes infested with hilariously foul-mouthed dandelion sprites (Max Jenkins, Caitlin Reilly). Edwin and Charles have to adapt to their new living allies while dealing with new threats in Port Townsend from the tricky and seductive Cat King (Lukas Gage) and from Esther (Jenn Lyon), a sarcastic and beauty-obsessed witch.

Throughout the story, Edwin is brilliant and sophisticated, but also uptight and hesitant to trust any newcomers. After decades with just Charles as a companion, he is not open to the two new women in their lives. In contrast, Charles is cheerful, upbeat, and friendly, and develops an attachment to Crystal, leading to one of two unexpected love triangles in the show.

In addition to strong leads, the show has an excellent cast of memorable side characters, including Tragic Mick (Michael Beach), a cursed walrus forced to live in the form of a middle-aged man who runs a magic shop that helps the teens; Monty (Joshua Colley), the witch’s handsome and seductive bird turned boy who becomes attracted to Edwin; the Night Nurse (Ruth Connell), a hilariously bossy official in the afterlife agency whose job it is to locate missing ghost children like Charles and Edwin; and Jenny (Briana Cuoco), the sole mundane human and a cynical goth butcher shop owner.

Each of the characters is laugh-out-loud funny, but also fiercely brutal or intensely tragic. The dichotomy works well, though, creating intensity without bleakness and softening terrifying moments with unexpected bursts of sarcasm or irony. There are also scenes where the show leans into the sadness of Edwin’s and Charles’s backstories without an undercurrent of humor, and that contrast of seriousness makes the overall story even more powerful. Towards the end of the series, the tale of Esther’s origins gets a little complicated and devolves into a rushed montage-style summary, which is not as helpful. The same thing happens with Crystal’s backstory when she starts to uncover who she really is. But, for the most part, Dead Boy Detectives delivers a near-flawless acting ensemble which draws you in from the first moment and leaves you cheering at the end.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights:

• Strong cast of memorable characters
• Addictive villains
• Grim humor with a little bit of everything

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris—Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, or how to film the unfilmable

For a massively revered classic, a faithful rendering may not suffice

As nation states go, these we have here in Latin America are rather young. The Westernized portion of our history only covers a few centuries, and the much longer Native portion barely survives in mutilated fragments. Unlike the Greek or Chinese or Icelandic peoples, who long ago developed a solid sense of who they are, we're still in the middle of figuring ourselves out. It would seem pointless to attempt to write a national epic about us when "us" still has many blank spaces awaiting definition.

And yet, the multigenerational saga One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez succeeds at both transmitting and creating a portrait of the Colombian nation. Like Don Quixote, it narrates the chaos that follows men when possessed by an idea. Like the Iliad, it laments the escalating destruction that can result from an unyielding sense of honor. Like War and Peace, it traces the ways individual lives intersect with big history. Like the Divine Comedy, it creates its own cosmology and makes the reader take it as true. Like Macbeth, it dissects the forces that lure men toward excessive ambition. Like the Old Testament, it bridges the passage from mythic origins to known history. It's an ostentatious book, the kind that requires a writer to err on the side of overconfidence. Such a bet is risky, but that's the price of admission in this game: you simply can't pull off something of the monumental scope of One Hundred Years of Solitude if you have any humility left in you. You must think yourself worthy of it.

The Netflix adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, released just this month in a first batch of eight episodes out of a planned total of sixteen, faced a comparable challenge. And on the technical level, the challenge is met with the highest excellence: period-accurate costumes, meticulously researched set design, authentic 19th-century furniture, handcrafted props, true-sounding accents, and multiple full-sized versions of the entire town of Macondo. The production's stratospheric budget is noticeable in every scene: in exquisite cinematography, in pitch-perfect casting, in brutally honest war scenes, in taking every opportunity to boast Colombia's gorgeous geography. If the series can be said to commit any fault at all, it's only in its absolute reverence for the source text, precisely the kind of humility with which it couldn't have been composed in the first place.

This degree of allegiance to the source text is understandable given the impossibly high expectations placed on the project. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a sacred cow of our literary canon, so there would have been a loud backlash had the scriptwriters and directors hired by Netflix dared introduce a more personal touch into the story. So what we get is an almost word-for-word translation of the novel, to the point that a voiceover narrator is used (in fact, overused) to explain the plot to the audience.

Now, before someone accuses me of being inconsistent: I'm aware that I praised the film adaptation of Pedro Páramo for staying strictly faithful to the book. So why do I see the same choice as a defect this time? The difference is that, despite being much shorter, Pedro Páramo is a far more experimental book than One Hundred Years of Solitude. The disorienting effect of hearing so many voices at the same time already gave Pedro Páramo (the book) some of the qualities of the audiovisual medium, which made the task easier for Pedro Páramo (the movie). With One Hundred Years of Solitude there's a bigger maneuvering margin to build upon the book, but the directors don't take advantage of it. To rely heavily on a voiceover narrator isn't as jarring in Pedro Páramo (the movie) because Pedro Páramo (the book) is composed as a continuous conversation: the protagonist is being told his father's story in the voices of the dead. So it makes sense for the movie to also be composed as a conversation. One Hundred Years of Solitude uses a more traditional formula (omniscient third-person narrator who is not part of the plot). Giving the narrator such a prominent position in the adaptation feels like an intrusion, almost an admission that the directors didn't trust the images' ability to tell the story. Watching a dramatized adaptation of a book shouldn't feel like a read-along of the book.

This deferential attitude toward our canon has already been defied in literature; audiovisual media shouldn't have to recapitulate the whole progression that went from the generation of writers who prayed at the altar of García Márquez to the generation of writers who spat in the face of García Márquez to today's generation of writers who are neither for nor against García Márquez and are just focused on doing their own thing. For example, in the Anglo world, iconoclastic reinterpretations of Shakespeare are a long-established and respected tradition. García Márquez himself was no stranger to that kind of transformative creation: he wrote the screenplay of a retelling of Oedipus Rex set in the violent 1990s of rural Colombia. It shouldn't be seen as blasphemy to do a less than faithful adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, as long as the core theme is treated with respect.

And what is that core theme? The same as in every national epic: This Is What It Feels Like To Be Us. However, García Márquez wasn't merely reporting on an already existing sense of nationhood; he was codifying it. The earliest Colombian novels were meant to serve as almost ethnographic descriptions of social customs, but the generation of writers to which García Márquez belonged had a much clearer idea of that task. By reading him, we learn to be Colombian. We learn to pay attention to what is at stake in our embarrassing saga of repeated errors. Particularly in One Hundred Years of Solitude, we learn about the folly of putting abstract allegiances above universal human needs, about the dangers of forgetting basic truths, about the poisonous consequences of imposing artificial obstacles to love. Above all, we learn that the one thing you should never be afraid of is love.

One isn't required to 100% agree with the guy's ideas about love, though. His oeuvre was uniformly influenced by outdated and sometimes very harmful views on gender dynamics. In his interviews he blamed women for the problems of sexism. The last book he published before his death is a romanticized account of child prostitution. When approaching his writings, one must keep in mind both his exceptional talents and his abhorrent opinions. Even One Hundred Years of Solitude, the book that got him the Nobel Prize, is replete with instances of unchallenged, as in authorially endorsed, sexual misconduct that can't be easily removed in an adaptation without unraveling the rest of the plot.

So what can be salvaged from One Hundred Years of Solitude? What justifies its continued place of honor in world literature and the undeniably beautiful adaptation Netflix threw bucketfuls of money at? I've already mentioned how it conveys the general feeling of what it's like to be Colombian. Let me give a more concrete example: a few years ago, when I reviewed Encanto, I briefly considered mentioning a factoid that existed in parallel with the announcement of the movie but was completely unrelated. What happened was that, on the same day that the first trailer for Encanto was released, it was reported in the news that the murderers of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse were Colombian ex-army mercenaries. I didn't include that bit of news in the review because it was already long enough, but it's relevant here: Encanto was offering me a rare occasion to feel good about my country, but it was instantly ruined by the revelation about the murderers. That whiplash of incompatible emotions, that corrosive question in my head (Why did I bother getting excited?), that millionth refusal by history to let us feel proud of anything, that abrupt cold shower of pointlessness—that is what it feels like, every day, to be Colombian. And the biggest artistic merit of One Hundred Years of Solitude lies in capturing that infernally complicated feeling and exploring how we live with it and through it, and how we stubbornly keep looking for a way to someday live past it.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Film Review: Pedro Páramo

Netflix adapts one of the most acclaimed classics of Latin American literature

Latin American history has been stained with blood since the time of colonization. The respective canons of our national literary traditions have variously grappled with the sense of disorientation of having to figure out how to build new nations after finally winning our independence; and the ever-present shadow of violence that haunted those first attempts (and that still haunts us in many ways) left a clear mark on our writers. But the special blend of Indigenous and Catholic beliefs that occurred in Mexico created a unique cultural relationship with death.

One of the manifestations of the role of death in Mexican consciousness is Juan Rulfo's 1955 novel Pedro Páramo, one of the biggest masterpieces of the Spanish language. Told in a minutely fragmented, extremely nonlinear style, it anticipated many of the technical innovations of what would eventually be called magical realism. It follows multiple first-person accounts in the remote town of Comala, where the main narrator travels to look for Pedro Páramo, his father. Pedro Páramo embodies the archetype of the Mexican macho: a selfish, violent authoritarian who exploits men and consumes women. His inner demons gradually turn him into a bitter loner, feared and hated by everyone. By the time the narrator arrives looking for him, Comala is an abandoned waste, its inhabitants long gone. But the deep pain that lived there still echoes in the walls and in the streets. Pedro left behind many tormented, restless spirits, from whose voices we piece together his story.

Pedro is a rich landowner at a time when the Mexican Revolution is trying to put an end to the outrageous inequality that has always been the scourge of our countries. Through shameless fraud, manipulation and murder, he gradually becomes the uncontested authority in the town, but all his money and his power are useless against the capricious hand of death that continuously denies him any morsel of happiness. One character defines him as "living rancor," and that sentiment takes hold of him until nothing else remains.

Of many classics of literature it has been said that they can't be adapted to cinema. Curiously, the numerous jumps in the narration of Pedro Páramo, from past to present and from one narrator to another, feel ready-made for the screen. The Netflix adaptation follows almost exactly the sequence in which the text is written, and that structure, full of abrupt breaks, which in book form demands constant attention and effort from the reader, lends itself to the audiovisual medium with surprising ease. (Rulfo also wrote movie scripts, so maybe he had a sense of the possibilities of scene cuts when writing his novel.)

Precisely because the movie didn't need to add more technical embellishments to a text that was itself quite complex, some Anglo reviewers have reported feeling left unimpressed by it, describing it as too long and not experimental enough for its source material. My suspicion is that they watched the movie in its lackluster English dub instead of the powerful dialogues of the original Spanish, most of them taken verbatim from the novel. I'm not surprised to find that, where English media have assigned this movie to a Hispanic reviewer, its reception has been more favorable. The languid, understated tone is part of the point. The trip to Comala is a descent into hell, and when these ghosts speak, they have much to lament. You can get bored with Pedro Páramo if you're not intimately familiar with the way the real and the unreal are experienced by Latin Americans. The generational shock of colonization and the repeated shocks of subsequent civil wars built a collective mindset where no assumptions are guaranteed, where things can crumble down at any moment and the most delicate beauty coexists with utter terror. You don't need fancy CGI to tell our stories. Our mundane, common lives are already full of the impossible.

Director Rodrigo Prieto masterfully communicates the intensity of the events in Pedro Páramo with vivid colors and stark chiaroscuros. The result is a slow-paced account of a life of frustrated desires painted with heightened accents. Nothing much seems to happen while a tempest of emotions roars under the surface. That's the tension in the heart of a Mexican macho, who is expected to show at all times a hard face that nothing can move, even as his unacknowledged feelings eat him alive. Here's where we can notice the ace up the sleeve of this movie: Gustavo Santaolalla's monumental soundtrack, at the same time unobtrusive and ominous, matching the all-consuming resentment and fury that hide in the ordinary flow of everyday moments.

This production lives up to the thorny responsibility of adapting a national epic. Many classics of Latin American literature took upon themselves the task of expressing an entire country in a book. To get a feel for the soul of Argentina, you read Martín Fierro. To get a feel for the soul of Colombia, you read One Hundred Years of Solitude. That's the position that Pedro Páramo occupies for Mexico. And the many souls trapped between the empty houses of Comala tell of a land mercilessly punished by men's ambitions, a land that resonates with the clamor of a very old pain that still hasn't found peace, a land where the melancholy of memories finds some comfort each time someone listens to them.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

First Scare: Dracula (1979)

The one that was color-graded with extreme prejudice

With this being the fourth Dracula adaptation I watch for this series, I start to wonder: is it humanly possible to tell a Dracula story where women actually make choices of their own? Even in this unabashedly horny version, directed by John Badham, Lucy's vehement wish to spent eternity with the Count can be attributed to magical coercion. It's as if there were no such thing as freely desiring your predator; with Dracula there must always be a pinch of deception thrown in the mix, a hidden hand pushing the will that believes itself free. Where human seduction depends on mutual offering and suggesting, vampiric seduction is all about control. The trick is to hide that control under a charming façade, to convince you that your surrender was your own idea. The vampire is one of those predator species that prefer a docile prey. Like an anglerfish, but hot.

The trope of the vampire as a sexual threat has been present since the very earliest vampire fiction: both Polidori's The Vampyre and Le Fanu's Carmilla revolve around serial seducers of unsuspecting maidens. It became a perennial trait in fiction even until the early years of the 21st century to handle the topic of desire with a certain deliberate ambiguity where vampires were involved. Those stories look very different now through the lens of our contemporary notion of consent: for us, upholders of bodily autonomy and personal agency, any degree of coercion is unacceptable, no matter how sugarcoated. And it's a sign of the progress we've made that the authors of classic vampire tales would have found our perspective odd, maybe too reductive. So if you're going to dive into the literary tradition of sexy vampires, you need to keep in mind two conflicting stances: that of today, according to which anything less than free consent is inarguably assault; and that of the authors, whose understanding of seduction was most likely less egalitarian.

Badham casts a handsome Dracula, removing part of the character's mystique. While it makes the movie's romantic storyline more digestible to the audience, I find that it alters the character too much. Dracula is supposed to be a master manipulator; a key component of his scare factor is that, even if he presented himself in public like the stinking, rotten corpse he actually is, his victims would still be incapable of resisting his embrace. Dracula pulls the strings of human desire in the service of his own desire, which is what makes Nosferatu so effective. If Dracula is good-looking, it doesn't strike us as horrifying that someone would desire him—even if he's using his mind control powers. With the air of effortless charm that Frank Langella gives to this character, it's entirely believable that someone would want to be possessed by him—even if he's not using his mind control powers.

Here your mileage may vary. For a segment of the audience, the fact that he's already attractive before he starts controlling you will make him feel more dangerous. In my case, I'm fascinated by the idea of an inhuman monstrosity that can nonetheless reach into your most intimate feelings and twist them against you. And here we need to invoke cultural attitudes around lookism. By making Dracula handsome, this movie joins the long tradition of folk tales that question the idea of a link between external and internal beauty. Think of the Greek siren, or the medieval succubus, or the Japanese jorōgumo: extremely beautiful, equally evil.

For this version of Dracula, the reshuffling of characters goes like this: Jonathan is engaged to Lucy, who is the daughter of Dr. Seward. There's no Arthur, no brides of Dracula, no earlier visit by Renfield, and no ruse from Dracula: he readily admits that he's visiting England as a consumer. Of more consequence is the rewrite that turns Mina into Dr. Van Helsing's daughter. This time, he isn't an established vampire hunter; he learns about vampires along with the audience. This change allows for a scenario I like to see: Dracula infiltrating human society. Langella plays the Count as a worldly hedonist who enraptures people with his vast talent for conversation. Instead of keeping to the formalities of high society, like Lugosi's Count, Langella's is almost scandalous in how openly he seeks and enjoys female attention.

Thick volumes could be written on the Freudian symbolism of the vampire as a dual object of the erotic impulse and the death impulse, on the alarmingly easy way our basic desires can be warped toward our own destruction. Badham's Dracula aims to present a believable scenario of such distorted passions. Much like desire itself, your response to this piece of art will be uniquely yours. Maybe you'll fall under the spell. Maybe you'll remain unmoved. Taste is a mystery, like life and death.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

First Scare: Dracula (1974)

The one with the excess of close-ups and the perpetually constipated grimace

Ideally, Jack Palance should have been a great choice for the role of Count Dracula. His suitability for the role was so widely acknowledged that Marvel Comics used his likeness for the series Tomb of Dracula years before Dan Curtis cast him in the role. This was the same Dan Curtis who created the TV series Dark Shadows. Add Richard I Am Legend Matheson writing the script, and this movie had the right pedigree to be spectacular. Unfortunately, someone must have given Palance the wrong acting instructions, because from the start to the end of the movie, he only knows how to make one face: that of the unlucky vampire who forgot to add some fiber to his all-blood diet, and is now in urgent need of a laxative.

It's not like Palance is wasted on the role. When he speaks, you believe that he's the right actor. He says his lines in an unnervingly calm, low voice, in the tone of an immortal who has seen everything and can no longer be surprised. His acting choices resemble those of Bela Lugosi in his manner of staring, standing, and carrying himself. However, where Lugosi could own a scene by raising an eyebrow, Palance invariably contorts every muscle on his face, as if the director were pressuring him to choose which emotion to show.

The director himself is no help on this matter, with his strange habit of resorting to a zoom-in to mark every emotional beat. He does make effective use of low angles and the occasional Dutch angle to underline a character's interaction with the realm of the occult, but his overreliance on close-ups becomes a form of self-sabotage against the serious tone he's clearly going for. Matheson's script keeps a tight rein on the pacing of events, an essential skill to have when the audience already knows the plot by heart, and the directing style falls short of what this script deserves.

This time, the reshuffling of characters is less drastic than in previous adaptations, but there's one key detail to pay attention to: the addition of the subplot about the Count's long-dead wife whose likeness he randomly encounters in the present. Coppola would use the same subplot in his 1992 version. This is another way of solving the eternal question about the Count's reason for moving to England: in this case, it's because he's a hopeless romantic. From his dialogues (and bizarrely melodramatic flashbacks) it can be inferred that he'd be happy to remain in his castle if it weren't for the armies that have continuously come to pillage his land and/or murder his wife. If you will just let him keep his wife, he won't have to come to kill you. This version of the Count is no less a seducer than previous ones, but here the story emphasizes his sexual needs instead of Lucy's or Mina's. In fact, the female characters in this version perform the function of hypnotizable MacGuffins rather than people. They're there for the Count to pursue and for Arthur and Van Helsing to chivalrously defend.

It's funny how the space left open by removing Jonathan Harker from the action in London raises Arthur Holmwood to an almost protagonistic position, yet the script keeps him restricted to serving as an appendix of Dr. Van Helsing. They do everything together, go everywhere together, investigate each clue together—you could remove Arthur from this movie and the only change you'd notice would be that Van Helsing would have to recite his infodumps to himself. Even Mina is almost an afterthought: her close friendship with Lucy is more told than shown, and what little autonomy she has in the plot is gone once she's fed Dracula's blood.

Changing Count Dracula from a predator to a heartbroken widower isn't enough to arouse sympathy for this character. There are still good reasons why the common folk who live near his castle shudder at his name. And on a more pragmatic level, the rough, hyperangular features of Jack Palance's face are a bad fit for a romantic lead. But the movie wants to present the Count as a suffering, tragic man who has endured loneliness for too long and just hopes for a second chance at happiness. Again, this is the same angle Coppola would try some years later, but Coppola succeeds at it because his Dracula is legible to us, because his flashback actually does the job of explaining the part of the story we need to understand instead of giving us mere hints as in this movie.

Dracula's manner of death in this version is overacted as all hell. Once the curtains are ripped open to let the sunlight in, the Count staggers and pauses multiple times to make sure you see him pose in pain from all sides. Then he helpfully gets himself in position for Van Helsing to impale him, a process that takes way more camera cuts than it needs. Overall, this movie is not without enjoyable moments, if your idea of enjoyment allows for frequent, abrupt shifts in PoV and a plot structured like a game of cat and mouse.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

First Scare: Dracula (1958)

The one sadly afflicted with pink eye

A few years ago, I did the experiment of watching all three film versions of Carrie on one day. It taught me a lot about the minutiae of adaptational choices: what effect it has if a certain dialogue scene is moved to a different moment in the story, what actions need to be condensed if a location is removed, how far an emotional setup needs to be from its eventual payoff. (My verdict is that 2013 has the best Margaret, 1976 has the best Carrie, and 2002 has the best prom massacre.) Watching various adaptations of Dracula is turning out to be a similar learning experience, with Terence Fisher's 1958 film a fascinating example of how drastically you can strip down a story while keeping its core intact.

If I was surprised by how much the 1931 film shuffled around the novel's characters, this version goes even further: Renfield and the sanatorium are entirely removed, as is Dracula's journey by ship, while Dr. Seward is reduced to a very minor role. Arthur is now Lucy's brother instead of suitor, and he's married to Mina. The bulk of the action is moved from England to Germany so that trips to and from Transylvania are less impractical. The most consequential change is that Jonathan Harker doesn't visit Castle Dracula as an innocent clerk bringing paperwork, but as a sort of secret agent already tasked with killing the vampire. This means that it's not the Count who lures Jonathan to his land, but Jonathan who takes the initiative to seek the Count. It also means that the Count's evil nature is known all along, so he doesn't get to mingle with human society.

Removing the Count's pretense of being a normal human massively reduces the contact he can have with the rest of the cast, which forces the director to make the most of his very few on-screen appearances. The tradeoff works: this is one of those monster movies where we get to see the monster very rarely, but each time we do, it lands with full impact.

The changes to the whole Jonathan/Mina/Lucy axis help provide a practical solution to the biggest loose thread in the novel: why did Count Dracula want to leave Transylvania in the first place? In this interpretation, Jonathan sneaks into the castle crypt in the first act and kills the Count's bride, who may or may not be desperate to be rid of the vampiric curse. This event gives the Count a clear motivation: you take my bride, I take yours. And that's why he goes after Lucy, who in this version is Jonathan's fiancée.

Jonathan doesn't make it past the first act alive (for which I was thankful, what with actor John Van Eyssen being rather mediocre in the role), so the film promptly shifts to introducing Dr. Van Helsing, who ends up being the true protagonist. As Van Helsing, Peter Cushing does a stellar job. He's helped by the script, which cleverly remolds the novel's crusader/pest exterminator into a detective-esque figure. He's apparently been on Dracula's trail for a while, and he frames his mission in terms of protecting the world from what could become a plague of vampirism.

However, precisely because the story has been stripped down to the basics, this whole talk of a threat to the world sounds incongruous. The action is confined to about half a dozen sets, beyond which the rest of society might as well not exist. Van Helsing does visit a customs officer and an undertaker in the course of his investigation, but those spaces just play their part and are quickly done with. If not for the dialogues, we wouldn't even know that Arthur and Mina are living in Germany instead of England. And the Count doesn't help sell his menace factor either; he's more interested in replacing his dead bride than in going on a biting rampage. The main conflict in this film is a strictly private affair, but the dialogues insist that Dracula sits at the head of a "reign of terror" that must be defeated yet is nowhere to be seen.

So instead of the usual dynamic in a Dracula story of the foreign Other quietly invading the civilized metropolis, here we have the civilized heroes going out into the land of the foreign Other to stamp down the threat it represents. Not a very subtle sentiment for a film produced while the Cold War was getting started (it doesn't escape the viewer that the undertaker's shop where the Count first goes to hide has the last name Marx, of all things).

This version of the vampire doesn't bother with theatrics. No beastly transformation, no fog cloud, no magical stares. His power is raw, brutal hunger (and his female victims welcome his assault with equal hunger). When he finally meets Van Helsing, he doesn't try to control his mind, as in the 1931 movie; here he goes straight for the jugular, and is only thwarted because he lets himself grow overconfident.

For a limited special effects budget, Dracula's death in this movie is impressive. Instead of erupting in flames when exposed to the sun, he simply crumbles down into a pile of ashes. It's very simple, very repulsive, and very effective. Unfortunately, the Technicolor process left many scenes more illuminated than they're implied to be, which makes it look like Dracula is walking outdoors under more sunlight than he should, so the dramatic shock of having the sun hit his face at the end is somewhat less effective. Still, this is a enjoyable watch. It's like going to the doctor's office for a needle jab: just the briefest glimpse of blood, and it's over before you feel any pain.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

First Scare: Dracula (1931)

The one with the intense stares

Tod Browning's Dracula is derived from a 1924 stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, and it shows. It keeps several of the hallmarks of a traditional theater script: lengthy infodumps via dialogue; time jumps that relegate some plot developments (especially the violent ones) to the implicit space between scenes; extended, continuous use of the same set for several consecutive conversations; and a marked preference for telling over showing. I understand that Western theater has a long tradition of keeping the violence offstage; what I cannot understand is how, when you translate the stage play into a movie, you produce what eventually becomes the most memorable, most revered, most iconic interpretation of The vampire without showing me one single instance of biting.

It goes without saying that Bela Lugosi carries this movie on his shoulders. Despite the excessive wordiness of the script, the obviously fake bat puppets, the lack of a music soundtrack, and the scattered, ill-advised attempts at humor, it only takes one look at the titular vampire's intense gaze to fall under his spell. When he's not engaged in the social pantomime of small talk, in a strenuous but futile effort to pass as a hot-blooded, cheerful human, his presence fills the screen with an unblinking, commanding aura of evil. Wikipedia tells me that almost a dozen actors were considered for the role, but now that I've seen the movie, the possibility of giving the Count any other face strikes me as inconceivable.

Fancy clothes and impeccable haircut aside, this version of the vampire is still very close to Nosferatu, an almost irrational monster guided by the hunting instinct, without the sentimental appeal that later reinventions would add to the archetype to create a more relatable figure, desperate to find love but cursed to see people only as food. When his character is free from the need to pretend to be a normal human, Lugosi puts on the face of a predator, giving his victims not the natural recognition of a fellow person but the hungry stare of a beast preparing to jump. He delivers a terrific performance, which anticipates later occurrences of the single-minded, uncaring killer that can be found in Alien or The Terminator.

The liberties taken with the source material are a double-edged sword. For one part, the early scenes about a real estate lawyer visiting the Count's castle are given to Renfield instead of Jonathan Harker, a change that strengthens the causal cohesion between the first and second acts. Also, Dr. Seward, who is in charge of the hospital where Renfield ends up locked in, is rewritten to be Mina's father instead of Lucy's suitor, which gives the Count a convenient reason to get close to Mina. The downside is that the role of Jonathan Harker is greatly diminished, Mina is reduced to sexy lamp status, and Lucy's death and subsequent undeath lose the weight they should have in the plot. There isn't even a scene to purify Lucy's corpse; she's simply forgotten halfway through the movie.

From our position in this century, accustomed to hundreds of variations on the vampire mythos, it would seem easy to forgive such misfires; there's always another version out there with its own aesthetic, its own vision, its own reinterpretation of the story. But in 1931, Dracula was yet to enter the public domain. The choices made by Universal Pictures did more than express artistic freedom: they set canon. There's an entire period in the history of horror during which Universal's Dracula was the only authorized Count on screen. Just like the present generation only knows Ian McKellen's version of Gandalf, and will forever think of Gandalf in that image, there was a generation whose idea of the Count was shaped by Bela Lugosi's acting style. It's the kind of first-mover advantage that forces every subsequent moviemaker to make their art as a response to it.

The irony is that Nosferatu came first, however illegally, which makes Universal's Dracula, for all its intentions of defining the character on its own terms, a response. Whereas Orlok is a cadaveric nightmare heralded by pestilence, Lugosi's Count comes across as a dusty relic of the Ancien Régime, a ruler over the human heart who repays obedience with madness. Both are corrupted, bloodthirsty abominations, but Lugosi's version knows the tricks of a stage magician, most notably the dramatic effect of a well-timed fog machine. Moreover, Nosferatu is silent, while Dracula lets Lugosi make full use of his heavy Hungarian accent to leverage the audience's learned Orientalism. Orlok feels like the fearsome Other because he's a walking corpse; Lugosi's Count feels like the fearsome Other because he's a foreigner with weird tastes.

My notion of the vampire was shaped by the film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire and Coppola's reinvention of Bram Stoker's material (plus smatterings of The Munsters Today, Forever Knight, Count Duckula, Drak Pack, and Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School). Somehow I never came into relevant contact with Dark Shadows, Salem's Lot, Hellsing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castlevania, True Blood, or The Vampire Diaries. I did meet Blade, Underground, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Twilight, although at an age too late for them to influence my personal mythology. (Namely: if you ask me to think of vampires, the thing about sunlight that hurts them is not the UV light, they are not at war with werewolves, they have no connection with Biblical characters, and they Do. Not. Sparkle.) I don't view vampires as tragic figures or forbidden seducers; I view them as the perfect symbol for the parasitic nature of aristocracy.

Alas, I am a child of my time. This version of Dracula didn't particularly frighten me. Some of the scenes where the Count uses his mind control powers straddle the very thin line between the sublime and the ridiculous, and the uneven editing kills all sense of dramatic momentum in the last third. Worst of all, in consonance with the theatrical conventions of its time, but absurdly for a big classic of horror, we're not allowed to see the Count die. I feel sorry for the masterful lead actor who was dragged into this less than expertly made movie.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

First Scare: The Sixth Sense

A creepy character study that holds up over time

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oscar-nominated cerebral horror film The Sixth Sense. I consumed a fair amount of Bruce Willis content during his heyday, but this one escaped me. At the time, I wasn’t in the mood for creepy content, so I took a pass. Over the years, the film became a classic, showing up on best of lists, particularly for best plot twists. Thanks to the internet and repeated discussions of the film, many elements of the story were unavoidable even for non-viewers. As a result, the “twist” at the end was spoiled for me long before I saw it this month. But instead of making me less interested, the fact of the twist made me more fascinated by a story that I previously imagined as creepy and subdued. Now, in honor of our First Scare project, I have finally watched M. Night Shaymalan’s award-winning The Sixth Sense.

The story follows Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a successful child psychologist in Philadelphia, who works with troubled children. The film opens with Malcolm celebrating a prestigious lifetime award for his work in child psychology. His loving wife Anna (Olivia Williams) is proud of him even though she notes that his success has come at the cost of putting other aspects of his life second, including her. However, she says it’s worth it for the children he has helped. This comment serves up an ironic twist of fate: their celebration is cut short when Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg), a former patient, breaks into their home and accuses Malcolm of misdiagnosing him and failing him. The psychotic, distraught, mostly naked teen suddenly shoots Malcolm and kills himself while Anna rushes to stop Malcolm’s bleeding.

Later we see a recovered Malcolm starting to work with another troubled little boy, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment). Grade-school-aged Cole has what seems to be delusions and is generally maladjusted and often bullied by other children for his odd and awkward behavior. Malcolm wants to focus on helping Cole as a way to atone for his perceived failure with Vincent Grey. In the process of visiting and interviewing Cole, we meet Cole’s stressed single mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), trying to support her emotionally troubled son. As the therapeutic meetings continue, we also see the world through Cole’s eyes and discover the first plot twist of the story and the explanation for Cole’s stress: as Cole himself explains it to Malcolm, “I see dead people.” Throughout the film, through Cole’s eyes, we see glimpses of half-burned people, hanging people, bloodied or poisoned people lurking around Cole and sometimes interacting with him. The sudden appearances are nicely creepy and provide quite a lot of jump scares. Later we find out why the child is haunted, and we find out a second important plot twist detail about the ghosts surrounding him.

In addition to his work with Cole, Malcolm also struggles with his relationship with his wife Anna. She seems to be distant from him and is generally melancholy to the point of ignoring him. Ironically, the child Cole, at the end of the film, is the one able to give psychologist Malcom advice on how to reconnect with his wife. That reconnection leads to the last big plot twist.

The most powerful thing about the film is Haley Joel Osment’s stunning child acting. His somber, melancholy, moody portrayal of a little haunted boy is quietly mesmerizing, poignant, and creepy. At times, his sweet, young face and soft voice are tragically endearing. At other times, he becomes angry and cruel, adding an extra layer of scariness and complexity to the story. Mostly, he is coldly and defeatedly accepting of his fate of suffering in a world of abusive children and disbelieving adults. The film has a lot of great (but likely unintentional) messaging about the importance of listening to and believing suffering children. The other excellent aspect of the film is Toni Collette. She delivers a great performance as Cole’s long-suffering mother, who is trying to protect her son from bullies while dealing with her own frustrations at his inexplicably odd behavior.

My least favorite aspect of the film was, ironically, Malcolm. My issue is not with Bruce Willis himself—he does a fine job playing basically the same type of character he normally plays (from Moonlighting to Die Hard). But the character of Malcolm is written in a way that is mildly annoying. His handling of the break-in is confusing. His decision to help Cole is ultimately a self-serving way to try to clear his conscience. But when things get tough with Cole, he decides to abandon the child. Ultimately it is the child, Cole, who helps Malcolm find peace, and Cole is most helped in the end by his final emotional exchange with his mother.

The Sixth Sense is my favorite kind of horror film, quietly cerebral and creepy. I’m surprised at how well it has held up over time. For a film that’s twenty-five years old, it still feels mostly timeless rather than dated (other than some passing comments on divorce and a surprising lack of diversity for a story set in Philadelphia). Despite knowing the big twist in advance, I still felt engaged with the main character, Cole. And for me, it’s all about character, even in a horror film.

Highlights:

· Oscar-worthy child acting
· Cerebral plot twists
· Survives the years of spoilers

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris—Multitasking, fiction-writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.