#and snatcher is all lovely and fatherly and sweet to her

[return-of-the-queen-au]

don't you ever get that feeling when looking at a fan version of your favorite character and you wanna scream "HE WOULD NOT FUCKING DO THAT" even though it's really just you not liking the fan thing? Like I'm sorry dude my brain's mean😔

[ravensroleplays]

Well, this was a nice sight... The very last time Snatcher had seen his dear 'Princess' in life, she had him carried off to the dungeon to be imprisoned before cold and hunger took him. Now, thousands of years later, here Vanessa was, imprisoned before him. Okay, it wasn't one of Snatcher's own traps that had caught the ice witch, but he could still appreciate the irony. Or, well, he could if he weren’t so livid. "RELEASE ME!" The former queen demanded. "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" The specter, currently in his human form, squeezed his chin, as if in thought, then shrugged, giving the most shit-eating grin he could. "Nah." "WHAT?!" The ice-cold fury was obvious in Vanessa's voice, but Snatcher didn't even flinch. Why should he be scared of his former abuser anymore? He was far more powerful now. And what was more, he had companions. Friends, who already had already helped him out a loud. A family, who he would do anything short of going back to stealing souls again to protect. Plus, those strings his comrades had wrapped Vanessa up in proved to be really strong. Snatcher narrowed his eyes as he glared up at the woman...no, the creature he had once loved. "I got those flowers for you, you know." He remarked, his voice almost as cold as Vanessa's ice. "That day way back when, when you had me locked up to die." He dared to step a little closer, yellow meeting red as their eyes locked. "I was paying the florist when you came. And for that, you had me locked away." Another step or two closer. "I died, the entire KINGDOM died, because of a simple misunderstanding. Because of your irrational, insane, jealousy. Look around you, 'darling'!" It took all of Snatcher's self-control not to let out a humorless, bitter laugh as he waved an arm around their surroundings. "All of this is because of YOU!" Vanessa was still for a good, long time. And then, she did something that genuinely surprised Snatcher. She cried. "All I wanted was YOU!” Vanessa sobbed. "I wanted you back...there wasn’t a day that passed that I didn’t miss you! I wanted to be with my prince again!” Her body shook a little more with sobs before waves of bitterness started to roll off of her.

"But what do I get for all my efforts?! All my magic?! An abomination that looks like it came straight from that accursed snake himself! I wouldn’t be surprised if that BEAST interfered with my spell somehow!”

Wait.

‘Snake’?

"Disgusting monstrosities, BOTH of them—that miserable little creature is better off DESTROYED!”

And like that, something inside Snatcher broke.

Whatever lingering attraction or affection he had left for this evil hag, even thousands of years later, was suddenly completely gone.

“...what did I ever see in you?”

"What?” The queen stared down at her ‘prince’ from where she was suspended in the air, and, before he could stop himself, Snatcher found himself laughing. Slowly at first, but then louder and harder, until he was clutching his sides.

“Not only are you manipulative, selfish, and unbelievably clingy and abusive, you’re as dense as they come!” Without waiting for Vanessa’s reaction, Snatcher pulled himself back up, his smirk only growing as he said “All these years later...and you still haven’t realized...”

And with that, his form grew and twisted as he changed back into his typical ‘noodle’ form, and he got the feeling that, if Vanessa still had a visible mouth, it would have fallen open as she screamed

"YOU?!” Snatcher held his arms out in a dramatic pose as he shouted

"SURPRISE!”

"You...all this time?!”

"I never left, ‘sweetheart’.” Snatcher confirmed as he loomed over Vanessa. "I just...changed a bit, since then.”

"You LIE!” Vanessa screamed, starting to flail in the strings. "You’re just trying to trick me! My Prince was sweet, and loving, and wonderful...he would never dream of defying me! You’re just...a MONSTER!”

Another harsh laugh escaped the huge ghost at that.

"I’m a monster?! I'm not the one who froze a whole kingdom full of people to death because I was having a hissy fit! And I'm not the one who tried to freeze one scared little girl solid, and treated another like garbage, since the day she was BORN, just for not turning out the way I’d hoped.” At that, his smile disappeared completely as he bared his fangs at Vanessa, fatherly instincts taking over again.

"You know, looking at it, maybe it’s a good thing we never had any kids together when we were both human...comes to find out you’re a terrible mother. You bring a new life into the world, a KID, and you act like she’s some horrible THING.” He shook his head in a gesture of mock pity, and Vanessa started to protest.

"She...IT, is! It just came out so wrong, so UNNATURAL...!”

"That doesn’t matter.” Snatcher snapped, crossing his arms. "She’s still a CHILD. A little girl who didn’t do anything to deserve the way you treated her. But you know what?” He raised an eyebrow. "You don’t want her? Fine. I'll take her...she was made from me, after all. She's just as much my daughter as the little girl I found as a baby and raised for seven years.”

With this, he loomed over his former love even more, narrowing his eyes at her.

"And if you do anything to hurt either of them, or any of my kids, ever again, I’ll make you WISH you’d perished along with everyone, and everything else all those years ago.”

With that, he turned to rejoin the others.

The specter was surprised to find how much...lighter he felt after that experience. It took a LOT longer than he would have probably liked, but he could now safely say that he had completely moved on from that evil woman.

And yeah, his hands might not have been clean, but at least he had been able to realize when he’d fallen too far, and start changing himself for his own sake, and the people around him, something Vanessa had proven herself far too selfish to do, no matter how much time had passed.

Whatever. Her loss...she had no one to blame for her isolation but herself. Let the former queen rule over her big, empty manor.

As for Snatcher...well, he had to get back to his family. ALL of them.

[julesdelorme]

The Wailing (Gok-seung)

I’ve had a lot of time on my hands of late. Stuck in bed mostly, I’ve been watching a lot of TV and a lot of movies. Some of it good. Some of it bad. And a bit of it surprising.

The Korean film Gok-seung, The Wailing, was one of those surprising things for me. It’s one of those types of movies that I think we should be talking about a lot more than we generally do. It’s so easy to talk about the big budget main stream films. So many of us, though, tend to overlook the smaller budget films, particularly from markets that we don’t pay very much attention to when it comes to movies.

Some Japanese films have captured mainstream attention, from the wonderful Akira Kurosawa films of the past, shlocky monster movies like Godzilla, Manga, Anime and Animation works, and horror movies like The Ring. Too many of those movies got badly remade by Hollywood, though The Magnificent Seven, For a Few Dollars More and even Star Wars managed to take Kurosawa’s work and make pretty good movies out of them.

This has also been true of some Northern European films and television series, particularly Sweden, though they too have a long history of “art film” prestige, and an unfortunate history of bad or just less powerful Hollywood remakes.

But smaller, lesser known markets, like Korea, or Iran and so many other countries with burgeoning film industries, too often get overlooked. And movies that do not qualify as “art film” get even more overlooked, probably because they do not appeal to our inner snobs and do not make for good “Look how smart and cultured I am.”  types of references.

South Korea has in fact been making its own interesting horror and science fiction films for a while now. This undoubtedly has a similar source of inspiration as the American science fiction films and Japanese monster movies of the 50s and 60s: an intimate relationship and natural paranoia about the possibility of very real annihilation, of a hidden enemy that might very well actually exist, in this case due to the proximity to the unstable North Korean government. This has led to a very similar type of undertone that made movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing or Godzilla much better than they should have been.

Gok-seung, The Wailing is a great example of just this type of movie.

On the surface it starts out seeming like another zombie/possession movie, though with a surprising mix of comic characterization mixed in. The lead character is an overweight, mildly incompetent, and not at all heroic cop in a small mountain village where some odd, possibly supernatural deaths take place. Do-won Kwak, as Jong-goo is not exactly what you would picture as a leading man. But his pock marked fleshy face is both wonderfully expressive when he needs it to be and a blank almost mindless mask at other times, calling to mind the wonderful Japanese/Korean actor and director Takeshi Kitano, particularly in the way that he relates to the world around him and his fellow human beings.

Except for his daughter Hyo-jin, played wonderfully by Hwan-hee Kim. She is the polar opposite of her father. She is sweet, full of life and of a surprising level of mature honesty and wisdom. Jong-goo clearly adores his daughter. When he is in her presence he melts. He emanates a deep uncynical fatherly love. He is a different human being when he is with her.

So we know of course that Hyo-jin will play a major role, but we don’t exactly how, and we definitely do not know how interesting the course that the movie will take, because at first it seems like such an obvious genre film.

It’s not.

Even when the story begins to unfold, and we think we know what the movie is about, it manages to surprise. And like those great movies of the 50s and 60s, Gok-seung has a surprisingly deep undertow, reflecting those American science fiction films in the way that the characters must struggle with the question of how exactly we can tell the difference between good and evil.

It’s also refreshing to see characters freak the f**k out when faced with the weird and the supernatural. If we’re being completely honest about of it, how many of us would end up squealing and curled up in a ball if we were actually faced with flesh eating ghouls or demons? It’s nice for once, and often very funny, to watch people actually do that.

The Wailing could easily pass as just a better than average horror movie, and can easily be appreciated as nothing more than that.

It’s funny. It’s entertaining. It’s pretty creepy at times. And it’s pretty shlocky at other times.

But The Wailing, much like its main characters, is also far smarter than it seems to be.

So, watch it if you like horror movies, if you like comedy, or if you just like to be entertained.

But maybe, when you’re done just enjoying Gok-seung, The Wailing, take a brief moment to appreciate how much better a film it was than it seemed to be.

You can find it on Netflix.

Maybe it’s not for everyone out there.

But I think more of you are going to like it than you might first think.

You might even be able to brag to your friends a bit that you’ve found a film that they didn’t know anything about. They may not be as impressed as they might be if you had watched a Kurosawa or Bergman film.

But that’s okay.

Art isn’t always that much fun.

But not everything has to be Art to be very very good.

The Wailing isn’t Art.

Not by a long shot.

But it is very good.

And it’s fun.

We should be talking more about movies like Gok-seung, The Wailing.

And we should be far less ashamed of having fun.

Because sometimes fun can be smart too.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5215952/?ref_=nv_sr_1