When I put Naughty Dog's The Last of Us as one of the best MOVIES of 2013 on my Top 10 list, don't laugh at me OK? It really is a cinematic masterpiece when you separate the fact that it's a video game. The setting (post fungi apocalyptic America), the characters (Joel and Ellie are the video game version of Dad and Son from The Road) and the plot which is filled with twists and turns and just pure WTF.
It really is without a doubt one of the best stories to revolve around the survival horror genre.I've played the game and finished it and I was blown away by the emotional roller coaster it took me on. Video games in reality actually force you to put more of your emotions because YOU are actually playing that character.
In doing so, you actually start directing your action sequences to how you want, something a movie could never do. But we're not here to debate movies vs video games. What I will say is that when just the cinematic cut scenes are solid enough to warrant a YouTube full movie cut, it says a lot in that the cut scenes alone can make you care about the characters, intrigue you about the plot and have their fair share of scares.
With any horror movie, you need the BIG BAD> There are actually two enemies in The Last of Us. The last remnants of humanity who have turned into scavenging and stalker as well as The Fireflies, a group looking to stop the epidemic at all costs. Stalkers, Clickers and Bloaters are dangerous as the infection evolves. The infected make zombies look like a walk in the park.
The performances (done via motion capture) are pretty superb starring Troy Baker as Joel and Ashley Johnson as Ellie. Motion capture is close to acting in a video game as acting in front of a green screen.
Of course this "movie" has only been experienced by only a few Playstation 3 gamers, so the level of exposure is limited than say a conventional movie. But the acclaim the game has gotten has been absurdly positive with making gamers "cry" and just having been gut punched into the stomach in some scenes.
The brutality of the kills by Joel and Ellie makes it pure survival horror and even if you die in the game, it wallops you with some serious game over carnage.
So here is a YouTube version "movie" with all the cutscenes. Sure it's 3 hours (I mean its scenes from a video game with over 10 hours of gameplay mind you) You may be able to get an idea of what it's about, the characters, the plot and some action. Some of the story and dialogue are told while you play so it can't capture that. But it is indeed a great cinematic masterpiece of 2013. A movie that could only been told in a game, rich in a landscape of nature reclaiming America and the morality humanity must hold on to in the most dire of circumstances.
The Last of Us is one of the best horror movies of 2013. And I'm not budging from that statement.
Have you played The Last of Us? Do you think it stacks up against even the best horror movies this year? Sound off and let me know!
When I saw the trailer for Jim Mickle's Stake Land, I have to say I got excited. Mickle's Mulberry Street to me is one of the best films to come out of the lame-o After Dark Horrorfests. So after tackling zombies, the next logical step has to be vampires right?
Stake Land draws a world of post apocalyptic America filled with non sparkly vampires and religious extremism taken to it's most extreme. Comparisons to The Road meets the Walking Dead meets Red State have to be made. And these are all good things in an above average flick. Characters come first in Stake Land, with eerie scenes of a wrinkled and abandoned America coming in second and finally fight scenes coming in at bronze.
There are no 3D gimmicks or star power to drive Stake Land. That's the beauty of a straight forward genre piece by Mickle. You're here to enjoy the road trip of these rag tag strangers who are looking for the mystical New Eden. Like in all road trips, you're going to get bored a few times along the way and Stake Land does suffer from stretches of boring nothingness. Not even a hint of dialogue to get more character development.
But clearly you have to take the good with the bad. Stake Land is a safe bet, a sunny day in a world of the bloody thirsty.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
Martin was a normal teenage boy before the country collapsed in an empty pit of economic and political disaster. A vampire epidemic has swept across what is left of the nation's abandoned towns and cities, and it's up to Mister, a death dealing, rogue vampire hunter, to get Martin safely north to Canada, the continent's New Eden.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
No extensive review here. I'm sure you can browse through the IMDB external reviews to get what you need about plot and such. I'm going to just give you a few thoughts on the film via list form because well I can't come up with coherent sentences.
Mister (Nick Damici) is one badass vampire motherfuckin hunter. A tough guy's tough guy. No jokey slayer. Nuff said.
Martin is Daniel-son, padwan and youngling. I like how the opening credits are a freakin training montage.
Their one man wolfpack includes: a nun, the lovely pregnant Danielle Harris and a Marine brotha
I loved the backdrops of burnt out cars, houses and vampires hanging on ropes. Just great post apocalyptic scenery bordering on a Hollywood set design. This might not be to far off from the real America.
Jebedia and the Brotherhood seems like a extreme satire on all that is Republican religious right wing nutzoids. I know these people actually exist but in Stake Land they come out as a crazy cult bent on survival. It seem to unbelievable to me but I'll give it a pass
The American government and military seem so half ass in a vampire apocalyptic world. I would hope they wouldn't fold this easy.
The father-son relationship between Mister and Martin is solid, pretty much the driving force of the flick.
The action scenes are straightforward. Gunshots, slicing and dicing, stake through the hearts, yada yada yada.
Who dies first...the nun or the brotha?
The final battle is sad and sadder and saddest
The ending is clearly a nod to all zombie flick endings
Stake Land is indie horror with a precision pulse on the genre. A lot of indie films try to emulate a post apocalyptic world be it zombies or vampires but Stake Land is one of the few that does it right. It's a little slow at times, yes even boring at points, the characters aren't totally flushed out, a few hiccups with the plot and story but all are minor grievances in an otherwise fresh take on the vampire run amok genre.
I can only guess where Mickle will go next. Maybe werewolves? How about a regular slasher flick? Maybe even a killer shark. I can see Mickle headed towards some big budget remake and I'm praying that doesn't happen.
That would be a stake right through my fuckin heart.
The movie is now out on DVD via IFC Films. I'm sure you can Netflix it or whatever. It's a good solid 140 min and has a few themes running through it for the more intellectual horror fan. You'll definitely leave feeling like you've seen a solid horror flick.
"It's different looking at America from the outside in"
-Kaulder
It wasn't Gareth Edwards intention to make a film allegory about the US immigration policy with Mexico. But that's what comes out of Monsters, a sci fi Lost in Translation meets District 9 sorta film.
It's also an excellent display of indie and guerrilla style filmmaking by Edwards, his crew and actors Scoot McNairy and the beautiful Whitney Able. It's easy to Blomkamp this flick with comparisons to District 9. It's got a restricted zone, a military policy towards the alien "invaders" and a look into the world of the quarantine zone. But the film does two things District 9 doesn't. It subtly establishes a pseudo budding relationship between our intrepid photographer and a daughter of a media mogul and it blends in "monsters" into commonplace lore. And it does both effectively.
Sure seeing the monsters in small increments makes it a little irritating, the acting is completely improvised which leads to odd exchanges and the suspense is a bit cliched but it clearly has the heart of a indie film that does the more than most blockbuster Hollywood flicks do with 1000x more budget.
At the end, you feel like you walked away from a seeing an allegory thinly disguised as a sci-fi drama and the aliens seem to have more in common with us than you think.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life form began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as an INFECTED ZONE. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain "the creatures"...... Our story begins when a US journalist agrees to escort a shaken tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
What you notice right off the bat is how seemlessly Edwards integrates the sci fi in Monsters. He is of course an FX wizard first before a full fledge director. We see night vision battles, smoldering ruins, fighter planes in the sky and newscast shots of the skyscraper tall tentacled aliens battling the Mexican and US military. All the signs of a "restricted zone" or "gas mask prices" have been digitally created within shots filmed in real life locations. It's a sight to behold and it's all done quite creatively.
You clearly get transported into a North America that looks gritty real, in a mid post apocalyptic world. Kaulder, a photographer on the hunt for his big payday ends up in Mexico where he's told by his boss he has to escort Sam, the daughter of the company's CEO back to America. Their relationship grows throughout the film.
Soon there trekking to the coast in a bid to get on a ferry to America. The film spends alot of time having Kaulder and Sam talk about their lives. Both have different motivations to go home, Kaulder for his son and Sam to her fiance. But these motivations are deceptive in the big picture of just getting back the the good ole USA alive.
We get a montage of fun and later the easy route leads to a harder one as the duo have to trek back to America by land instead. It's filled with a boat ride with some solid extraterrestrial WTF scenes of suspense. A fighter jet disappears via mysterious tentacles and a group of guide soldiers gets slaughtered.
As we approach the end, Sam and Kaulder are clearly attracted to each other in that "we survived multiple alien attacks" romanticism that comes from well you know surviving such an ordeal. The ending is a little wild and bit of a "Huh?" but it is what is.
Scoot McNairy and the hot Whitney Able both give great performances in a movie that they were only given an outline of what they needed to do. If all the dialogue was improvised, it's a credit to them with coming up with conversation that seems plausible and funny. Able is a presence on screen, a mesmerizing beauty though cliched damsel in distress. McNairy plays tough, lovable fun guy. An alpha male with a heart.
But the monsters should be as important as these characters and through glimpses via news footage, some shots in some climactic scenes and one at the end, they are only their as background. As the titular name of the film, they should have had some focus, possibly their plight of being targeted by both governments (like they did in District 9). This is where I had a few gripes. The aliens seem to have no agenda, no motivation and no adequate screen time which leads to a lacking trifecta.
If your going to make a alien flick, you need to get some meat on the bones of the aliens. They shouldn't be treated like a establishing shot of a sunset. It's only at the end do we see the aliens have relationships as well, a budding family per say and there main motivation it seems is the resources America has. Somehow, it's an appropriate parallel to real life events.
Monsters is made on the attention spans of the YouTube crowd. Doing more with less is a testament to everybody involved in the movie. Edwards does a fantastic job of getting the most out of his special effects laden flick but missed a chance to shed some light into an important subject in current events. The plight of the monsters is as important as the plight of our leads.
America's population will constantly be a changing demographic and so will our alien flicks change as well. Monsters is a step into a new frontier of indie sci-fi, one where we have to adapt our expectations on what it can be, not what it should be.
Gore-ipedia
A few scattered bodies, nothing a tween couldn't handle.
Nude-ipedia
Nada
WTF moment The tentacle tango between the aliens at the end
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
Monsters is out on DVD now via Magnet Releasing. If you're in the mood for a more arthouse Cloverfield flick with a touch of Lost in Translation and some District 9 danger, Monsters is the clear cut choice for you.
With the Walking Dead just kicking ass on AMC, I was originally going to post a list of things that logically would kinda suck during a zombie apocalypse. One of the main things would be all the freakin flies and maggots that would infest the dead. Shouldn't we see flies buzzing around each zombie? Also, a few weeks into decomposition, its maggot city right?
But I digress.
It's no shock that a zombie apocalypse to me is the king of apocalypses. I mean the dead walking around is pretty much fucked up as you can get. Limited human survivors and a constantly growing army looking to eat your brains guarantees an end to the world. But what other types of apocalypses would suck?
Here is my list. I hope you include your own in the comments. I'm also putting up a poll in the right nav bar so you can vote on which you think is the WORST OF THE APOCALYPSES.
Now head to your fallout shelter ASAP!
10.) Water Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: Think Waterworld. Say because of global warming the ice caps start to melt and we all gotta live on boats. I'm not good with boats and get sea sick pretty easily. Shit, I don't want to grow gills either.
9.) Religious Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: You'd think I'd say it would be God vs the Devil or angels vs demons. But that's not the kind I'm talking about. It would kinda suck if the world collapsed into a collective war over religious ideology. Oh shit you mean that's happening now? Fuck.
8.) Asteroid Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: You know where I'm heading. Yup Armageddon and Deep Impact territory. The impact of the asteroids would eradicate a large population but the fallout would cause us to probably all live underground. We probably wouldn't have Internet either.
7.) Natural Resources Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: On Discovery Channel they once theorized if we ran out of oil all hell would break loose. Wars would breakout all over the world as each country horded gas and oil. We really do need all the stuff we dig out of the Earth and it would be madness if gas cost $100 a gallon.
6.) Vampire Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: I recently read Guillermo Del Toro's The Strain and he really details a widespread pandemic if vampires elected to go all vampy and not be all secretive about their intent. Daybreakers illustrates that we could all be infected pretty fast. A vampire world with consist of no sunlight and an overwhelming thirst for blood. But the superhuman strength would be fuckin awesome.
5.) Virus Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: An airborne virus spreading across the planet is the most frightening and MOST REALISTIC thing that could happen. We've had our scares with Ebola and Mad Cow. Say we get a virus like in Stephen King's The Stand, we'd all be fucked. Quarantine zones, wearing masks and hazmat suits. Say the virus turned us into flesh eating mutants? Who would I get to play XBox Kinect with?
4.) Robotic Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: Skynet goes self aware. Your jacked into the Matrix (which doesn't sound so bad). A war between the machines is gonna suck. When your Wii starts attacking you, all hope is loss.
3.) Nuclear Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: It's The Road and it's depressing as hell. Sure Mad Max may look fun with their dune buggies and Road Warrior shoulder pads but the 100 or so years in the fallout shelter would kinda suck.
2.) Alien Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: We're not alone. But after they destroy all the major cities and start a human genocide you'd hope we would be. A virus from a Mac ain't gonna work dude. Being slaves to an alien race is pretty much the worst case scenario. No way we can beat their technology if they're using fuckin force fields. Plus being destroyed by aliens would be demoralizing as you'd think humanity could do it better ourselves. 1.) Zombie Apocalypse
the jaded viewer says: Like I said, a post apocalyptic zombie world would just plain the best worst. Zombie corpses, flies and maggots. All major cities uninhabitable. I mean the walking dead would stink like crazy.
Plus I'm not good with firearms. Maybe I should brush up via Call of Duty.
Well that's my list. What do you think is the worst of the apocalypses? Go ahead and vote in the poll to the right and if you got your own list, share it below.
And if I flipped the question around, what would be the best apocalypse that you think we'd all be able to survive? I'm thinking vampires (we got daylight!).
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