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.

Martian Gothic: Unification Review (PC/PSOne, 2001, Take-Two Interactive/Coyote Developments)

This is just one of those examples of a game you were disappointed in, but would have loved to see much more come of it.

Developed on a budget disavowing the development team of just about any freedom (in tandem with some objective dissonance within the team itself which led to the hackneyed product we have today), Martian Gothic had the foundations of a rather solid survival horror experience. It had the chills, the atmosphere, the fantastic music, a very desperate gameplay model with limited weapons & ammunition, and unfairly difficult enemies (indeed, the enemies are either invincible or are predominantly just obstacles to be overcome), and quite the distinct storyline underneath it all.

But things just didn't fully turn out the way they should have.

The graphics are a rather mixed-bag, with butt-ass ugly character models that would make the original Resident Evil laugh, almost non-existent lighting effects, and a general lack of polish all compounding the aesthetic disappointment. The saving grace here is in the background sections, or the level design, which, for the most part, aptly portrays the implied chaos that pre-dated the events of the game's plot. However, it would have been monumentally better if the game had an actual lighting system to accentuate the atmospheric prowess we could have beheld. It wouldn't have hurt to darken many of the areas as well, because for the most part, this game is BRIGHT, but not in a good way, due to an issue I've mentioned at least once before.

It would be criminal of me to omit the tidbit that Stephen Marley, the writer and designer of the game, intended for this to be a survival-horror game more akin to Resident Evil than what it turned out to be. While it did end up being a very similar game (albeit a far slower, less consistent one), the overt emphasis on puzzle-solving notwithstanding, it was meant to be even more apt in that comparison. Instead, we got a prodding, "Guide dang' it!" kind of game that threw mostly obscure puzzles with clues that even Sherlock Holmes would scratch his head in solving. The action is not even there, really, because you will realize that enemies can't really be killed. Zombies don't ever die, but instead get knocked down, just to get back up again (the rate of revival increases as the game goes on). The rarest enemy in the game, also an element that had a lot of untapped potential, serves to be a dangerous obstacle to the player. That is, until you get a weapon halfway through and kill them with relative ease. There are ankle-biters in the game, but they have terrible AI, are viable to get glitched severely (you'll see a lot of it in either version where one of them is seen in impossible places, unable to touch you at all), and can be ignored entirely.

A definite strength going for our adventure is the audio. All of it is fantastic and builds one of the strongest atmospheres around, in spite of the elements that bring it down. The music is minimalistic, resembling the rustling of wind, enforcing a "haunted house on Mars" vibe. When it lifts at times, it's ominous and mysterious, taking on a dark orchestral sound. All thanks goes to FirQ (the artist responsible for the music in the game). And then there are the sounds of monsters. Zombies, or "non-dead" as they're called here, emit creepy guttural sounds when they rise from their slumber. If one grabs your character (and that's all they'll do in this game), a loud instrumental sound will play that may make you jump the first few times. My favourite, however, is in the menacing growls of distant TriMorphs, which are tripartite monstrosities consisting of three individuals clumped together into one killing machine. If you're in the immediate area of a TriMorph (often just behind a door near your position, or just the next camera-frame over), you'll hear its animalistic growling.

And then the story comes 'round, and it's kind of obscured by a "let's-cover-all-possible-grounds" methodology. I'll flesh out what I mean here: when you thought this game was a mystery, driven by adventure & mired by infrequent adversity, it later turns out that the game is a Resident Evil-esque survival action romp slowed down by sometimes ill-conceived puzzles. At other times, it may as well be a point & click adventure title, slow & prodding leaving imagination to the player. And then it becomes some kind of avant-garde combination of all of those things. Are you confused yet? Did all of that work out to produce a consistent, solid product? No, not really.

There are also a number of characters introduced that seem unfulfilled or are missed opportunities. One of them, being known as "Ben Gunn" or "John Farr", merely populates a messy canteen, divulging cryptic clues as to the dark history of the base. That's pretty much it. Another, more egregious example of a poorly-conceived character is Judith Harroway. It eventually turns out that one of the team-members is intimately (literally) tied to the character, and a *SPOILER ALERT* conspiracy of rebellion rears its ugly head! It also doesn't help that the characters are not very-well acted, coming off as unconvincing given their situations. They seem almost ecstatic to be there, actually. It ends up diminishing the feel of the game. Some of the story elements, thus, seem to be abrupt cop-outs that come off as jarring rather than anything else.

Guns don't feel right, at all. Plus, they're given monikers that don't amount to anything, slightly diminishing the "oomph" factor. The weakest weapon, called the "Piccolo", is a pea-shooter and will be discarded immediately for something better. Plus, it sounds more like a fart than a gun. You later nab a nail-gun which is barely a step up, but can pin down one of the only other enemies present in the game (which you can ignore entirely anyway, making this gun kind of pointless to use). Later, you get your hands on a magnum-class handgun called the "Dillinger", which I can't complain about much because although it never really kills anything worth a damn, it sure does pack a punch doing its job temporarily dropping zombies. Then there are novelty weapons, like the Daedalus sub-machine-gun, which only serves to stop "non-dead" in their tracks but takes forever to put just one down. Then there are the novelties OF the novelty pack; the Psionara is a weapon that does virtually nothing to anything in the game, except for special, rare enemies that are affected by its psychic, non-ballistic delivery. The next one is the flare-gun  which kills the TriMorphs clean in one hit whilst doing sweet piss all to anything else (in fact, shooting it at zombies in the PC version reveals that they're not fully corporeal anyway!). What this all boils down to is that you'll only really use two, give or take three of those weapons; the Dillinger  the flare-gun  and yeah, the psionara, the latter of which does in-fact serve a pretty useful purpose once or twice. This amounts to another disappointing roster.

Bugs are aplenty, however. On the PSOne (not the original Playstation), you are apt to run into a hard freeze when you enter a decompressing airlock sequence. If you're playing on the PC, and you don't patch the game, you are liable to run into a game ending glitch every time in the following sequence: Matlock must traverse a ventilation duct to a locked room, and outpace a TriMorph in the process. Prior to this sequence, privy players (most wouldn't know of it if they don't refer to a guide beforehand) will place Kenzo, the "infomeshing" expert near a surreal switch/rock/whatever thing (it's hard to explain what it is and why it works at all). At the right moment, a door in the ventilation duct will shut right behind Matlock, trapping the oncoming TriMorph in the process. However, in the un-patched PC version, the door will shut but won't be physical, and thus, the TriMorph will go through it as if it were nothing. Because you need that door to survive this sequence, you'll die every single time. Given that this game is so obscure and it's been over ten years since its release, good luck even finding an available patch to download.

That's assuming you're able to play it at all to begin with.

The game's length also doesn't do it any favours. Not that a lengthy play time is anything to scoff at, but it has to be engaging throughout. Here, however, it's not; it's too confusing, puzzles and their clues/solutions are far too obscure to understand at all, the action is absolutely barebones that it can barely stand without crumbling to the floor, and it is boring for most of the game. It also doesn't help that puzzles seem to take centre-stage over everything else. Enemies are simply obstacles rather than individual challenges. There is often just one way to deal with any challenge, leaving little to the imagination of the player. The story is a mess, going from one note to another with poor transition often being the case. Oh and, I haven't touched upon the HORRID controls yet. Let's just say that, like many survival horror titles of the day, you are burdened with tank controls in this game. However, imagine a tank with leaking motor oil and broken treads, with a top speed of five miles an hour. And this tank takes FOREVER to turn and reach any modicum of speed. And then there's the fact that you have to press enter, once you activate "aimed" mode, to fire. What the fuck? Yeah, I thought that, too.

Characters, while they are free from absurdly retarded dialogue (think "Resident Evil" for the Playstation), don't come off as convincing because they don't exhibit the mood & urgency that you think their situations would rouse from them. Then the game appears to be flat-out rushed because there's little variety to the engaging elements, there's no final boss fight (even though you'll witness a brief sequence hinting otherwise, it means nothing), and the ending is both confusing and anti-climactic. All of that hard work, and what do you get? You get pretty much jack shit.

However, it's the little things that keep it from being an abysmal, less than average game. It has its moments: the foreboding atmosphere (which, if improved as I described earlier, would have been utterly fantastic), the genuine scares you'll get that aren't typical jump-scares, a basis for a chilling enemy, and neat concepts such as the exploration of Mars & the possibility of life beneath its cosmic-ray battered surface. The negatives kind of outweigh the positives, though. It deserves a retry, though.

---

Two and a half TriMorphs out of Five

The Rundown:

Positives

+ A chilling, interesting storyline, albeit requiring a bit more fleshing out
+ The backgrounds you traverse through are fitting, portraying a tale of chaos & terror
+ The audio is superb, only hampered by audio glitches (sounds sometimes cut out) and generally low quality bitrate.
+ Decent characters that don't succumb to complete idiocy, typical to the genre

Negatives

- It's ugly, seriously. Character models would fit right in with a Playstation launch title. No lighting effects other than specially designed "lights." Disappointing enemy designs.
- Tank-like controls that tank-like controls laugh and/or scoff at.
- The bugs are aplenty
- Rushed, especially evident toward the end
- Sadistic puzzles that are often nigh-impossible to decipher or require nothing but trial-and-error
- Limited save system, which can be punishing to less inquisitive players.
- Barebones enemy roster that is disappointing, feels unexplored
- There's a dissonance of mood between the characters and the game's storyline/atmosphere as a whole. Everyone is either understated or nonchalant about being in a Martian base haunted by ancient ghosts, invincible zombies gnawing on their necks, huge masses of former humans shambling on them in places, mind-numbing psychic phenomena, and a lonely, oppressive atmosphere. What is wrong with these people and why were they told to be so detached emotionally & mentally?
- Boring overall. It never really goes to great lengths to engage the player, and just when you think it's going somewhere, it settles right back where it's been for almost the entire time.
- Hasty, rushed, lame ending.