It's Alive!

I'm back! Now I can finish where I left off with 'Purge', and continue with 'Fury' as well! Good times are ahead.

Bringing the Dead Back to Life (Update)

I recently purchased the parts necessary to restore my workstation (where my writings are stored) to working order. I will try to get that all done in the week. Once that is complete, my literature will be on the road to completion.

Another dead power supply means I have to wait until payday (this Friday) to nab yet another of those damned things. I've gone through four of those in about 5 years, so that's almost 1 a year. Ridiculously delicate things they seem to be, but you need 'em to compute.

Otherwise I have my desk, chair, and motherboard all ready to go. Just need a pesky current to power them up and you can't do that without a PSU, obviously. Eh, this week will go by fast anyway!

Absentia review (2011, Horror/Mystery/Thriller, Mike Flanagan, Fallback Plan Productions/Blue Dot Productions)

Seventy-thousand dollars, and we get this hidden gem.

Granted, that is an estimate as far as the web (IMDB's "Box Office" section for the film notes this) is concerned, but if there's a significant grain of truth in that number, then it's quite something. But you may be wondering just why I am harping on this point instead of getting to the point?

The point is that this film is remarkable given its barebones budget. Just think about it: George Romero produced the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead on a $114,000 budget. I don't know what that figure is when you adjust for inflation, but it's quite a bit more than what Mike Flanagan, the director/writer of Absentia, had to work with, and this was done in 2011.

Regardless, the film excels in so many ways in spite of that heavily-restrictive budget. For one, it's a far cry from the typical cheap scares & tricks of the genre today. Instead, the film has a slow, but deliberate pacing to it, building the tension for you to experience throughout the film. When any "in your face" horror does appear, it is appropriate and not forced just to try and get a rise out of the audience.

There's also a bit of drama to experience as well. The premise is that Tricia (Courtney Bell, also involved in the production of the film), eight months pregnant, has nearly finished grieving over the loss of her highschool sweetheart & husband seven years prior. Or so she hopes to believe. When she has to declare him legally dead (in absentia), her guilt comes to haunt her. Her guilt takes on the form of an emaciated, ghoulish-looking image of her husband. As for the reason she's seeing him, it is left up to the viewer's interpretation. As for her situation that may be causing her emotional duress, she's pending delivery of her unborn baby, and creeping unease is haunting her over the course of the film; could she feel guilty for having slept with a man while her husband was still missing? Does she feel that her husband, her teenage-sweetheart, should have been the father? Or could she truly be over the grieving process regarding her loss? That's for you to decide.

In the meantime, her younger sister Callie (Katie Parker) has returned from her status as a drifter searching for answers as to the meaning of life, among other things. Apparently recovering from drug abuse and trying to cope with her own problems through prayer, Callie nonetheless reignites the sister-sister bond with Tricia in their respective times of need. Supportive of her sister when she needs her most, Callie is an important piece of the puzzle in the plot of the film.

However, as time goes on, disappearances occur in their immediate neighborhood, and old cases open up anew, bringing tingling questions with them. To go on further, though, would be to spoil the film unjustly.

First of all, there's no elaborate special effects to be found throughout the film. If you're one of those viewers who needs spectacular visual displays to occur at one point or another, then you're going to be gravely disappointed in this one. Also, as I've mentioned, the film has a deliberate, prodding pace, and it may bore the less attentive of viewers quite a bit. Unlike most horror films ever made, Absentia presents the horror elements through tense buildup, and rather clever release (monsters showing up & other engaging scenes) sparsely.

You're also likely not going to feel like the film has been resolved. What really happened by the end of the film? Did people really disappear without a trace, or did they run away for a life anew? Is there a message, a theme overlying the plot of the film that could explain the rash of people in absentia? What about the thing in the tunnel?

Admirably, the plot is actually rather semi-linear, in that it presents alternate threads throughout the events that unfold. Some may take this as the filmmakers lacking confidence in the storyline they were writing, but I think the filmmakers were rather trying to give the audience the means to come to their own interpretation(s). It's something that is sorely lacking in this overburdened genre that lacks true tension and creativity. Remember when horror was both stunning and surprising? Yeah, it's been a long ass time.

I enjoyed the minimalistic soundtrack as well. There's a low, downbeat dark ambient tune that plays throughout most of the film, and it helps establish the mysterious mood that permeates its duration. A few scenes break what could have been a monotonous soundtrack with light rock songs, cleverly integrated into the activities the characters are actually engaging in (in one scene, Callie is jogging while listening to a track on her MP3 player; a little later, she takes off her headphones and the song dies down). 

Couple the intelligent brand of horror, the open-ended plotline, the down-to-earth characters, and the minimalistic but appropriate soundtrack, Absentia is a showcase of what to do with a horror film, no matter the budget & personnel limitations. Those latter two elements of film-making are not good excuses for churning out recycled crap that generates so much mockery of this genre that possesses enormous opportunities.

B+

The Good:

+ Down-to-earth, obscure actors present believable, at-times sympathetic performances.

+ In spite of the miniscule budget, there seemed to be a very natural, stress-free approach taken to the film. Nothing is overly forced or hammy.

+ A subtle breed of horror that builds tension, then shocks the audience without abusing such things for spectacle sake.

+ Open-ended, semi-linear plotline that is open to interpretation.

+ No overt special effects.

The Bad:

- May leave some viewers unsatisfied with the ending.

Rage Against the Capital Punishment Machine (Link)

Copyright © Superbious.com and Garrett Will 2012-2013 All Rights Reserved. 

Take a gander at the goods

Optimistic Horizons Visible

I've been living in Calgary for a couple weeks now, and lots of progress has been made, especially in the past couple of days.

I will soon be working, selling modestly-priced goods that the consumer has to assemble for themselves.

Also, in order to jumpstart the sad state that Superbious.com has been in (almost coincidentally since my inactivity there since the end of April), I submitted another piece. For that, I won't doll up a teaser since it's kind of pointless to do so.

Adios.

Dumber Ingredients for a Dumber Consumer (Link)

Copyright © Superbious.com and Garrett Will 2012-2013 All Rights Reserved. 

Give it a shot

So this is my last post for now, because I'm leaving this dump I've reluctantly called home for the past eight months. I don't know how long I'll be, but I'm guessing a couple weeks of absence at the most. Until then, adios.

Upcoming Superbious article teaser: "Dumber Ingredients for a Dumber Consumer"

I've submitted a piece that will tackle the issue of over-simplified ingredients lists replacing the functional, thorough ones which include IUPAC systematic names, like "sodium chloride" (which is commonly known as "table salt"), or "potassium sorbate", amongst many others. I'll loosely elaborate below.

There's a mindset where a consumer will avoid purchasing an article of food if they read an ingredients list consisting of any number of ingredients they cannot pronounce, nor that they understand of their purpose & composition. Many of such are ignorant (wilfully or otherwise), indoctrinated by the media or disingenuous nutritionists (often a combination of such, since nutritionists are provided platforms to share information with audiences), or are simply put off by the complexities therein. A basic understanding of chemistry should be in order and would be an appropriate response to this mindset, right? Well, this isn't a perfect world.

It's certainly true that there are ingredients that are questionable in their use, but generally speaking, not all inorganic compounds found in our foods are malign. Plus, one should not be intimidated by them simply because they cannot read, verbally or mentally, their chemical names. As I mention in the article (which should be available tomorrow as of this writing), vitamin B12's IUPAC name is "cyanocobalamin", and for anyone under the ill effects of the above-mentioned mindset, that name, if found on an ingredients list, may be off-putting. A simple solution, especially in this digital age considering that consumers are sometimes armed with tablets or smartphones, would be to do research on the spot. But you can't always expect people to take responsibility. Sometimes, unfortunately (for the sake of the market), people with such mindsets, whether they peddle it or not, may make waves through the media. Such press can be damaging to a food company's PR image, so they act on restoring it any way they can.

Without getting much further, since the upcoming article will be the primary entanglement of this discussion, these food companies are responding by dumbing down ingredients list. If the trend continues, and more troubling, worsens over time, then you won't see such items as "potassium sorbate", but rather just salt. Instead of telling you what is actually in the tomato sauce dotting the frozen pizza you're buying, it'll just say tomato sauce. And that's the problem I tackled, for your (eventual) reading pleasure.