Silent Hill 2: The Hell We Create For Ourselves

So as part of my Depth Year™, I wanted to write a few posts about important books, games, movies or other art that means something to me personally, and try to explore why I connect so strongly to them. These are going to be pretty personal, a bit spoiler-filled, but also I hope interesting, and I hope that by doing this other people can reflect on the important touchstones of their own life. 

Anyway, for my first entry, I wanted to explore possibly my favorite piece of horror media ever. The seminal, unforgettable Silent Hill 2. And yes, there will be several spoilers, and yes, this game is Not For Everyone, so both of those warnings apply.

"No, don't pity me. I'm not worth it. Or maybe... you think you can save me. Will you love me? Take care of me? Heal all my pain? ...Hmph... That's what I thought."

________ The Background

The first Silent Hill (released in 1999) was a critical and commercial success on the Playstation 1, and a sequel on the Playstation 2 was inevitable. What nobody realized though was how different it would be. You see, the first game focused on the town itself. A man named Harry Mason loses his daughter Cheryl in the aftermath of a car crash on the outskirts of the town of Silent Hill, and in his search for her discovers the town’s dark secrets, involving a cult, some sort of God being born, and some sort of screw up which leaves the town either a) quiet and desolate and raining ash from the sky that looks like snow, with a few scattered townspeople who seem ever so slightly mad; or b) a twisted industrial nightmare filled with monsters and even more deranged townspeople.

The key takeaway here is that the story of the game was about the town itself, and Harry was something of a sympathetic cipher to the events around him. Nice guy looking for his kid is an excellent motivation for a video game character, but Harry wasn’t the deepest of souls, and his main job was to go “What the hell is THAT?” whenever something weird happened.

And then Silent Hill 2 came along in 2001, and the story of James Sunderland managed to make Harry look like a cardboard cutout (which he kinda was), and the plot of the first game like so much hokey gibberish (which it also ... kinda .. was). ________

Returning to Silent Hill

"Don't worry, I'm not crazy... Least, I don't think so."

James Sunderland arrives in Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife Mary, who has been dead for three years. Here the shift is subtle, but extremely important. Harry was looking for someone who he hoped was alive. James is looking for someone who he knows on some level is already dead. 

“In my restless dreams, I see that town, Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again someday, but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now: in our special place, waiting for you.”

He heads into town, and discovers, much as Harry did, that there is something very wrong with the town. He runs into Angela, a seemingly friendly  but oddly juvenile young woman, who is looking for her mother; Eddie, a disturbed, overweight man; Laura, an eight year old who claims to have befriended Mary at the hospital; and eventually Maria, a woman who looks strikingly like Mary, and swings back and forth between claiming to be her and claiming to be her own person. 

It goes without saying that all of these people are deeply off. Voice acting in early 2000s video games was, in a word, shit, but here the stilted delivery works because all of these people seem at times to simply be talking past James, and James is doing the same to them. 

The final character is, of course, the town itself. Gone is the history, the cult, and the broader connections to and between the characters. Instead, the atmosphere is one of a mostly passive presence that absolutely hates you. It’s difficult to describe just how crushing the atmosphere in this game can be. 

The monsters themselves are strangely non-threatening by contrast. They attack you, and can kill you, but they also seem to wander the streets, purposeless, jerky automata in the fog. They are scary, but also pitiable, with the exception of the Red Pyramid, probably better known now as Pyramid Head. Even then, the hulking behemoth of the movie and the later games is a presence terrifying in a different way. He attacks and appears to sexually assault the other monsters in the game, his helmet and sword are are almost too heavy for him, and half the time he seems as content to stand and stare at James as he is to attack (and probably kill) him.

Maria is another thing entirely. Killed repeatedly by Pyramid Head, she reappears, seemingly fine later on. What the hell is she? ________

Denial and Despair

So I hope I’ve established that Silent Hill 2 is an incredibly creepy game, dripping in atmosphere, and all those other buzzwords games journalists like to drive into the ground. Where this goes from being merely that (although that is rare enough) is in the plot itself, both in what happens, and what it implies. Major spoilers from now on.

The true genius in the plot is that while there are several twists, they are twists in the best storytelling tradition. The best plot twists don’t come out of nowhere, blindsiding you by, ahem, “subverting expectations” (No, Game of Thrones is a wound that will never heal). The truly shocking ones are ones that on some level you already suspected or knew, even if you didn’t want to accept it. Foreshadowing is everything.

"It's hot as hell in here."

"You see it too? For me, it's always like this."

It’s only in a very late game conversation with Angela that something is explicitly stated that has only been implied up to that point: the other characters don’t see the same town James does. No wonder talking to all of them was so weird. Angela, who has murdered her abusive father and brother, sees the town as a kind of inferno, and is last seen ascending a burning staircase. 

Eddie, who has become completely unhinged from a lifetime of bullying and verbal abuse, and has made the shift from doormat to sociopath. His town is ice cold, and filled with meat hanging from hooks. Where Angela seeks to punish herself, Eddie has disconnected from humanity. Laura, the 8 year old, sees the town simply as a town: she has done nothing wrong.

It’s at this point that we, the player, are invited to do something we very rarely do. We turn our gaze upon our player character. James is one hell of a study. So what does his town, the one we’ve spent several hours having the piss scared out of us in, represent? 

In a word, denial. _______

The Sins of James Sunderland

Mary was ill for a very long time, and in pain for a lot of it. We all know this, but we also know that illness, whether physical or mental, takes an absolutely brutal toll on those around the person suffering, and James had endured for a long time. 

"Forgive me. That's why I did it, honey. I just couldn't watch you suffer. No... that's not the whole truth. You also said that you didn't want to die. The truth is, part of me hated you. For taking away my life." 

James murdered his wife Mary by holding a pillow over her face, possibly a scant few days before arriving in Silent Hill. He even took her from the hospital, propped her up on the back seat of his car, where presumably, she still is as you “search” for her in the town. The letter, the three year time jump, all of it, are the products of James’ delusions. Never before has a video game put us in the shoes of someone so utterly damaged. 

The town, then, becomes both a far more scary place than in the first game. The town and the cult are evil, to be sure, but a place that takes all of your darkest thoughts and desires and sins and makes them real is one of the most horrible thoughts imaginable. 

The monsters snap into focus as something else entirely once you realize their source. The nurses, faceless yet well-endowed, are James’ suffocated libido at the side of his dying, withering wife made horribly real. The strange, armless, strait-jacket prowlers that wander the streets represent his restraint. And Pyramid Head, who pursues you and murders Maria over and over again in front of you, has one source: guilt. Only when he accepts what he has done does it stop, impaling itself.* __________

Multiple Endings

"I was weak. That's why I needed you... needed someone to punish me for my sins... but that's all over now... I know the truth. Now it's time to end this."

There are four possible endings to the game (plus two joke ones**), dependent on the player’s actions. They are, briefly summarized, as follows.

• James encounters Maria, who transforms into a hideous monster (having always been another creation of the town intent on torturing James). After destroying her, he meets with Mary one last time, she gives him the letter he thought he started with, but ‘dies’ before they can reconcile. Unable to live without her, he drives himself and Mary’s body into the lake, committing suicide. 


• After encountering Maria as above, he meets with Mary. They reconcile, and she forgives him for killing her, telling him to get on with his life. James leaves the town with Laura. 


• James encounters Mary, who transforms as Maria does in the previous two endings, unforgiving of James’ role in her death. After destroying her, he leaves town with Maria, who is once more resurrected, but begins coughing in the car, implying Maria has the same illness as Mary.


• The encounter is with Maria, the same as the first two. James then takes Mary’s body and rows it out to a temple on the Lake, convinced that there is a ceremony he can perform to resurrect her. 

So what we have, in essence, is acceptance and suicide, acceptance and forgiveness, a return to a cyclical pattern, and (in my opinion) a further descent into insanity. 

The true genius of this is that none of these endings are considered canon by the developers. They are all as valid as each other. _________

Where I Come In

So why do I like this story so much? We-ell ‘like’ is maybe a strong word. It’s an incredibly dark and adult story, driven by guilt, delusion and despair. I would not play this every weekend. And yet, it remains a touchstone for me in terms of what can be achieved in the medium of interactive storytelling.

But first, the negative. This game is 19 years old, and therefore has the conventions of that time period. It has a slightly clunky interface, an older-style control scheme and graphics which, even in the HD Remaster, are showing their age. The camera swings around like a dodgy fairground ride, the combat is, for lack of a better word, bad, and the puzzles run the gamut from the merely baffling to the downright obtuse. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend anyone set out to play it now, for these reasons.***

However. However. It is still something I mull over regularly over a decade and a half after my first play through. There is so much I could talk about, from the way the game questions the relationship between the protagonist and the player, to the protagonist’s assumption of ‘being the hero’ ruthlessly shut down, to the less interesting (to me) stuff, like the lore of the town and how it operates. 

But I am going to focus in on one aspect that, while everything else has shifted in and out of focus, continues to resonate with me as strongly, and that is the idea of how we influence the environment around ourselves, and what we can do with that information.

It is very, very easy in the modern world to feel powerless. News media, the decline of collective action and corresponding rise of individuality, and increasing financial instability have increased our sense of being essentially “not in control” of our own lives.

In addition, many of us feel a crushing sense of guilt about things for which we have very little individual responsibility. I know many people who worry about their carbon footprint, for instance, despite the fact that mass carbon dioxide production is a problem largely of industry and not the individual (or at least, accountability for one without the other is pointless).

Mary and James were two people stuck in the worst situation imaginable, but it is imaginable. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of people in their position around the world, and disease, illness and death are, ultimately, the removal of choice. You can’t choose to not feel pain.

Despite this, James deludes himself as to what has happened for most of the time we spend with him: he is an unreliable narrator. How can he be attacked by such horrible monsters in this weird town? ...Except everything he sees is simply him, reflected back through the distorted mirror of Silent Hill. Even the final encounters with Mary and Maria may simply be the town or James or both still fooling himself. 

It is a scary thought to think we aren’t in control. It’s an even scarier one to think we are. Our environments and ourselves, even if not as starkly and horribly as in Silent Hill 2, still reflect each other. Is it too easy to surrender to bad circumstances? Jean-Paul Sartre famously stated in No Exit that “Hell is other people”, but what if Hell is simply the pain we inflict on ourselves, and everything else is just window dressing?

In that same play, Sartre also has a moment where the door out of Hell opens, and nobody walks out. There is nothing in the narrative stopping James from simply leaving Silent Hill and going home (I suppose the player equivalent is switching the game off) and why he doesn’t do so is one of the games best questions. The answer it provides is that, despite the horrors, on some level he doesn’t want to. He both deserves to suffer, and hope. Is that a good thing?

I think what gives me hope is the game’s ultimate message. James may not get a ‘happy’ ending - it’s worth noting in all four that Mary is still dead - but where he ends up is a result of the choices he and the player have made. If a man who has so utterly surrendered his own agency as to be in deep, deep denial still has the chance to make a choice about his fate, surely we do too, in our small way. If we can create Hell for ourselves, surely we can work towards the opposite.****

"Even though our life together had to end like this, I still wouldn't trade it for the world. We had some wonderful years together."

________

* There is only one monster in the game, called the Abstract Daddy, which is not the product of James’ emotional turmoil. A grotesque figure writhing on a bed, it instead represents Angela’s sexual abuse by her family and only appears in association with her.*****

** The two joke endings are that in one all the events of the game are being controlled by a dog with a computer, and in the other, aliens turn up and abduct James with the help of Harry Mason, Silent Hill’s protagonist. Neither of these are available on a first play through and are meant more as fun Easter Eggs.

*** A remastered HD version is available on the Playstation store, but there are some important differences, notably all of the voice acting has been rerecorded with a new cast. The voice acting now is objectively better across the board, but it has lost a lot of the weird stiltedness that made everyone seem so off and in my opinion the game has lost something in the transition.

**** Sadly none of the sequels ever came close to this level again. Silent Hill 3 continues the story of Silent Hill the town, bringing the cult back front and center and underwhelming those who had played 2, but a recent re-evaluation has elevated it to something of a cult classic (if you’ll pardon the pun). Silent Hill 4 had a strong original story, although it lacked the same psychological depth as 2 and was marred by some terrible, terrible gameplay. Origins, Shattered Memories, and Homecoming are somewhat less well regarded, although I am playing Homecoming at the moment and it seems OK.

***** Ew.

Think Like a Rebel

For this blog, I'm going to assume that there is a certain amount of continuity between the Rebel Alliance of the original trilogy/Rogue One and the Resistance of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. They share tactics, leaders, equipment and some personnel so it seems a fair assumption.

----------

Two things you should know before I start. Firstly, I love me some Star Wars, and have for over 2/3rds of my life now. Secondly, I am a gigantic military history nerd who occasionally reads theses from West Point's archive <insert Homer Nerrrd gif>. There's been a heck of a lot of debate over Poe Dameron's actions during The Last Jedi, and a not insubstantial amount of it has taken place in my head, and my take is that the conflict between Poe and Holdo represents the conflict between what the Resistance is, and what it thinks it is.

The Resistance consistently runs into problems in The Last Jedi because it still sees itself as the legitimate government of the galaxy, and behaves accordingly. A fascinating glimpse of this mentality is shown when they send out the distress call from Crait. I could hate the First Order with the passion of a burning supernova, but there would be no way in hell I would send my men and ships to back THAT losing horse.

Then again, this is business as usual for the Rebel Alliance. They fight by committee, if Return of the Jedi and Rogue One are anything to go by, and unlike the mono-species Empire, have to take the interests of vastly different groups into account. This is the only explanation for the bizarre decision in ROTJ to send the entire fleet to Endor. They weren't expecting the Imperial Star Destroyers, and there's no way in hell they're going to damage the Death Star, so why are they there? Strike force on the ground (which they do) and a handful of small fighters, and if the worst happens that's all you lose, and Ackbar can go wreak havoc elsewhere. In fact, this idea may be even better. Can you imagine the damage the Rebel Fleet could have inflicted if Gold Leader had sent a message saying "Just FYI, the Imperial Fleet's here too." after arriving at Endor?

The only explanation is that the Alliance is a loose confederation whose strategic initiatives have to conform to politics within the group, and I suspect that the Resistance is similar. The fact that they are evacuating a base under enemy fire at the start suggests that things have gone very, very wrong.

Forget anything that happens in the movie - the worst strategic decisions made have been made a while before the movie begins. 

Poe's ill advised assault on the Dreadnought in these circumstances is understandable, but still idiotic. His insistence on destroying the ship shows that he simply does not understand that the Resistance is now in such bad shape that the Dreadnought is less valuable and more replaceable than literally anything that they would lose to take it out.

But with that being the case, there was no reason for the mission to be ordered in the first place. Either don't order the mission, or let it follow through. As it was, the Resistance command managed to get the worst of both worlds - relying on their known hothead pilot to pull a mission and refusing to, and then blame him for its Pyrrhic success. No wonder he's pissed, even if he should, I dunno, follow orders?

If Poe represents one end of the spectrum, then Holdo represents the other. She keeps her strategy secret from her senior command for seemingly very little reason other than, I dunno, security I guess? But the trouble is she's in a position where a lot of the senior command staff have been wiped out and they are under an extreme time constraint. Plus all of their fighter cover is gone.

So why are you freezing out Poe Dameron? He's a clever guy and while hotheaded he also shows a solid strategic grasp of the situation after the initial run on the Dreadnought. The fact that he plans and executes two separate attempts to save the fleet independently shows that he's an ideas guy you need on your side. One thing the Resistance and Rebels have been very good at is utilizing mid-level talent.

The problem is that Holdo is still acting like the Resistance is a legitimate military force that has suffered a setback, and that the chain of command still holds true. It's a severe flaw as a commander, an inflexibility in the face of drastically changed circumstances, and betrays the same mentality as the Crait distress call and Poe's attack on the Dreadnought.

Poe's attempt at a coup is borne out of a lack of information and represents a failure of Holdo as a commander, and the fact that he was semi-successful (i.e. a bunch of people supported him) lends credence to the idea that she completely failed to judge the situation.

Which, to be fair, was the highest possible-stress situation imaginable. Like I said: Worst mistakes -> before the movie.

Having said THAT Holdo's sacrifice is undoubtedly heroic (not to mention completely badass), and shows what the Resistance and the Rebel Alliance was really about: punching above their weight, which all successful insurgencies have to do.

Poe also accepts the other thing an insurgency has to do is run away a lot, because in order to fight, first you have to survive.

In the end, both their arcs come to the same point. Poe and Holdo have to learn to think like a Rebel.

Cynthie

Every year, my wife asks me to write her a short ghost story for Christmas, and this is this year's. I may have gone ... slightly outside my remit.

Enjoy!

When I received the telegram from Sir Walter Hawthorne, I must confess I was surprised. We had had some short acquaintance in during the Great War, both serving on the staff of General, now Viscount, Byng, and as far as I had remembered we had shared little in common, despite our roles as medical professionals in a war that made a mockery of such.

There was one thing, however. Both of us had expressed an interest in so-called spiritualism - although as I recalled, his studies had taken a far more occult bent than my own more casual dabbling. It was to this his telegram alluded.

My dear Julian (our acquaintance had obviously meant more to him!)
I have reached a critical point in my studies and require some help to make the next stage a success. Please attend as soon as able.
Walter.

I considered his request carefully, but having no patients in the immediate future, at least none that could not be put off. I packed my suitcases, left instructions for the housekeeper, and headed up into the wilder reaches of the Annapolis Valley.

As the motor car rattled northwards, I tried to remember what little I knew of Sir Walter. He was married, certainly, and I remember distinctly the impression that she was a foreigner of some kind, due to vague references he had made. More definite was his daughter - his face had lit up when he talked about her and he had even had shown me a wrinkled browning photograph of a stern looking girl in a floral dress.

The girl stuck in my memory because of a peculiarity of her features. She was not an ugly child, but a certain elongation of her face leant her eyes a strange look. I would have put it down to her foreign parentage if I had not seen mixed race children on my travels. If her mother was some form of foreigner, I had no idea from where she came.

The other oddity was the picture itself. It was the fashion in those days for the picture of a child to be fully in the picture, or else a close-up of the face. This was neither, and instead there was the upper half of the child in the lower half of the picture and an eternity of brown space above her head. This was more easily explained, however. Sir Walter had clearly taken the picture himself, and as an inexperienced amateur, had not framed her in it correctly.

Eventually the road gave way to a rutted track, and then a sharp right turn up a steep driveway brought me to Sir Walter’s abode. It was a handsome house of Georgian vintage, with high windows and a certain solidity of structure houses of that era possess. After passing dozens of farmsteads that could be described as little more than shacks, the house was a reassuring sight, and I at once pictured a roaring fireplace and a hearty meal.

When Sir Walter answered the door himself, something felt amiss. He was a man of considerable means, and therefore answering his own door must have been an eccentricity rather than a necessity. There didn’t appear to be any other staff around either.

As I stepped over the threshold, I was immediately hit by a wave of heat. Instead of the relief I expected, I almost staggered and gagged. This was not the heat of a fire - it was a wet, almost tangible thing, that stifled the air and filled it with a smell not unlike rotting fruit. As I stepped into the kitchen there seemed to be no source for this miasma. It was foul.

It even seemed to bother Sir Walter a little, and he mopped his brow as he led me towards an armchair. When we sat, I properly examined my old wartime companion for the first time.

He was a stooped, quiet man, who owed his title more to ancestral fortune than to any merit on his part. A shock of grey hair shot out from each temple, and to my astonishment I noticed he was wearing rubber boots. He was nervous, and avoided eye contact with me. Instead he removed his spectacles, repeatedly rubbing at them and putting them back. After a few minutes of this - he standing, I sitting, to add to the awkward atmosphere - he seemed to focus on me properly for the first time.

“Well, Julian, shall we begin?”

At this a certain degree of anger hit me. He had dragged me up to his house with little to no explanation, and now was expecting me to proceed in a matter I knew nothing about!

“Look, Sir Walter (he waved his hand at this as if the title meant little), I have driven a long way with little to no rest, and I believe the very least I am owed is an explanation for why I am here.”

He crumpled at that. He suddenly looked very old, and very tired. He indicated towards the mantle.

“I…” He stopped and composed himself. “I wish to see Cynthie again.”

On the mantle was a copy of the same photograph I had seen years before, beautifully framed and lined with black velvet.

I regretted my anger immediately. My own spiritualism had withered in the face of too many frauds, but obviously his had not, He had contacted me in the hopes of conversing with the dead.

“I’m terribly sorry, Walter. I had no idea.”

“She’s with her mother now.” he said, and there was a strange hint of malice in his voice as well as grief. “But with your help, I hope that tonight I will see her again.”

He had become distant again, so I stood and indicated that he should lead on.

He led me down into a cavernous basement. It was from here that I realised the smell was coming from, as some glutinous mixture of enzymes covered the entire floor. He indicated that I should put on another pair of rubber boots he had at the top of the stairs.

Down at the bottom the smell was almost intolerable. I had spoken to a handful of people who had the misfortune to inhale mustard gas and this was similar to how they described the sensation. It seemed to cling to my very clothes, and penetrated into the furthest reaches of my sinuses. There was something else to it now, something worse than rotting fruit. Something … burnt.

In the centre of the room a small platform was raised, and on it, arcane symbols had been carefully drawn out in chalk. I had seen some of them before, in books I dare not mention, but others were unfamiliar to me. I examined them for a few minutes, before Sir Walter busied me away from it.

“Nonono. You stand here.”

He indicated a spot on the far side of the cellar. Here I was far from both the platform and the curious array of equipment that Sir Walter went back to adjusting. He switched on an electric spotlight above the platform, and plunged the rest of the basement into pitch black.

“In a moment,” he cried out, “I will run a current through the substrate on the floor. Whatever you do, don’t touch it.”

I affirmed that I understood, and he flipped the switch. There was a buzzing of an enormously powerful generator, and around the platform a sickly glow, lit by flashes and sparks, spread from the liquid. It glowed, to the extent that I could see Sir Walter’s grim face by his machinery, concentrating intently on the centre of the room. This went on for what seemed like several minutes, and I was just about to yell that Sir Walter had better power down or risk burning out his equipment, movement caught my eye at the edge of the illumination.

Into the spotlight stepped Sir Walter’s daughter. Cynthie had grown into a young woman, with thick black hair cascading down her front. Her eyes were closed, and I thanked god in that moment that they were, for as she stepped forward again, the rest of her body came into view.

From the waist up she was normal, or at the very least, human. She was naked, and her long hair preserved her modesty. Her hands were clasped in front of her in a mockery of prayer. From the waist down, there was something … else. She had not come fully onto the platform yet, and I could only see a hint of a scaly blackness below her waist.

Two giant arachnid forelegs came out in front of her, and pulled her snake-like rear fully onto the platform. I shrieked in that moment, and she opened her eyes and stared at me curiously with fully human eyes. Below her waist her limbs moved again, and four insectile legs clasped the edges of the platform, supporting the bulk of what was behind. Dear God! No wonder he had taken the photograph in such a way!

She turned from me and looked at Sir Walter.

“Father.” she said, silky smooth and without a hint of affection.

“Cynthie!” he said, stepping forward.

The final horror came as a shadow detached itself from the wall behind me, and moved around the edge of the room with inhuman speed. I never saw it clearly, but as Sir Walter reached towards his daughter, something foul and insectile reached around and lifted him clear off the floor and spun him around.

A dozen eyes glittered in the darkness. Thus far I was rooted to the spot, but the final thing that sent me careening from that house of horrors was when the second creature spoke. It was a raspy, cooing noise, and infinitely horrible and alien, yet also undeniably female. Sir Walter screamed at what she said, and as I ran up the stairs there was a ragged, tearing noise and the screams died.

However, it was the words themselves that would keep me from sleep for countless nights to come. I would play them over and over again, and marvel at the nightmare I had narrowly escaped:

“Foolish Lover. Did you really think that someone else could pay the price for you?”

The Quiet Ones - Movie Review

God damn it. I was really hoping to be able to recommend this one, given my well documented love of Hammer and given that it seemed to have such an intriguing set of ideas.

The set up is an interesting one. A professor called Joseph played by Jared Harris* believes that mental illness is merely a manifestation of negative energy, and that it is possible to draw this energy out and...capture it? Dissipate it? This part is a little vague. To this end he has enlisted the help of two feisty (read: irritating) undergraduates, a camera operator, and a very disturbed young woman called Jane Harper. His mantra, of "cure one person, cure humanity" actually makes a kind of sense, given that anything they can do to prove that his idea is correct will open up an entirely new area of beneficial research.

Couple of ibuprofen, she'll be right as rain.

Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that. Jane has an invisible friend named Evey and it becomes increasing obvious that Evey isn't exactly a manifestation of mental illness, but something else entirely. Exactly what she is can be guessed at around the halfway mark. 

The film overall has a major problem that I will discuss towards the end of the review, but I am going to digress at this point and talk about jump-scares. These are all well and good when used sparingly, but while they make the viewer jump, they can also dissipate tension. They should be sprinkled lightly over the horror movie pie. This film backs a truck up and dumps a load onto the pie, and some of them are so well telegraphed you switch off waiting for something to go OOGA BOOGA. Not good.

The dynamic between the Professor and his patient is by far the most interesting part of the film It is implied to be a co-dependent relationship, but also a mildly abusive one, and Jane is well enough developed as a character for her 'treatment' scenes to be uncomfortable viewing. As the experiment fails to produce results, Joseph pushes ever harder in his 'treatment', even burning her skin. There comes a point at which you wonder if Evey is less of a danger to Jane, let alone everyone else. 

The cameraman acts as a foil to all of this. He is not the believer that Joseph is, but is sympathetic towards Jane to the point of romantic feelings. His journey from being the skeptic to being the first to suggest the supernatural is a thing I feel the film could have developed more. He also adds in a more practical and interesting angle: the ability to use found footage techniques in a non-found footage film. When the camera's rolling, you know bad things are going down, but after watching The Borderlands last week my bar for found footage has been set very high, and despite it being an original idea, I feel that found footage is an all-or-nothing.

"Dude, this thing's heavy. Can we go to an exterior tracking shot or something?"

The problem with the film, the big problem, is that the plot doesn't really go anywhere. Sure, there are creepy moments (a scene in the attic is unbearable) but every time the plot has an opportunity to do something interesting, it shifts back into familiar grooves and into neutral. There is nothing original here and a lot that is guaessable, and the film isn't good enough for it to carry off a story we've seen a hundred times before. On the way home, I listed in my head the ways the plot could have gone which would have re-engaged me, but ultimately I left the theatre disappointed when I wanted to be terrified. After the triumphs of Wake Wood and The Woman in Black, sadly, I would give this one a miss.

Also wins a prize for the most hilariously awkward shoe'd-in title-drop in cinema history.

__________

* AKA Professor Moriarty from Game of Shadows, and the only person I recognized, although one of the others was apparently in the Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The Borderlands - Movie Review

I realized as I looked back through my archive the other day that I seem to have reviewed a lot of 'found footage' films - some of which were very good indeed - but what was properly missing was one from Old Blighty. So imagine my surprise when I bought The Borderlands on a whim and discovered not only was it a found-footage (or FF, which I'm sure will catch on as an acronym) it also wasn't crap! Hoorah!

Even though this might give you that impression. Worst. Box Art. Ever.

The plot concerns three men - a team sent by the Vatican to investigate a potentially miraculous event. I have no idea how accurate this is to how they actually go about investigating miracles, but it's plausible enough for the movie to work. In an interesting twist, it is the priests who are the most cynical: they have uncovered too many forgeries and people misguided by 'faith'. It is the third, an annoying techie, who really buys into the fact that the church and it's resident priest that they are investigating are not quite what they appear to be. All of the cast are pretty much unknowns but expertly cast and acted, which goes a long way to making them feel like real people.

The first thing that this film has going for it is that it provides an excellent justification for the same question that dogs every FF - why do they keep filming when bad stuff is happening? The simple answer provided here is that everything has to be documented for the Vatican. Hence, everyone wears headcams at all times, and several remote cameras are put up in both the church and the house they all stay in. 

The second is that it spends a lot of time establishing its characters and exploring their world-views. Most FF characters are essentially meat on the hoof, impossibly attractive audience foils to whom Bad Stuff Happens. All four of the leads here, however, feel like real people, with real histories, sometimes with each other, and personal demons that can never really be overcome. One is presented unsympathetically as a functional alcoholic, for example.

The set design is wonderfully claustrophobic. The mounted cameras cover the whole church, it seems, but still don't seem to cover enough of it. The dark corners in which something could be lurking, the terrible noises coming from...somewhere and the glitches in the recording all add up to moments of unbearable tension. Watch this late at night with the lights off, and you'll soon be creeping yourself out. 

This is the church DURING THE DAY. You'd better believe it's worse at night.

It is a bit of a slow burner, however, so if you put it on during the day or half-watch it I imagine it's effect will be diminished. There are long conversations on the meaning of faith, along with things like the church records and previous incidents. I can see this being a film that bores some people. I, however, loved it and would recommend it to anyone who is a horror fan.

There's another reason I would recommend this - the ending. Without spoiling anything, I had to rack my brains to think if I'd seen anything like it before, but if so, I'm 100% sure this is the first time I've seen someone do it 100% right. Oh maaaaan. Sequel please!

Horror At Sea, Or Andy Watches Terrible Movies Again

I do enjoy championing sub-genres. Whether it be the rash of crappy monster movies that came out in the late 90s (which is definitely something I want to write about at some point) to the amazing variety of Night Of The Living Dead knockoffs, I am always happy to go digging in the crud to find the gold. Recently, having once more savored the sumptuous feast that is Jaws, I felt an overwhelming desire to find other sea-based horror movies. Having watched Deep Rising so many times a fear the disk is wearing out (and fearing that my fiancee might suspect I loved it more than her) I struck out to find horror in aquatic form. Here are the results of my search.

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Virus

Set-up: An abandoned Russian research vessel is found adrift in a hurricane, with no sign of the crew. The intrepid crew of a tug boards in the hope of claiming salvage. Instead, what they find is apparently the Borg from Star Trek. Hijinks ensue.

Star Power: Kiefer Sutherland and Jamie Lee Curtis, who should both know better.

Opinion: Yeah, no. Even as a fun romp this isn't very good. The monsters are creepy and kind of icky, being cyborgs, but also seem really slow and ponderous. The fact that a couple of the crew die in non-cyborg related ways and none of them seem very bright makes them seem even less threatening. Also, in case you haven't worked it out yet, The Virus Is Man. Yawn.

Best Moment: Undoubtedly the part where they get into contact with the 'intelligence' behind the cyborgs. They ask it what it wants and it starts listing body parts.

Worst Moment: "Wow, that is a really, really large pile of explosives in the middle of the room. And look! They are attached to some sort of rope that is running out. Maybe I should do something abou-" *BOOOOM*.

Sink or Swim?: Probably not worth bothering with. There are much better films that do the same thing. 

Leviathan

Set-up: A sunken Russian vessel (sounds familiar) is found near a deep-sea mining facility, with a sealed safe containing the Captain's Log. Said Captain's Log describes a virus that was genetically mutating the crew before the ship sank, and you better believe he's included a free sample in the safe. Basically, it's what would happen if you blended Alien, The Thing and The Quatermass Experiment in a blender, and then doused it in seawater.

Star Power: Peter Weller, aka Robocop, and the criminal from the Home Alone movies who wasn't Joe Pesci.

Opinion: This one doesn't have an original thought in it's head. Which is a shame, because while the setup is interesting, it constantly reminds you that there are better films you could be watching. You can also pretty much point out the survivors from the first ten minutes onwards. Having said that though, it does get points for knowing not to show its creepy monsters too soon and in too much detail and has lovely set design.

Best Moment: The one moment of true original creepiness comes when one crew member tells another to get well soon, having seen him move under his blankets. Of course, we know he's already dead...

Worst Moment: Any time the company rep appears onscreen it stops the movie dead and kills off any potential atmosphere. She needs to be cut out.

Sink or Swim?: Sink, unless you like deja vu.

Ghost Ship

Set-up: A deserted cruise ship turns up in the Bering Sea after 40 years adrift and a crew sets out to salvage her. After arriving, they decide to not actually, yknow, salvage the ship, and instead wander the corridors having spooky things happen to them.

Star Power: Gabriel Byrne and Karl Urban (the other Robocop). Also, a very young Emily Browning.

Opinion: Hoo boy, this is a dumb one. This ship has been floating the high seas for 40 years in a shipping channel and nobody noticed. Also, nobody noticed a bunch of other salvage crews going missing in the same area. Not to mention the fact that the crew never does anything with any urgency. They all have a serious meeting about the ship sinking at one point, plan a course of action, and go back to wandering about. BUT, it does have a sense of fun, which is a first for this list.

Best Moment: The opening scene, set 40 years in the past, is so over the top it actually makes the rest of the film feel like a let down.

Worst Moment: The ending makes precisely zero sense.

Sink or Swim?: Swim, if you're in the mood for a trash. It's not scary, but it is kind of dumb and fun in the same way something like Python is.

Below

Set-up: A US submarine picks up three survivors of a sunken hospital ship during World War II. Meanwhile, the new commanding officer is struggling because the "old captain just fell off the side" story is beginning to sound a tad unconvincing. And then creepy things start happening...

Star Power: Probably the greates concentration of "Hey it's that guy!" guys in cinema history. Bruce Greenwood, Dexter Fletcher, Jason Flemyng, Zach Galifianakis...

Opinion: At last! A proper creepy, well plotted, thriller, with enough spooks and tension to keep you on your toes. Also, being in such a cramped environment means there's a lot less scope for people wandering off and a lot more claustrophobia. Also has one of the best uses of sound in a horror movie - I can only imaginw how much creepier this would be in a cinema or with half-decent surround sound.

Best Moment: Two scenes are unbearably tense. The first is when a depth charge fails to detonate and it bounces veeery slowly down the hull. The second involves a reflection in a mirror, and is audaciously simple and brilliantly sinister.

Worst Moment: The ending seems a little anti-climactic, but then again, some big effects-fest wouldn't be appropriate either.

Sink or Swim?: Swim. The only one on this list that really creeped me out and the only one I recommend unequivocally. 

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So there you have it. If aquatic horror is your thing, the smorgasbord is mostly smeared with dung, but there is the occassional vol-au-vent. What a foul image, I do apologise. Anyway, until next time. 

Prometheus Explored Part 3

Fathers and Sons: Prometheus and Family

"Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?"                                                                                    - David, Prometheus 

Perhaps the most fundamental relationships in Prometheus are the familial and adoptive bonds that exist between them. In fact, it is almost possible to relate all of the major characters together into a pseudo-family tree of Elizabeth Shaw, Meredith Vickers, David, Peter Wayland, and of course the Engineers and their creations - each person in various degrees of dysfunctional relationships to the people around them.

The irony of this situation is that there is only one 'true' family bond within the crew - Peter Wayland and his daughter Meredith Vickers. This relationship is shown to be cold in the extreme; Vickers is rejected in several ways by her father. Professionally, she hasn't been 'trusted' with this mission alone, despite being an accomplished businesswoman. She is reminded in company that she is a daughter, rather than a son, and rejected in favour of an artificially created 'son'. At the most fundamental level however, the rejection is much more psychologically personal. 

One of the major themes of The Odyssey is the idea of Odysseus rejecting other potential forms of immortality in exchange for the limited form offered by his family. Peter Wayland is an inversion of that, as he actively seeks immortality, thus denying his daughter the inheritance and freedom that could potentially be hers. He has rejected her by disinheriting her at the most basic level imaginable. Vickers states "A king has his reign, and then he dies." but this is not acceptable to Wayland. In some ways he is the most child-like of all the characters, demanding of his substitute parent the Engineer that the rules be changed for him and only for him. He will live forever. It is almost certain to deduce from his character that he would then do his best to rise above the Engineers as well. It is not difficult to see why David would express the sentiment at the top of this page if he had been created by Wayland.

This relationship is counterpointed to the brief glimpse we get of Elizabeth Shaw's relationship with her father. He is clearly a warm, loving man, spending time with his daughter and answering her difficult questions about life and death. He has of course orphaned Shaw by the time the film begins, however, and many of her actions are characterized by efforts to find a replacement father figure in the form of the Engineers. Her other tragedy, of course, is that she cannot become a parent herself, a subject I explored in the previous essay (1).

David is also somewhat rejected by Wayland, his 'father' figure. He is told, indirectly, that he has no soul, and it is clear from the look on his face that this is an idea that troubles him. In the context it is given, it is also a petty and mean thing to say, even if those are things which wouldn't necessarily upset him. He is, however, incapable of the same level of resentment that Vickers shows towards Wayland, but is also incapable of grieving his death at the hands of the Engineer. It is left ambiguous how much David actually 'feels' but it is almost certainly more than he lets on. The sibling rivalry he shares with Vickers, which is exacerbated by the fact that they even look a bit alike, seems on first glance to be all one way, with him calmly reacting to her aggression. On closer inspection, however, it appears that he tries to poison her, suggesting a far higher level of resentment that his exterior suggests (1).

The target for his poisoning 'experiment' is Shaw's partner Charlie Holloway - the one character who is shown to repeatedly insult and belittle David. However, there is something else at work here. David is one of the most interesting characters in this family dynamic - everybody else is seeking reconciliation with a father figure; either the Engineers or Peter Wayland. There is a hint that David is seeking something else in the person of Elizabeth Shaw - not a mother figure exactly, but a softer presence (2).  Poisoning Holloway is an attempt to gain Shaw's undivided attention. It is interesting that at the end of the film, not only are they the only two still alive, David is also completely dependent on her. 

The final parental and child figures are the Engineer and the final emergent creature. The Engineer, as discussed in the previous essay (4) is a mix of religious icon and father figure, and in a human sense, fails at both. He rejects his 'children' out of hand, and doesn't appear to share any of the 'family values' the humans display and search for. Finally, the alien creature that emerges from his stomach at the end is the ultimate embodiment of the philosophy expressed at the top of the page. It literally kills its parent in a grim parody of birth, and does not seek another. As a final coda to a film rife with corrupted family relationships, its impact cannot be overestimated. 

__________

(1) Gods and Supermen: Prometheus and Religion

(2) In one scene Vickers pushes him up against the wall and threatens him. He responds by inocuously asking if she wants tea. In the next scene, David poisons Holloway by droping hte black liquid in his drink. It's subtle and very creepy. 

(3) His attributes of reserve and calm, a 'stiff upper lip', in other words, are traditionally male qualities, and the parental figure he seeks is therefore maternal as opposed to paternal. 

(4) See (1)