The Watchers are Best Unobserved

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I am most intrigued by horror films and stories that swing for unusual concepts and ideas. When the trailer for The Watchers dropped it peaked my interested but cautiously.

New Line Studios

The Watchers is the story if Mina (Dakota Fanning) an American woman living in Ireland avoiding the traumatic memories of her mother’s death. While transporting a Sun Conure to a distant zoo Mina becomes stranded in a deep and threatening forest. One that voice over prolog has already painted as not appearing on any map and that draws damaged souls. As night falls Min discovers a concrete structure and warned to flee inside before the daylight is gone or she will die.

Inside she meets the other people trapped by the forest. Ciara (Georgina Campbell) the surviving spouse of a couple that had become stranded in the forest. Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) a rebellious local and Madeline (Olwen Fouere) an older woman who holds the knowledge of the rules that keep them alive. Each evening ‘they’ strange unseen creatures come to the structure and spend the hours of darkness observing the people on display. No one has ever seen the creatures and to be caught outside after dark is to die, as what happened to Ciara’s husband.

This premise, adapted from a novel by A.M. Shine, holds tons of intriguing promise. There are mysteries to uncover. Who are the watchers? Why do they spend their hours watching the trapped humans? What is the nature of the forest and where did the shelter come from?

A premise such as this lives or dies on the answer to those questions and how those answers are discovers. The Watchers fails on both counts. The answers are inconsistent even within the story’s own logic and most are vomited at the audience by way of ‘info dumps.’ when your 3-act movie has a massive info dump in the third act you know that it has failed at the most basic level.

In addition to the supernatural elements The Watchers expects the audience to accept situations that are utterly beyond credibility. There is no way in hell a professors University office remains untouched, unused for 14 or 15 years so a character as go there and discover the story’s final twist.

The greatest failing of The Watchers is not the clumsy exposition or the bluntly illogic f it backstory and construction but rather that the characters are flat, uninteresting, and devoid of any characteristic for which someone forced to endure a screening might find some form of emotional engagement. I never once cared what happened to anyone in this movie. Throughout the screening I was more concerned about getting some sleep unreservedly uninterested in any of these people’s outcomes.

I can find no reason that anyone should endure this movie.

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The Ultimate Fundamental Force

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The fundamental forces are fascinating and mysterious elements of the universe. Electro-Magnetism harness and yoked by humanity powers our modern life. The Strong nuclear force binds the cores of atoms together. The Weak Nuclear force drives decay and radioactivity. Leaving gravity exerting the least force of the four through teamwork that extends across the universe proves stronger than all the rest creating black holes and breaking physics itself.

But the ultimate fundamental force is Motivated Reasoning.

Motivated reasoning is the power that makes 1984’s Big Brother a terrifying possibility. It is not that everyone knows the truth of a situation and simply complies out of rational self-preservation but rather once a desired outcome is formed how easily we craft elaborate justification and logic chains to bind ourselves to the fiction that produces the satisfying result.

It powers out divisive and partisan politics. As parties move and reform around new priorities and populations very few former members leave for pastures more in line with their stated positions but rather the people find circuitous routes of reasonings that ‘justifies’ their loyalty to new positions.

Motivated Reasoning extends its deceptive grasp beyond politics. It reaches wherever emotion and identity impact. Show me something that is important to a person sense of self and there you will find motivated reasoning.

This force is particularly dangerous because it is so subtle. Working its way on us from our subconscious influencing the very things we give any weight to before we are even aware that we have given something a value of importance. People rarely ask themselves, ‘Why do I think this?’ ‘Why do accept this?’

I am no more immune to motivated reasoning than any other person walking this planet. I try, I try very hard to interrogate myself as to what is beyond my acceptance of a fact or my ‘gut feeling’ on any subject, but being human, being a creature of socialization, I fall short as we all do. But we must try.

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A Non-Believer’s Fascination With Religious Horror

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Yesterday I wrote about faith being a critical and essential component in the success of 1973’s The Exorcist. Today I am thinking about the other religiously themed horror film that also work for me and how strange it is that an atheist enjoys these Christian stories.

In addition to The Exorcist the other massively successful and franchise inspiring ‘devil movie’ of the 70’s is The Omen. This film’s theology is not as well sourced or faithful The Exorcist playing much more directly as the genre intended for it, horror. It doesn’t raise question but presents the inevitability of the ‘End Times’ and the futility of humanity’s position in the grand scheme. A perfectly positioned movie for its decade The Omen is the bleak and cynical counterpart to The Exorcist’s questions of faith and love.

Two months ago, I went out and watch the pair of religiously themed horror films release in the spring of this year, Immaculate and The First Omen, the latter being a prequel to the aforementioned 70s film.

Of the pair it has been Immaculate that persists in my thoughts. I have a review of the film here on my blog, but I am going to expand on my thoughts a bit. There are by necessity spoilers.

Seriously — spoilers for the big reveal.

Black Bear Pictures

Immaculate unlike either The Exorcist or The Omen is quite subtle in its relationship with the supernatural aspects of religion. It is an easy interpretation of the film that absolutely nothing that occurs is beyond normal accepted reality. A perfectly valid way to view the story is that the fanatical faithful of the convent are deluded. The ancient and rusted spike is not from the crucifixion and the genetic material is not that of Jesus. That their cloning attempts are of some random person and the deformed products are just tragic miscarriages.

It is also possible that the spike is exactly what they believe it to be and that the convent’s repeated attempts to clone the son of god will, if successful, produce the opposite, the ‘anti-Christ.’

A third interpretation is that the convent and its faithful are doing precisely what they believe, bringing about the second coming of the Christian savior by cloning and producing him by way of a virgin birth.

Side note, it is a common misconception that the phrase ‘immaculate conception’ refers to Jesus’ conception without sexual intercourse but theologically it is about Mary and her being born without ‘original sin’ and thus possessing the purity to bear a god.

The film gives no clues if any of the three interpretation I have presented are the ‘correct’ way to view the events of the film. From the story as presented one cannot determine is Cecila is a young woman abused by fanatics, the savior of humanity, or the vessel through which it is damned.

This week I obtained Immaculate on Blu-ray disc and I look forward to listening to the director’s commentary.

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Faith is What Makes The Exorcist Works

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For nearly five decades Warner Brothers studios have been trying, desperately, to make The Exorcist into a successful franchise. The original film released to mind-blowing box office in 1973 and none of the follow-on sequels, prequels, or re-imaginings have come close to the bright hot fire that was the original. Bot even when William Peter Blatty returned for Exorcist 3 ignoring the disaster that the second film had been both commercially and artistically.

The Exorcist works because of a couple of factors. One of course is the tremendous talent that was William Friedkin. Though he may have been an abusive ass to his performers the filmmaking is unequaled.

But perhaps more important than a visionary director is the commitment to faith that is evident in the novel and the screenplay.

Before I go further let me states clearly that I myself do not hold to any religious teachings or faith. This universe is governed by physical laws, and nothing exists beyond it. When the subtle chemical reactions that power my flesh end so will I.

William Peter Blatty held to a different philosophy. A devote Catholic he accepted the Church’s teaching and lore as truth about the universe and humanity’s place in it. It is important to note that Blatty did not see the novel or the film The Exorcist as an exercise in the literature of horror. He wrote the novel while experiencing a crisis of faith and the themes are his own personal explorations into the questions that pestered him. Blatty has saif that the book and script are religious detective stories not horror.

A critical element to understanding Blatty’s approach and explorations is that there is no clearly defined cause and effect that explains Regan’s possession. Yes, she played with a Ouija board but that is never detailed as the cause. Father Merrin unearthed a token to the demon Pazuzu but that reminds Merrin of his earlier encounter with the demon and does not ‘release’ it.

The vast majority of supernatural horror films have a clear cause and effect relationship. The wrong incantation is read, the fierce anger of a wrong death powers a vengeful spirit, a priest commits an unspeakable sin in a church yard, something makes the evil events begin. This is very much a modern rationalist worldview. Something makes something else happen. It is Newtonian a supernatural version of For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is not at all what happens in The Exorcist but very much how all the sequels and prequels operate.

The reason what it is absent is because cause and effect by its very nature supplies answers. Often in these types of horror stories understanding the cause and effect leads directly to resolution and the restoration of order. The Exorcist is not interested in answers it is concerned with questions.

The friendship between Blatty and Friedkin had been damaged for decades due to the director’s edit of the film. Friedkin deleted a scene that Blatty consider absolutely essential to core theme and message of the script. Fathers Merrin and Karris while on a short break from the spiritual combat with the demon sit on the stairs outside of Regan’s room and Karris asks ‘Why’? Merrin speculates that the demon’s purpose is to show humanity as ugly and animalistic, unworthy of God’s love. It doesn’t provide a cause and effect for why Regan become possessed but only a motivation for the demon and ultimately it comes back to faith in God and the Christian belief that his love is real.

The Exorcist is a work of faith by a person grappling with their own doubts and questions. The sequels and prequels do not have such questions and are for the most part nothing more than dressed up monster stories with scarcely any more purpose than to goose the audience in the side and be quickly forgotten.

One does not have to have faith to feel its power in the novel and the script. While I do not believe in any supernatural eternal being I can feel Blatty’s faith and belief and that provides a reality that all other versions lack.

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Better but Not Yet Whole Again

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So, this damnable cough that I developed following my bout of COVID-19 remains with me, albeit less intensely than before.

The new therapy has lessened the severity and number of attacks but hasn’t eliminated them.

My endurance in talking has increased and for two weeks running I was able to game master my Space Opera Role Playing Game but with a limited endurance. After about two hours the cough returns with enough force to compel me to stop the game. My players seem satisfied to go on with short runs so the game will continue.

On the writing side I am quite energized by the coming folk horror novel I am going to attempt. There are some issues here and there. Given the nature of the commune the setting limits the diversity of the characters more than I typically like but I think I can find a way to bend this to my theme so it pays off rather than hinders the project.

I am still at an utter loss for a title but that may come as I write it.

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Of Rockets and Scams

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I ended up taking two days off this week, Wednesday and Thursday to watch rocket launches streamed live. Originally it had been just Wednesday as June 5th had been the originally proposed date for the Integrated Flight Test 4, IFT-4, for the Starship/Superheavy launch system but when the date slipped to Thursday, I just added an extra day off in my request and took both. (After yen years of working for my currently employer and thanks to a muscular union I enjoy a decent amount of paid time off every calendar year.)

Wednesday, I watched the Starliner, a crew vehicle from Boeing, launch on its first crewed mission. The launch went well but problem have arisen and Boeing continues to suffer for the evolution of its corporate culture. At the time of the writing the issues look to be something that can be dealt with, but I would not rule out the possibility that the crew will need to return on a different vehicle than the one that launched.

Thursday’s launch was much more interesting to me. The massive, almost inconceivable system that is the Superheavy booster and its mated large vehicle, Starship may represent an impressive leap forward in space access if everything can be made to work at projected. The ‘if’ in that sentence is not meant to disparage but a simple recognition that the engineering achievement is challenging and not all goals can be achieved. That’s why this is test flight 4, bit by bit and flight by flight a lot of being learned about the technical challenges this project represents.

IFT-4 succeeded in its mission objective and then some. The enormous booster returned to Earth for a soft ‘landing’ in the Gulf of Mexico, though the precision of the landing still needs to be studied and verified. The Starship vehicle achieved it orbital velocity and planned trajectory. (This flight was never intended to actually go all the way to orbit.) Reentering above in Indian Ocean fully under control even as the thermal protection system failed in spots, damaging some of the control systems. The fact that Starship is so large that is casts a shadow in the hot plasma of reentry and can transmit live video to the Starlink constellation of communication satellites is in itself a major evolution in what we can see and learn in space travel.

When I first searched for the live stream of the launch, I ended up on the scam site impersonality SpaceX’s official stream. The AI faked Elon Musk was as impressive that the rocket launches themselves. For at least the first round of ‘deposit one crypto coin and I’ll match it without another, doubling your money’ of pitches I just accepted that Musk, a known promoter of crypto, was real even if the deal stunk to high heaven of scam. (No one gives away free money.) I found another stream to watch and enjoyed the launch with all its excitement.

The fake Musk scam sort of invites all sort of sharp definitive opinions about the eccentric billionaire and illuminates for me the Manichean way so many people view the world. Something or someone is either ‘good’ and praiseworthy or they are ‘bad’ and worthy only of contempt. When focused on a particular thing or person these opinions are often not static. Musk when he touted environmentalism and saving the ecology through electric cars and such was praised, rightly so, by the left. When he assumed control of Twitter and unbanned a number of quite distasteful figures he became a subject scorn. The truth of the matter is that he has done both good and bad, he views have been both right and wrong, but it’s very hard for people to hold such complex views. The founding of the United States of American was a fantastic advancement for human liberty and American is awash in the sin of slavery and most of the men who founded this nation with high ideal of freedom were also enslavers. Both things are true. America is neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but so many insist on one or the other viewing the opposing facts as mere footnotes.

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This Writing Thing is Fun

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While I have not yet begun the words in a row prose writing that will create my American Folk horror novel, I have been hip-deep in character design and creation. This has been a blast.

Most of the novels I have written have been science-fiction set in quite distant futures. For each of those I did create characters documents, studies, and histories but there is something very different doing the same for characters that exist in the here and now. (Well, effectively the here and now. There are no supernatural entities and threats in the real world but aside from that the world of this next novel is our own world.)

That means as I create the backstory and history of the characters it’s important to know the world as it was when they were that age. Being in to 20s in the 1960s is very different than the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.

While the historical context and its effect are fun to research and think about that hasn’t been the most enjoyable aspect of this part of the process. It’s the spontaneous evolution of the characters as I make the notes.

When I started this phase I knew some of the really big things that were going to be in various characters backstories as it compelled their natures and motivations. For me, something changes at the moment of actually making the notes in the various files. Writing the comments ignites new ideas, new aspects of the characters come to mind and insert themselves into the history. This ripples out to characters that they are associated with and changes them. The big boundary lines of what I originally envisioned act like guardrails, keeping the character enough on course that the novel will still work as intended, but now the characters can go faster, further, and higher into the storm I have created for them.

Man, I am having so much fun.

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StokerCon 2024

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StokerCon, is a premier Horror Convention where the Horror Writers Association hands out their award for excellence and achievements.

When I learned last year that 2024’s convention would be held here, San Diego California, I was stoked to attend.

Then in January of this year, after nearly 4 years of dodging the damned virus, COVID-19 caught up with me. Due to my vaccinations and boosters, it was a very mild case. It seemed hardly worth noticing.

And then the cough arrived.

No fever. No fluid in my lungs. No further infections just a deep, hard, and dry cough that refused treatment.

Weeks passed and nothing I or the doctors did stopped the coughing. If I remained silent, I did not cough but even a few sentences provoked attacks. I knew I could not attend a convention in this state. It would be fun for me or fair to the people around me who would have no way to be sure I wasn’t infected with something. I would be a walking source of anxiety, particularly for those with weakened immune systems.

Ironically the last two weeks the newest therapy seems to be working. The coughing was far less than it had been but not yet fully conquered. I elected that it would still be best for me and for others if I didn’t attend.

Instead, I ran my tabletop role playing game and discovered the limited of my recovery. A mere two and half hours into play the cough resurfaced and quite strongly. I ended the session earlier and with rest the cough subsided again but there is no doubt had I attempted to attend the convention it would have been provoked, so it turns out my decision to stay home had in the end been fully justified.

It breaks my heart that this turned out to be the right course of action. I had really wanted to hang out with fellow scribes, many much more talented than myself, but at heart I could not induced such anxiety in others.

From the reports I have read it appears that convention was a success, and I am thrilled for everyone who attended.

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Guilty on Every Count

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Yesterday after just 11 hours of deliberation on 34 felony county a New York City Jury found former president Donald Trump guilty of every charge. Not one count did they find him acquitted nor did they hang on any of the charges. They looked at the evidence presented by document and testimony and found that there was no room for reasonable doubt as to his guilt.

Of course, conservative partisans rushed to prostrate themselves before their Orange God-King protesting the trail, the verdict, the jurors, and every political opponent that could muster to mind. It has been decades since the GOP or the conservative movement possessed any fragment of principle or integrity. Terrified at the potential political fallout they huddle together and mutter their threats and plans of vengeance. Deep in their souls they know that this is a trap entirely of their own making.

The GOP has several opportunities to avoid this fate. They could have refused Trump entry to the party’s debates in 2016. They could have mustered the conventions against him. They could have impeached him when he corruptly used the office against a friendly nation for his person political benefit. They could have impeached him when he attempted to overthrow a fair and free election. They could have stood with due process as the justice system brought him to task for his crimes.

They did none of these things.

From their own selfish wants for lower taxes, more liberty to pollute, the puritanical need to impose their sexual mores on everyone else, and the need to have utterly unrestricted access to any firearm of that their little hearts desire, they have sold their souls, and betrayed the core concept of this great nation: No Person is Above the Law.

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Movie Review: Furiosa

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I took a few extra days off around this holiday weekend and pretty much did nothing except go to a movie and make progress on the next novel. The movie of course was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga the prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

Warner Brothers Studios

Furiosa is the story of the character Furiosa introduced in Fury Road as she assists the escape of the warlord Immortan Joe’s wives from their sexual slavery from the Citadel. Fury Road drove into blockbuster status scoring on target hits with both audiences and critics.

As recounted in the earlier film the story of Furiosa is of her abduction from ‘The Green Place,’ an oasis of rich fertile lands with within the Wasteland and her eventual life in the Citadel as one of Joe’s Imperators, a trusted driver, warrior, and lieutenant. In Furiosa we discover that between her abduction and gaining the status of Imperator, Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) was the captive of another, but lesser warlord Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and the bulk of the film is comprised of her struggles to both survive and wreck vengeance upon Dementus.

Furiosa suffers from some of the trouble typical to a prequel. An audience member familiar with the following story knows that the character can’t die because there is another story to tell, and many elements exist to ‘explain’ why things are the way they are in that earlier released but later in the timeline tale. Why does Furiosa have only a single arm?

While the action in Furiosa is exciting and thrilling, with impressive stunt work performed by skilled professionals, the story is lesser to the one rendered in Fury Road. The major challenge in prequels is the character arc of the protagonist. The character’s nature is what drew in the audience originally and caused them to love the person so in the prequels there is the temptation to make the character as close as possible to the already adored version and that stunts any characters growth. They have nowhere to go because they start out in the final form by which we have already known them.

Furiosa in Fury Road is a woman who is risking everything to save other women, what we needed in the prequel is seeing her as a woman who doesn’t two fucks for anyone else and the transformation as she becomes a person willing to risk it all for others. This should have been the crux of the scene between her and Dementus when he intones she’s like him.

The other issue with this fil is that at the onset we are given her overriding goal, return to The Green Place but that is a goal she cannot achieve in the film because it’s the next story. So, the character and the audience can only be frustrated.

Furiosa was a lot of fun but ultimately it is not a movie that I will add to my collection as Fury Road is a better film on every measure.

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