#the idea of being actually pregnant sounds like something straight out of a horror film

[breedingboy-jay]

Its so strange to carnally crave being fucked pregnant all the time, but not once experience baby fever, want kids or even like kids. Like I wanna be bred thoroughly and eventually become weighed down with a huge pregnant belly but I don't actually want to be a dad or deal with the kid after they're born at all. Its like........pregnancy fever, not baby fever.

[virtual-toast]

Scream Queens VH1 recap - Season 1 Episode 1

Hey what’s up so because I’m bored as hell I’ve decided I’m going to recap the short-lived reality series Scream Queens (not the horror series with Emma Roberts) because it’s absolute top notch reality TV trash. Yes you can still watch the whole thing on YouTube here but I’ve decided to recap it for you in case you’d prefer to read about the trash and drama I guess lol

Anyway Scream Queens was a reality series on VH1 back in 2008-2010 where 10 “up and coming” (generous) actresses would compete for a “breakout role” (also generous) in the next Saw film. They’d do dumb challenges that were vaguely related to acting and of course bitch about each other behind the scenes. Season 1 was judged by Shawnee Smith (post-Saw fame), James Gunn (pre-Guardians of the Galaxy fame), and John Homa (apparently a big-time acting coach??). Season 2 switched out Shawnee Smith for Jaime King and James Gunn for Tim Sullivan. No idea how the show got two seasons but I fucking love it and I’ve watched it countless times over so let’s do a recap!

Here’s your key players, folks.

The first episode opens with all the girls walking in wearing their ~finest~ mid-2000′s fashion and talking about how “omg I should be the next scream queen cuz I’m attractive / talented” etc. Jo-Anne in particular (who is 26 btw) claims she’s “getting old” and that she’s “ready for something to happen”. lol okay girl. They’re introduced to the three judges and whoo boy, Shawnee may be a decent actress but she should not be a host; her droning nasally voice is torture. We’re introduced to a few more girls including Lindsay who was a child star, and had a Nickelodeon show called Caitlin’s Way, but has since lost her way to her anxiety, and it’s just like holy shit I relate to you so hard though. There’s also Lina who thinks she’s top shit because she had one line in an Adam Sandler movie woohoo.

The judges introduce the first challenge and a pseudo-Jason Voorhees literally BUSTS THROUGH THE FUCKING WALL and sends the girls running and screaming, followed by laughing because omg what a funny prank haha. So basically the girls have to take turns begging this guy not to kill them, with the best performance getting a “guaranteed callback” aka. immunity from elimination. Most of the girls do the typical screaming and/or crying schtick. Michelle literally claims she’s pregnant and then screams “KILL ME WHY DONT’CHA” which is a choice. Kylah tries to seduce him and the other girls are torn between “she should be a porn star” and “holy shit I’m aroused”. Lina literally puts on a stereotypical Asian accent and FLOPS AROUND ON THE FLOOR SCREAMING like what the actual fuck. Jessica gets up and does the “you’re not psycho I’M PSYCHO” thing and the girls are (probably rightfully) scared of her.

But then Tanedra gets up and tells us she has ZERO acting experience and then proceeds to KILL. IT. Watch out for Tanedra cuz you know she’s coming for that crown. Obviously she gets the guaranteed callback. Shawnee announces the girls are competing for a role in Saw 6 and they FLIP. THEIR. SHIT. While at the same time you can tell none of them actually like or care about the Saw series and just want to be famous, but whatever get those dollars I guess.

So they head into the house and start drinking champagne, getting to know each other etc. Of course they all end up in their bikinis in the hot tub and start talking about their training. Cue all of the girls COMPLETELY underestimating Tanedra (despite the fact that she already beat all their asses) when she tells them she has no experience.

The next day the girls go to their first class with John Homa. Right off the bat he’s like, “Welcome to your first acting class, we’re gonna need it.” Like, true but also, rude. He gets out a tray of fruit and tells each girl to take a piece and eat it “as seductively as possible”. Cue several girls giving blowjobs to bananas and the rest basically dry humping the floor while they eat this damn fruit. Homa sighs like his instructions were SO CLEAR even though there weren’t any. He explains how he actually wants them to be subtle and seductive rather than outright sexy/slutty and has the girls sit in a chair while eating their fruit and being all cute and seductive. Great. Then he changes it up so the girls have been poisoned halfway through eating. Everyone does pretty well except Jo-Anne who very clearly buckles under the pressure. Back at the house, Sarah straight up tells the others that the class made her horny.

The following day a surprise picnic appears in the house but when the lid is taken off one of the dishes, a bunch of snakes come out because omg what a funny prank haha. There’s a note telling them where to meet Shawnee where she tells them their first “director’s challenge” (main challenge) is an adaptation of the bath scene from James Gunn’s movie Slither, and guess what, they gotta be naked! Or very nearly naked, at least. All of the girls get working on their scripts and discussing whether they’re going to go with nude underwear, pasties, or au naturale. Did you forget about Crazy Jessica? Well she has a FULL ON CRYING MELTDOWN about having to do a nude scene, complete with mocking the other girls just for talking about it. Like seriously this is day 2 and she’s FREAKING OUT. Sarah specifically says in her talking head, “Jessica is fucking psycho.”

They get to the director’s challenge, Sarah goes first and does really well, so the other girls are intimidated from the start. Jo-Anne once again buckles under the pressure, it’s like her spark literally goes away as soon as the cameras start rolling, it’s honestly baffling to watch. Tanedra and Michelle also do really well, although Michelle gets criticised by some of the others for her over acting. Kylah literally sounds like she’s in a cross between a pantomime and a musical and the other girls flat-out laugh at her behind the scenes. Finally it’s Jessica’s turn, and little miss freak out is just like BA-DING HERE ARE MY TITTIES. Like seriously, after all that, she goes buck naked. WTF. Her performance is still meh though.

Back at the house, Michelle is confident she won’t be on the list and that Kylah will be. Tanedra reads the list which “summons” Michelle, Jo-Anne, Kylah, Sarah, and Jessica to the “grand ballroom”. Cue Michelle’s FULL BLOWN TANTRUM because she was SO SURE she wasn’t going to be on the list and “THEY’RE GONNA THROW THIS FUCKING TALENT AWAY??” You seriously can barely hear her dialogue in this part because there is so much swearing getting bleeped out. Aside from this everyone generally agrees that Kylah should go home because she has no acting talent (lol) and that there’s no way Jo-Anne is going because they all love her.

The girls go to the grand ballroom and honestly if looks could kill, all three judges would be dead because Michelle is fucking letting them KNOW she’s pissed hahaha. They pull Michelle and Sarah forward together and tell them they were the top 2 (so much for your tantrum Michelle) with Sarah getting leading lady (winning the main challenge). Jessica gets pulled forward on her own and basically just gets read for being crazy and told to calm down. Kylah and Jo-Anne are last and are the bottom 2; Jo-Anne basically for shutting down and Kylah for just being shit. In a controversial decision, however, Jo-Anne gets the axe while Kylah lives another week.

Stay tuned for Season 1 Episode 2!

[prettylittleliarsxxxx]

At last, seven seasons and 160 episodes later, I can finally Google all those lingering questions regarding the show, Pretty Little Liars, without fear of accidentally finding out who A was all along.  After all, when a quick IMDB search of Ian Hastings led to a wedding photo of his character with Aria (who begin a romance from the very first season) shot from the final season I quickly learned spoilers are everywhere.

I consider myself one who would have proudly passed the famous marshmallow test of Walter Mischel had I been one of those kindergartners being tested for delay of gratification.  Although many a time I wanted to give in from the suspense and look up who A was, I persisted, painfully.  Literally, that is, as I often watched the show when I was exercising on the elliptical.

While the show began innocently enough and was intriguing (I guessed Alison to be alive from the first episode and Jenna to miraculously regain sight), over time they pulled out more and more of the stops, with many nods to thrillers such as Psycho (shower scene) and Hitchcock-esque elements complete a Rear View Brew.  Everything ever considered creepy from clowns to dolls, teddy bears, deserted lake cabins and masks were somehow integrated into a teen drama turned horror film.

Including that is, the ubiquity of the worst of mental health—sanitariums, straight jackets, that human muzzle from Silence of the Lambs (whose terrifying movie cover image kept me from ever watching the film in the first place), and even a disturbing dance number from Maddie Ziegler, known for her performance in Sia’s Chandelier music video.

In watching the series, the theme of mental illness is clearly a prevalent one.  Mona ends up in a mental institute called Radley Sanitarium (sanitariums having been replaced by psychiatric wards in hospitals long ago, and certainly not looking like what is sensationalized on the show) at the end of season one the moment when the missing psychologist Dr. Sullivan returns with a “diagnosis” (if you can call it that) which explains Mona’s terrorizing of the girls.  Something about extremely high intelligencepaired with being bullied and not accepted somehow morphing into a multiple personality disorder (a term which the mental health community stopped using when the disorder was replaced with Dissociative Identity Disorder).

From there, Spencer ends up locked up after she abuses stimulant medications and finds out about Toby’s apparent death.  We see her in various states of consciousness as well as locked up in a room that looks like a dungeon with no medical equipment in sight as one might assume a hospital might have (although anyone who has watched the series knows nearly every character ends up with IV fluids at some point during the series whether from being run over by a car, shot by a gun, or burned by a fireplace bursting in flames).

Of course, Spencer still manages to find game boards, puzzle pieces, abandoned rooms and there seems to be a level of roaming about the facility which again, doesn’t happen in real psychiatric facilities.  While I am certainly not an expert in every form of psychiatric long-term facility in existence, I can tell you with certainty that the patients I have sent to the hospital have very structured group therapy, individual therapy, and activities hour to hour that keep them more than occupied and not roaming around aimlessly in underground basements.

After Spencer is eventually released from the hospital, Aria goes in as a volunteer and of course, there is Mona who is repeatedly sneaking in and out of the sanitarium.  Later, uber-A, CeCe Drake, is revealed as a transgender male to female patient who was born to Mary Drake, Jessica DiLaurentis’ twin sister (yes, this is indeed sounding like the stuff of soap operas you’d expect from Days of Our Lives) who was also institutionalized (Mary, not Jessica).  Apparently, Mary manages to get pregnant (twice) and delivers twins in the sanitarium, one of whom we learn in the final season is Spencer (bringing full circle that she was born in a sanitarium only to return to the same one 16 or so years later).  CeCe Drake (the first of Mary’s children and non-twin), is meanwhile also a brilliant mastermind who manages an ivy league degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

You might say the Pretty Little Liars creators are very fascinated by that famous saying about the line between genius and insanity.  Mona and CeCe (basically the first two out of the three A’s we encounter) are all described as highly intelligent.  It seems the narrative then is that these are all sociopathic deviants.  Except that many things don’t add up (not that we expect them to).  This is notwithstanding the fact that two of the main leading men have the hacking skills of what you’d expect out of CIA hopefuls but are just your average high schooler and English teacher.

There are of course many logical flaws that make for fantastic drama—as my husband once astutely asked, “Why don’t they have alarms or guard dogs in their homes with all the frequent break-ins?”  Regarding mental health, however, it is not only the inaccurate portrayal of psychiatric care facilities but also the idea that brilliant masterminds are plagued by mental illness.  I’d argue that in fact the severely mentally ill are actually just trying to hold onto hope and deal with life one day at a time.  The energy expenditure required for a severely depressed patient to exercise let alone plan some scheme is essentially nonexistent.

Even if we are talking about the personality disorder category, we’d be looking at individuals with histories of abuse and traumatic upbringings.  The percentage of children in the “deviant” category who torture animals is extremely low and they are typically not parading around suburban Pennsylvania towns in heels toting shopping bags.  No, I am not a criminalexpert or forensic psychologist.  But as a psychologist in practice not unlike the show’s Dr. Sullivan (although I certainly do not see groups of 4-5 teens in therapy!), I can tell you some major liberties are taken with the portrayal of mental health in the show.

In fact, the use of mental health facilities was not really necessary to tell any of the stories at all.  Mona could have just been a jealous cyber-bully.  Mary could have been a woman on the Autism-spectrum scale, and CeCe could have had narcissistic personality disorder (she makes the transition from boy to girl look seamless and glamorous, which is a far cry from the reality of true trans teens).  No sanitarium in sight.  But of course, in Hollywood, it’s all about the backdrop and the hospital was featured in some of the scariest scenes.  Perhaps as spin-offs of the show come out or there are reunions, we get a fairer and ultimately more respectful portrayal of mental illness.

[mst3kproject]

Elves (1989)

Christmas is a weird holiday.  We all talk about joy and generosity and love, while it’s actually a season full of stress, greed, and hate.  We hate our politically incorrect grandparents, we hate our in-laws asking why we’re not pregnant yet, we hate the expense, we hate the crowds, we hate the traffic, and most of all we hate anybody who doesn’t partake in this flaming bag of holiday. Partly because how dare they actually relax and enjoy the season while we go festively mad, but mostly because we’re white people and we just hate everybody.

That brings us to Elves, a Christmas movie about Nazis.

Three ditzes meet in the woods for a dark ritual in which they officially swear off Christmas.  In the process one of them cuts herself – the blood falls on the ground and naturally awakens some primal horror sleeping below. It follows her home in a POV shot, and then we spend a little time getting to know Kirsten and her abusive family. There’s her German grandfather who slaps her around and enforces weird rules, her mother who steals her money and drowns her cat, and her perverted little brother who spies on her in the shower. All right, these people definitely need to die.  Bring on the evil elves!

But no, instead we follow her to work at the department store, where she gets hit on by a drunken Santa Claus.  This guy at least dies quickly, stabbed to death by the elf while trying to do a line of coke without getting it in his beard (is this a Santa Claus and Coca Cola joke?  I hope so).  Later, the evil elf digs up the body of the cat and leaves it on Kirsten’s windowsill, which gets Herr Grandpa thinking.  He meets up with some of his old Nazi friends, and learns that after forty years, their terrible plot is finally coming to fruition.  It seems that Kirsten is the last pure Aryan virgin, who is destined to mate with the evil elf on Christmas Eve and give birth to the Antichrist!

Are you going wait, what the fuck? at this point?  Don’t worry, so am I, and this is only the first third of the movie.

Meanwhile, we’ve also been following a homeless guy who gets hired to replace the murdered Santa Claus and decides to play detective.  The girls invite some of their boyfriends for an orgy sleepover in the department store, but the boys are killed by Herr Grandpa’s Nazi buddies who are here to offer Kirsten to the elf.  Replacement Santa saves Kirsten herself but her girlfriends get killed, and the elf (and the Nazis) decide to follow her home.  Herr Grandpa tries to atone for the mistakes of his past while Replacement Santa consults some scholars to find out what’s up with the Nazi Rape Elf.  The elf was the product of genetic engineering.  Kirsten was the product of incest between her mother and grandfather. A car blows up for some reason.  The elf has a gun.  My brain hurts.

The upshot is that with Herr Grandpa dead and Santa Claus neutralized, it looks like Kirsten’s got to save herself.  I don’t give that good odds.

There’s quite a bit of foul language and a few boobs in this movie that MST3K would have had to cut or cover, but it would have been worth it because god damn this movie is bad.  The summary above probably makes it sound weird and incoherent but trust me, it’s a vast improvement on actually having to watch this thing.  There is no entertainment value here whatsoever.  Thirty minutes in I felt like I’d already been watching it all day. Not even my incredulity that I was watching a Christmas movie about a Nazi Rape Elf could carry me through it.  This is the Manos: the Hands of Fate of Christmas movies.

Most of the time you can barely tell what’s going on.  An awful lot of important scenes take place in various levels of darkness, and then they pile the distorted elf-cam on top of that.  There are bits where you can’t hear the dialogue and when you can it doesn’t make any sense.  The characters aren’t likable and nobody can act – the nearest thing to an exception is the Santa Claus guy.  The character seems like a really decent person who doesn’t need to get involved in this but does, simply because it’s the right thing to do.  Dan Haggerty occasionally tries to give a performance, but mostly he just stumbles through the film in the same dead-eyed how did it ever come to this? haze as Graham Greene in Atlantic Rim.

Kirsten and her two friends are annoying bimbos.  The friends’ names are Brooke and Amy but I don’t remember which one is which… one of them’s the horny one and the other one is the stupid one, and that’s the extent of their personalities.  Maybe they’re both horny and stupid.  Their boyfriends are absolute assholes, who are thankfully only on screen for thirty seconds total before they get killed.  Kirsten’s mom is a sadistic bitch (I guess at least she’s got a reason), her bother’s a brat, and the bad guys are a bunch of German accents distinguishable only by the fact that Herr Grandpa is in a wheelchair.

The elf is made of disconnected puppet parts so ugly and immobile they almost wouldn’t be out of place in Troll II.  It moves about as fast as the Creeping Terror and kills people by stabbing them repeatedly with a fruit knife.  There is nothing remotely threatening or scary about it.  The only emotion it inspires in me is an urge to punt it across the room.  It looks like a cheap, shitty Hallowe’en decoration that isn’t sure how it wandered into this cheap, shitty Christmas movie.

Every so often the movie tries to be funny, but it never succeeds.  The thing with the tape on the door seems like it’s setting up a wacky misunderstanding, but it’s a joke without a punchline.  The guy explaining the history of Nazi Rape Elves while his children sit there waiting for him to carve the turkey is probably supposed to be a joke, but again, it never goes far enough to get a laugh. The closest we get is with little details that are often more clever than funny, like Santa and his coke – or my favourite, a shot of a rack of guns with a sign that says gift ideas for mom.

I understand the urge to make a Christmas-themed horror movie.  Christmas is, frankly, just begging to be ironically subverted, and plenty of film-makers have tried to rise to the challenge.  Not all of them have succeeded, but Elves doesn’t even try.  A movie that has, say, a serial killer dressed as Santa Claus (examples are numerous) is commentary.  It’s saying something about how we tell children to put complete trust in a guy in a weird outfit who breaks into our houses every year. The Christmas imagery in Elves is completely irrelevant.  If this were a movie about one of Santa’s elves snapping and killing people, it could be about holiday stress and taking advantage of the working class.  It’s not.

The movie can’t even keep its own mythology straight.  One of the scholars tells us that the elves were on Noah’s ark and are supernatural beings that have been around since the beginning of time – that’s why the offspring of an elf and a human will be the Antichrist, and why it must be conceived on Christmas Eve.  The other one says the elves were genetically engineered by the Nazis to be the fathers of the master race… so which is it?  The fact that Kirsten has had visions and the elf is so desperate to get the deed done before midnight speaks for version one, while some of the stuff the Nazis say seems to point to version two.  If this ambiguity is intentional, they could have made that way clearer.  The elf draws a rune by each of its victims but these don’t seem to serve any purpose besides being creepy and giving Santa Claus a clue.

I think some symbolism may be intended by having the guy investigating all this be a department store Santa Claus.  Santa Claus is a lover of children and a giver of gifts.  When he catches the girls sneaking into the store after hours, he allows them to stay and have their fun as long as they don’t steal anything – this might metaphorically be considered a gift for good children.  Later he gives another gift, when he passes the ‘elfstone’ to the little brother to pass on to Kirsten.  This isn’t really developed enough to accomplish anything, though.  It’s more of a motif than an actual theme.

And of course, there’s the ‘it’s not over!’ ending, where the credits begin to roll over a shot of a fetus.  What?  There was definitely no rape scene in the movie, nor any implication that one had occurred and the film-makers, showing more restraint than usual, didn’t show it. While Kirsten waited injured in the woods for her brother to bring her the elfstone, the elf was distracted eating a toad.  Did it impregnate her by passing a hand over her stomach, like the guy in Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe?

Man, do I ever hate this movie.  What a boring, stupid waste of my time.  Who makes something like this?  Who decides to put the words Nazi Rape Elf in that order and then thinks the result would make a good Christmas movie?  I dug this piece of shit up in search of something to watch and review besides The Star Wars Holiday special and I’m actually sorry I did.  I’m not even joking.  Elves is that fucking bad.

[bffhreprise]

Best Friend For Hire Reprise, Entry 385

 Flying high above, I took in the size of the land where my daughter was trapped.  Earlier today, I received a mysterious phone call, claiming my daughter was awaiting me at this address.  After looking up the address, reading about the company who owned it, and discussing the situation with my nephews, I hurried here to investigate.  The woman on the phone had said my daughter would be awaiting me in the keep, which had seemed strange before seeing there was an actual, full-sized fortress behind an enormous mansion on the land.

 Spotting a man heading toward the keep, I dove down and went inside, thinking I might be able to follow him to my daughter.  To my surprise, he had gotten ahead of me before I spotted him inside.  He now carried an actual flaming torch instead of a flashlight.  The man was very tall and looked somewhat opposing, despite obviously being young, in the flickering light.

 A number of turns through the maze of stone corridors, the man studied a wall briefly before turning a sconce to his right.  Like some sort of horror film, a secret passage opened for him, so I quickly flew in before it could shut again.    Stairs spiraled down, so I slowly followed, keeping the light barely in sight.

 “Who’s there?” called Keira, obviously scared.

 What sort of person would keep my poor daughter in a place like this!?  There were startling sculptures of fantastic creatures on every pillar.  Jail cells wrapped around the large room, and a scent of sweat and filth lingered in the air as if numerous people had been imprisoned here before.

 “Sorry for the late introduction.  My name’s James.  You’re in a keep on my land.” explained the tall man who must have inherited such wealth.

 “This is kidnapping!” she exclaimed as I crept closer.

 “Well, not exactly.” claimed James.  As I landed behind him, he spun around, saying, “Hello, Colby.”

 I quickly altered my form, readying myself for a fight.  This situation was too bizarre, leaving me even more uncomfortable.  I ran forward, intending  to end this quickly.  If a human needed to die for my daughter to be free, he would get his wish granted.

 To my shock, the man easily stepped around me just as the door up the stairs shut, audibly locking.

  “Don’t worry.  There’s no conspiracy here.  I suppose having one might seem like a boon to you, but I’d consider it an unkindness.  Surely we can both agree that it’s better than a murder, right?” asked James conversationally, smiling at his own bad jokes.

 A murder was a group of crows where an unknindness was a group of ravens.  I was surprised he could tell the difference between crows and ravens, but his mockery only fueled my rage.  I attacked again, spreading my wings, but he jumped clear over me, flipped as I turned around, and landed on his feet with an easy grace.  I quickly attacked with my wing, attempting to slam him into the wall.  I could easily lift hundreds of pounds, but my wing hit painfully as if I had hit a wall.

 He stepped toward me, and I backed away.

 “I’m really not here to fight you.” he stated, perfectly calm.  “You are trapped for the moment, but that’s just so you’ll speak with me before fleeing to get help.  All of the therianthropes who don’t work for me wouldn’t be enough to storm this place, so please try to calm down.”

 “Dad, they have a… monster!” exclaimed Keira in distress.

 “Half-demon, actually.” corrected James with an obvious lie.  “Her name’s Raine, and you might hurt her feelings if you call her a ‘monster’.  Please don’t.” I stated, glancing at the door.  To her father, I added “Raine’s a werecat.  She’s very good at catching birds, so let’s be reasonable.”

 My mouth opened to tell him what I thought of his lies, but I sensed something behind me.  When I looked back, there was a creature straight out of hell.  “Please, don’t hurt my daughter!” I pleaded as I backed away, now believing in demons.

 “We haven’t, save for capturing her.” replied James, sounding sympathetic.  “Your daughter bit Mick Storm, apparently wanting to turn him.  Mick, being a bit freaked out, stunned her with a strong jolt of electricity, nearly getting himself killed.  Your daughter will be a prisoner here while she comes to understand that forcing someone to switch species isn’t acceptable.  I’m sentencing her to help Mick adapt to the changes.”

 Giving up all thought of fighting, I shifted my form to show my compliance, jumping as I found myself surrounded by a curtain.  There were clothes on a chair next to me.  Somehow, they were even my size.  What is this place!??

 “M-Mick had said… h-he was… attacked.” mumbled a woman, her speech quiet and broken.

 Was that the sound of a demon?  She sounded… meek.

 “Well, from his point of view, sure.  I’m under the impression that Keira was trying to force a longer relationship on him.” suggested James.

 “Keira, is that true?” I demanded as I finished dressing.

 “No!” she exclaimed in that tone she used when she was obviously lying.  “Sorta…  Mick thought changing forms was cool, and we had been seeing each other for a while.  I just…”  She paused, thinking of how to explain herself

 “Really liked him and felt impulsive?” offered James.

 “More or less.” she muttered.

 “Keira!” I exclaimed, shocked that my own daughter would do something so reckless.

 “You never understand me!” she exclaimed, kicking the door between us.

 “You know better!  You obviously exposed us!  Look where we are!  Don’t you walk away from me.”  I told her, stepping toward the cell now that a small girl had opened it.

 Keira shoved me back after quickly whirling on me.  “Mick is a wonderful guy!  He seemed serious about me!  If you actually gave him a chance instead of jumping to conclusions, you’d understand how perfect he’ll be with us!”

 “I already found you the perfect guy to match you.” I replied flatly.  She knew that I was arranging for her to date someone from another clan to strengthen our ties.  “How could you do this to us!?”

 “Me!?  How can you expect me to date someone just because he’s a wereraven!?  I remember Peter.  He’s a short, sniveling mess.  Why would I be interested in that guy!?” she demanded.

 “You haven’t seen him since he was six!  He’s grown into a fine young man!” I retorted, furious with her.

 She slammed the cell door in my face, holding it shut as we continued to argue.  Suddenly, I realized I couldn’t hear anything and stared at my daughter, who was still attempting to speak.

 “This is another reason why Keira will be remaining here for a time.” stated James out of the silence.  He was now seated at a table covered in refreshments while the short blonde stood off to the side.  “You both need time to settle down.  Keira, I’ve had one of the employee apartments furnished for you, so you can stay in the house.  I would hope you know not to try running, but seriously don’t.  Mick will need help adapting from what you did to him, and your assistance is mandatory.  My wife is a daughter of a Slayer, I imagine you both have heard of that family.”

 “They exist!?” I asked, my voice shaky as my mind tried to wrap my head around the idea.  Slayers were myths passed down to frighten children.  A single Slayer could wipe out a clan without effort in a head-to-head fight.

 “Yes, and they live up to the name.  She’s pregnant and can get a bit touchy at the moment, so please behave when you come to visit.  Every single person here is dangerous when provoked, but they’re good people.  Behave and everything will go smoothly.” replied James, sounding perfectly confident.

 “How often can I see my daughter?” I questioned as I fell into a seat, my anger fleeing as I stared at the strange man.

 “That’s up to her.  Just call first.  She still has classes.  One of my friends will take her to get her car tomorrow, but she’ll be getting a ride to and from school each day.  If she tries to run, I’ll ask Raine to fetch her and put a more restrictive sentence on her.  I’m certain you know what the change is like for those newly turned.  Let her help Mick, and she’ll be free from there.” he told me without a hint of dishonesty.

 “Can I meet him?” I asked hopefully.  If this boy was to survive as one of us, there were things he’d need to know.

 James smiled as he said, “That would be wonderful.  His parents want to meet Keira as well.  I’ll be requesting that everyone is on their best behavior.  As your daughter found out, his family isn’t quite normal either.”

 I nodded.  Hoping he’d continue being forthcoming, I asked “What are you?”

 “A best friend for hire.” he replied.

 I had looked at his company’s website.  Though Best Friend For Hire had a very impressive site, despite the odd nature of the company, I hadn’t seen anything to explain what was happening here.

 “There’s a table and food here.  None of this was here before.  The stench is gone.  How!?” I exclaimed, surprised Keira was actually taking a seat as well.

 “The stench was an illusion that Raine dismissed, and she created this table to my specifications while you two were arguing.  She’s a demon, so she can create whatever she imagines.” he explained as if that fantastic idea was just as normal as water being wet.

 I glanced at the girl as I took in her scent.  She smelled of cat and… something I couldn’t name, something that made my heart race.  James, however, smelled perfectly human.

 “You’re not human.” I stated, watching his reaction.

 “Actually, I have it on good authority that I am human, just a unique case with a large amount of magical potential.” he argued with a shrug.

 “And your strength?” I asked.

 “My body utilizes magic extremely efficiently, but I really am human.” he insisted.

 Despite myself, I believed him.  We continued to talk for a time with James interrupting any time that Keira and I started to argue, but I eventually went home to explain the situation to my nephews.  James did not seem like someone to trifle with.

[agentnico]

A Quiet Place (2018) Review

A few of the viewers at my screening would not survive A Quiet Place. That’s right, I’m talking about you, guy with crunchy popcorn and a slurp-filled Diet Coke!

Plot: A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound. If they hear you, they will hunt you.

What a concept! When was the last time you watched a film and there was a truly original idea that hasn’t really been done before? It’s been a while, but now we enter A Quiet Place, a film with no sound...well, almost no sound. Mostly this movie plays out like a silent film, however when sound is used, it works to add towards the overall creepy unsettling feel of isolation that the movie holds throughout. Whether it’s the whistle of the wind, or the notes of Marco Beltrami’s eerie score, any use of sound is minimal but to the point. Otherwise this film is done in complete silence, even the characters have to rely upon the use of sign language (fair play to all the actors who had actually made the effort to learn sign language, minus of course the daughter, the actress, playing whom, who you may know from last year’s film Wonderstruck, is actually deaf). Having this isolated silence all the time really naturally brings out the horror aspect, as it is not that the film is scary per-se, but its the overall aura that it gives off, and it really immerses you, since you sit there in your seat at the cinema trying to make as least amount of sound as possible...and also if anyone around makes the slightest sound, even if some one takes a more heavier breath, it sounds like a drum in your ears. So that aspect affect the film both positively and negatively. The movie demands to be seen at the cinema, since the sound, or lack of it, surprisingly works well with the surround speakers of the cinema, but that is balanced out by the fact that any noise made by any of the audience members will annoy the hell out of you.

Following in the steps of Jordan Peele with last year’s Get Out, we have ourselves a comedian who has now turned towards both horror and being in the director’s chair. And fair enough to John Krasinski who does a stellar job, fixating on bringing out tension, experimenting with some camera angles and having certain shots where you question what you see. He also loyally sticks to the simple premise of the film, taking a few risks here and there but staying dedicated to not trying to make this film any bigger than it should be. I mean, if you think about it, this film could have easily been turned into a Cloverfield film, it has all the merits to work for it. It’s even being distributed by Paramount. But I am glad that the film was kept quite ‘in itself’ so to speak, as the result is a very good self-contained thriller. However I do have one complaint, and that is the abundant reliance upon jump scares. So many horror flicks these days rely upon jump scares, and why cannot studios understand how tiring this gag is by now. It’s been over-done. Just let it go. There are also a few cliched moments here and there, however they are cliches for a reason, they worked for what this film was going for. I should also mention that there are a few plot holes and some questionable moments here and there, but if you don’t think about it too much, it shouldn’t bother you. There is one thing that did bother me though, and that is that Emily Blunt’s character is pregnant with a baby. I mean, who thought it was a good idea to start conceiving a child in a middle of the apocalypse, especially one involving the rule of not being allowed to make any sound? Have they considered birth? That tends to involve a lot of screaming, I’m just saying. And no, the excuse of her becoming pregnant is not an excuse that can be used, as the story in the film takes place around the 470th day (or something along those lines), so the child was conceived DURING the whole chaos. Basically, I question the prospect of why Krasinski’s and Blunt’s characters were having a baby in the first place. One can connect this to their need of wanting another child, but with Krasinski’s character being a no-sh*t-taker survivalist it seemed a bit far-fetched.

Lets talk about the cast, which is basically made up of this one family. John Krasinski (who also writes and directs the film) plays the father, and he is a straight up survivor who really cares for his family, and survival is his key motivation. And you really connect with his character thanks to Krasinski’s natural charm and charisma. Emily Blunt is also good as the mother, but her motivation has a bit more layers, as she does care about her family (and most importantly her kids’) survival, however she also wants her children to thrive. Blunt also has great chemistry with Krasinski, no surprise, they are married in real life! The kids did a very good job too, and for their age they have fairly decent acting chops.

In the end, A Quiet Place is a very solid directorial debut by John Krasinski. The film’s concept is its strongest point, but strong control from the director, good performances, the use of sound (you’ll know what I mean when you see the film, which you should)...it’s very good and highly entertaining. As of right now, this is easily my favourite film of this year so far.

Overall score: 8/10

TOP MOVIE QUOTE: “I...love...you, I...have...always...loved...you.”