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Reviews
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
A Very Jarmusch-esque Zombie Parody
Fans of Jarmusch's curt absurdism and quirky characterizations will find a bit of what they like. It is well-acted, well-shot, and the makeup & effects are excellent. But the film really only works as a send-up of other zombie movies, and only veterans of the genre will be equipped to appreciate the intentional irony of the narrative.
All the traditional zombie movie characters are inserted - the aging cop & his young partner; the nervous woman; the precocious children; the gun-nut loner; the awkward nerd; the sweet old man; the cool young hipsters (including the obvious Final Girl). All are well-presented, played by famous faces, and would seem like prime candidates for End-Credits Survivors, yet every one is unceremoniously killed off - some almost immediately after their introduction. There's also the Unkillable Badass Saviour - another staple of zombie films - who is removed from the equation here in the most Jarmusch way imaginable, without ever saving anyone. Nobody gets a happy ending or a dramatic escape. Then it's all tied together with a half-hearted diatribe on society's ills, and how "the living are the real zombies" - another common trope of zombie fiction, done in a semi-ironic fashion.
As a subversion of a much-maligned and oversaturated genre, it makes its points fairly well. But as the zombie genre is much-maligned already, it feels like those points weren't really worth making - particularly with such a lack of wider appeal. Viewers who are unfamiliar with the genre - perhaps attracted to this film purely by its stellar cast - will feel like it didn't have any point at all.
Wounds (2019)
I think I get it?
About halfway through the movie, Armie Hammer reads a couple of lines on an internet chat forum claiming wounds can be used in a ritual to "contact higher beings" and help you become a better person.
These two lines, shown on screen for 5 seconds, are the only plot exposition in the entire movie.
Armie is a bad guy living a bad life - a borderline alcoholic, stuck in a dead end job, with a girlfriend who doesn't love him, and a female friend who he keeps trying to cheat with, but who doesn't want him. However, after being "chosen", he begins to see horrible visions all around him, which i guess are meant to signify how rotten his life has become... driven mad by this, he quits his job, breaks up with his girlfriend, and finally gets closure with the other woman... all of which seem like healthy steps toward becoming a "better person" - he just gets there in the most gross and confusing ways imaginable. He then accepts his new "better" life by embracing the creature which bursts forth from his conveniently-wounded friend, in the hope that it will "make him whole" (his girlfriend previously insults him for being an empty, hollow person, so this could be his motivation).
Are his visions the result of this existential crisis? Alcohol-fuelled mania? Some sort of curse? How & why was he "chosen" in the first place? I've done my best to interpret some semblance of meaning from this movie, but it's badly-told at best. Hammer & co are as competent on screen as you'd expect, but it feels wasted on what amounts to nothing more than a schlocky gross-out "horror" with no scares and even less plot.
Control (2019)
Ambitious, Original, Stunning.
Gameplay, graphics, physics, detail - this game stretches current-gen hardware as far as any effort I've seen. The environments are as pretty & polished as you could want, but they're also fully destructible - and not even in a "some objects will fall over then disappear" kind of way. Effort has been made to keep every detail looking & feeling as realistic as possible, even in the middle of all the superpowered skirmishes.
This is the real centrepiece of the game - your character's powers, and how you use them for fun & fighting. Jesse Faden starts out as a normal woman drawn by some inexplicable force to The Oldest House, a shady government bureau where she procedes to obtain an arsenal of supernatural skills - allowing her to overcome the House's hazards and uncover its secrets in the most joyful, empowering & eyecatching ways.
The storyline (one of pseudoscientific research & interdimensional espionage) provides a creatively grounded backdrop linking the action together, but it always felt to me as if this was a gameplay-led project; while Alan Wake had some cool & innovative gameplay, its remembered mostly for its dramatic story and themes, whereas Control feels more like a showcase of video games as a spectacle.
I wouldn't be itching to tell people about the narrative, which suffers a lack of clarity at times - there's a lot going on in The Oldest House, and much of it is devoid of explanation (which is probably intentional) or an obvious point (which probably isn't). However I couldn't wait to show friends all the cool stuff you can do whenever you feel like it, and how good it always looks when you're doing it.
Confronting a wretched, wailing group of interdimensionally-possessed former office-workers who have become twisted beyond human form, and defending yourself by telekinetically flinging a tray of photorealistic coffee cups at them - that's what this game is all about. And it's great.