Top 10 Video Game Levels

One thing that seems to be vanishing from video games is the concept of “levels.” Mainstream games have moved from progressing through a series of linear, isolated environments to embracing open-world sandbox gameplay, which is sort of good and sort of bad. Yeah, there’s something to be said for a game where you can explore everywhere at will, but I hope that doesn’t completely steamroll the old-fashioned level structure, because who wants to play a game where every area you visit looks the same? I don’t. Sorry, Modern Warfare, but I’d rather skip merrily around a series of outlandishly different in-game zones than trudge wearily from one identical colorless environment to another. Growing up with 2D and 3D platform games, I was big on levels, or worlds, or whatever you want to call them. In honor of that, I’m going to give you my all-time favorite levels, worlds, zones, stages, and areas in games I’ve played. These locations all managed to wow me with their uniqueness, their visual beauty, their innovation, their immersive ambiance, their entertainment value, or some combination of the above. Here are...

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN FAVORITE VIDEO GAME LEVELS/WORLDS/AREAS

(Note: This list was written in 2009. I’d probably change/update it if I had to rewrite it today, but it’s still good as it is.)


Amateria (Myst 3: Exile, PC/Mac)
With its pre-rendered landscapes and open-ended concept (you write world in book; world becomes real), the Myst franchise always leads the pack when it comes to gorgeous and unique levels. Case in point: the Amateria Age from the third game, in which you are deposited onto a beautiful island composed of hexagonal stone columns and vaguely Oriental architecture. Amateria’s puzzles are seriously cool and all fit together like a giant pressure lock, as you manipulate energy marbles through a series of pathways and obstacles. The entire world is one big puzzle, and a top-notch one at that. And did I mention how lovely it is? You can almost smell the salty air. Yeah, it’s very linear, but I’ll take a one-way path through photorealistic environments over a free-roaming adventure with crude, sub-WoW graphics (FUCK you, Myst 5). Amateria was achingly creative and deeply satisfying: solve the giant marble run and you get to ride through it yourself, sealed inside a marble. Best...reward....ever.



Anything with Brambles (Donkey Kong Country 2, SNES)
Speaking of pre-rendered graphics, I’ve always been a fan of the shiny, Matel-on-crack environments from the original Donkey Kong series, and my favorites have to be the bramble levels from DK Country 2. They were an absolute bitch to play -- pretty much every solid surface could kill you -- but just look at them! An endless, tangled maze of giant thorns stretching away in all directions. Surreal, dreamlike, as if you stood in the dark heart of Mother Nature. With the aid of barrel cannons or your friend, Squawks the parrot, you could ascend to the very heights of this lethal Eden, emerging victorious from the thorny womb. And then...there was the music. Stickerbrush Symphony, people. One of the greatest pieces of video game music ever, and half the reason I love the DKC2 bramble levels so much. The music plus the visuals plus the challenge equals ambient gamer nirvana.


Black Velvetopia (Psychonauts, PS2/Xbox)
Welcome to Spain! That is, Spain as imagined by a hopeless romantic with artistic passion and a serious screw loose. Every environment from Psychonauts is wonderfully imagined and realized, but the true visual fireworks come when you leap into the mind of frustrated painter Edgar Teglee and find yourself navigating narrow, neon-lit streets where lovely señoras wave from the windows and giant playing cards form a tower to the sky. This level was absolutely fucking gorgeous and I want to hug Tim Schafer for exploring the concept of an environment that is literally a painting come to life. Not only is it lovely, it’s funny, too, poking fun at Spanish clichés as you battle goofy luchadors and receive advice from a series of talking dogs in sombreros. Do the dogs play poker? Of course they do! Perhaps weirdest of all is that fact that the whole level is an idealized hallucination born from a neurotic dude’s traumatic memories of high school. Brilliant. Psychological healing doesn’t get any more engrossing than this.


Castle Salazar (Resident Evil 4, Gamecube/PS2/Wii)
Welcome to Spain....again! Okay, so you’ve spent some hours roaming the desolate countryside and you’re getting rather sick of angry backwoods peasants. Suddenly, looming on the horizon is this massive stone edifice, a monument to classical European decadence. What follows is survival horror gold. Ruled by a squeaky-voiced midget in a Napoleon hat and crammed full of chanting, heavily tattooed religious cultists, Castle Salazar takes everything that’s ever been good about the Resident Evil games and throws it in a glorious blender. It’s fun to look at, it’s challenging and awesome to play through, it’s absolutely hilarious at times (giant walking statue, lol) and terrifying at other times (stalked by invisible man-insects, EEK). In other words, it personifies the campy, old-school horror feel of RE4. Yeah, there’s one shitty thing about the castle, and her name is Ashley Graham. Dodging zombie suits of armor as the helpless teenage twat...not fun. But that doesn’t make me love the opulent, tongue-in-cheek killfest of Castle Salazar any less.


The Forbidden Land (Shadow of the Colossus, PS2)
This is the one entry on my list that encompasses the entire game, and it totally deserves to be here for the sheer hours I’ve spent in it. Shadow of the Colossus takes place wholly in the Forbidden Land, a desolate peninsula long abandoned by humankind and accessible only by a miles-long bridge leading to a massive temple. You must explore this haunted place, its ruined cities and deep canyons, its forest glades, caves, deserts, and cliffs, to find and defeat the sixteen colossi. I’m always amazed by how serene the world is. No people, nothing to fight or kill other than the colossi, just the howl of the wind and the cry of distant birds. The graphics are so-so with a lot of unfortunate bloom effects, but that doesn’t really distract from the incredible ambiance. There are many locations in the Forbidden Land that have no real purpose beyond being a quiet little secret spot for you to find. It’s not for the impatient gamer, but for people like me who value atmosphere, it’s a video game world that’s a dreamy delight to get lost in.


Gruntilda’s Lair (Banjo-Kazooie, N64)
Ahhh, the overworld -- the hub from which every other area of the game is gradually unlocked. All the older 3D platform games had one, and my favorite is a labyrinthine cave complex owned by an evil witch with insecurity issues. Many overworlds simply exist for the sake of convenience, but Gruntilda’s Lair had real personality and was just as challenging to explore as the levels themselves. It was huge, for one thing, and filled with hidden nooks and crannies. To access a level, you had to find both the level entrance and the magic jigsaw puzzle that unlocked it, and there was plenty more to discover as well. I found it genuinely rewarding to uncover more and more of the place, and since Gruntilda the witch was so vain, her lair was filled with various images of herself, leering at you from all sides and never letting you forget who you were up against. In terms of creative world-building, this may have been Rare’s shining moment before they betrayed Nintendo and turned to shit. Sigh.


Kingdom of Zeal (Chrono Trigger, SNES)
It comes out of nowhere. Well into the time-hopping adventure of Chrono Trigger, you’ve already visited a medieval kingdom, a postapocalyptic wasteland, and a prehistoric paradise. You assume you’ve seen it all. Then the game suddenly plunks you down twelve thousand years in the past, during an ice age when the human race had divided into two societies: a highly advanced, arrogant group of scholars who lived on islands in the sky, and a ragged tribe of wretches clinging to life on the snowy planet’s surface. H.G. Wells would so approve! The contrast between icebound desolation and vibrant, golden sky-islands was visually striking and utilized the color palette of the SNES to the max. It was about as beautiful as video game graphics could get for its time, and the addition of this unexpected chapter to the complex Chrono Trigger plot made everything far more fascinating. What could be more tragic than a Utopian society that doesn’t know they’re doomed to be erased from history? Not much, which is why playing through Zeal made me realize that I was immersed in one of the all-time best games of a generation.


Prague (Sly 2: Band of Thieves, PS2)
Welcome to Prague! It’s snowing, the electric tram is running smoothly, and the mace-wielding wolves are out in full force! Oh, and you’re a turtle. I don’t know much about the real Prague, but the stylized cityscape of out-of-control Gothic architecture into which Sly 2 throws you is so cool that I’m tempted to visit just to tell them what they should be doing. The retro, cell-shaded visuals of the Sly Cooper franchise were never put to better use (in my opinion) than during this sequence, wherein Bentley the turtle must free his friends from a vile prison run by a giant spider. Yeah, playing as Bentley was a drag, but soon enough Sly escaped the prison and the turrets, gables, and spires of Prague became an acrobatic thief’s personal playground. It was drenched in atmosphere, it was challenging, and it poked fun at stereotypical Gothic imagery while also embracing it with love and devotion. Ever wanted to explore a game area for hours just for fun? I loved Prague way too much.


Spire (Myst 4: Revelation, PC/Mac)
How come the Myst franchise gets two entries? Because, that’s why. The fourth game was the last hurrah of pre-rendered gorgeousness (FUCK you again, Myst 5), and the world of Spire alone was worth the price. Imagine if you took a vast cathedral, broke it into chunks, and fused it with a crystalline asteroid orbiting a green sun. Austere, bleak, and beautiful, Spire was intended as a prison, but its sole inhabitant turned the entire world into one huge physics experiment, utilizing its gravity-defying properties to construct an escape plan that makes Prison Break look lame. This resulted in some of the most difficult puzzles in the entire Myst series, but their deviousness made it all the more satisfying when you unlocked Spire’s secrets and gained control of its power yourself. I can think of few video game worlds that I found more unique or visually striking; Spire truly warrants the adjective “phantasmagoric.” Look it up. And then look up Myst 4 (if it even still exists) and lose yourself in the elegant, greenlit abyss of Spire.


Toluca Lake Prison (Silent Hill 2, PS2)
Welcome to hell! If you were expecting fire and brimstone, you’re mistaken; this is a more subtle hell, one which creeps up on you, twisting your idea of reality until you make the leap into gibbering madness. And that’s exactly what Silent Hill 2 does to the poor player, thanks in large part to the Toluca Lake Prison, a dismal, rotting, underground gaol that defies all logic and plunges our hero, James Sunderland, straight into his darkest fears. Why is it so scary? Because the game forces you to journey deeper....and deeper....and deeper....down stairways and elevators and black pits....until you feel you must be in the bowels of the earth. Below the decayed prison is a sinister, half-flooded labyrinth where Pyramid Head lurks. Below that, even more foul holes and catacombs, not to mention murder. The whole world seems to be crumbling around you. Daylight and warmth are but a dream. You are fully submerged in a nightmare, unable to look away. It is the most emotionally draining video game experience I’ve ever had, and whenever I replay SH2, I dread the prison area. But I look forward to it as well, because behind the sheer horror is the type of immersion that very few games can achieve. If there is a hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s like Toluca Lake Prison: quiet, foul, joyless, and so, so lonely.


AND SOME RUNNERS UP!

Looking Glass Land (American McGee’s Alice, PC/Mac)
If only my list went to eleven, I could include a trippy dreamscape from this dark take on Alice in Wonderland. But then the Nostalgia Critic would come beat me up for stealing his gimmick. As it is, I did enjoy Looking Glass Land, with its monochromatic chess kingdoms and warped, mirror-filled insane asylum, quite a bit.
The Milkman Conspiracy (Psychonauts, PS2/Xbox)
Every level in Psychonauts rocks. But I couldn’t justify including two levels from one game, and the luminous beauty of Black Velvetopia won out over the twisted, hilarious, paranoid suburbia depicted in The Milkman Conspiracy. It’s a close second.
Various Areas from Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
I dug a number of the environments from FFXII. Say what you will about the MMORPG-style gameplay, but the folks at Square-Enix still know how to create vivid fantasy landscapes. I don’t think I could pick just one, is the problem. Plus, any area gets boring after you have to spend hours grinding in it -- one of the many reasons I despise MMORPGs. Ultimately, I must praise the FFXII world as a whole, rather than drawing attention to a single locale.
Shiver Star (Kirby 64, N64)
My favorite world in Kirby’s one adventure on the Nintendo 64 was icy-cool, had great music, and featured an evil shopping mall as a level. Few things are more amusing than Kirby in a shopping mall. But is “amusing” good enough? Again, maybe if my list were longer.
Riven (PC/Mac)
Riven is my favorite Myst game and one of my favorite video games ever. So why’d I give slots on this list to two other Myst games? Because Riven’s strengths were its complex and brilliant puzzles, its compelling story, and the way in which the game worked as a whole. Myst 3 and 4 are more episodic with weaker plots, but I don’t find the actual world of Riven to be as beautiful or unique as Amateria or Spire. Its true merit lies elsewhere.

Creepysearch

Boredom and Cracked.com have driven me to do this. In the name of shits and giggles, I’m going to enter ten ordinary, innocuous words or phrases into Google Image Search. Each time, I will scroll through the first few pages of results and pick the creepiest and/or most random picture I find. Because this is a review blog, I promise to include some pop culture in this amusing exercise. Also, although I search with all content filters turned off, I promise not to post anything gory, pornographic, or so disturbing that it’s not funny any more.

Let’s see what weirdness lurks on the internet...

Search #1: “Lemon Drop”

Why? Because lemon drops are among the most boring candy out there. I mean, seriously. They’re tasty and everything if you like lemon, but they’re also so predictable. Lemon drops are old lady candy. They’re what sits in a crystal dish on your grandma’s coffee table, slowly collecting dust. If you tried picking one up, you’d find them fused into a single wad. How could lemon drops ever be creepy?

The Result:



Well, that’s horrifying. It appears to be a 1951 comedy starring Bob Hope, but it looks more like how Psycho would look if Norman Bates and his mom were both played by Richard Simmons. And instead of murdering lovely women, he gives them enemas while old men look on in disapproval. His victims can be seen on the right, assuming the humiliating position.

I looked up the plot summary of this movie: Bob Hope plays a two-bit criminal named the Lemon Drop Kid who gets involved in wacky hijinks. There is apparently one scene where he dresses in drag as an old lady. One scene. Talk about blowing something out of proportion. Literally, in this case.

Search #2: “Postage Stamp”

Why? Because postage stamps surely can’t be scary, can they? I mean, yeah, any image can potentially appear on a stamp, but keep in mind that a letter bearing a stamp could be sent to anyone, including toddlers, the elderly, Mormons, etc. Stamps have to be G-rated. People would complain if they got birthday greetings from Aunt Mafalda and saw, say, Carrie White gaping bloodily up at them from the envelope. Nope, stamps are easy on the eyes...

The Result:



Leave it to the Russians.

Next time you have to mail thank-yous to your relatives for sending you argyle socks and books about knitting for Christmas, enact subtle revenge with this handy stamp. Won’t they chortle to see a maddened, psychotic pirate with a Salvador Dali mustache, clearly in the late stages of scurvy, about to murder two bound captives by the Pyramids of Giza, which are being engulfed in a tidal wave of blood! I found this on Wikipedia; apparently this pleasant gentleman is “bloodthirsty Barmalei,” a character created by Korney Chukovsky, who is one of the most famous Russian children’s poets. With Russian kids being raised on stuff like this, It’s no wonder they ride armored bears and shit.


Search #3: “Gullah Gullah Island”

Why? ’Cause I want to ruin my childhood. I vaguely remember watching this show on Nickelodeon as a kid. This was during the political correctness blitzkrieg of the 1990s when everything marketed for kids had to teach moral lessons and educate us about other cultures. (The Gullah are a subculture of Southern black Americans known for their rich African traditions, in case you weren’t aware, you ignorant WASP.) From what little I recall, the show was all about songs, dancing, and learning good manners.

The Result:



BEHIND YOU! Stop singing about the joy of sharing and LOOK BEHIND YOU!! IT’S GETTING CLOSER!!!

Wow, I’d totally forgotten that Gullah Gullah Island included a costumed mascot named Binyah Binyah Pollywog. If you see see Binyah Binyah, nightmares nightmares follow follow. Now, this little guy wasn’t as scary as some costumed kids’ characters, but still. You’d be enjoying a perfectly ordinary episode with a group of friendly Gullah folks, and suddenly BBP would come lurching into the frame, and you’d wonder what traditional African medicinal plants they’d been smoking. Also, the fact that BBP is so small (by costumed mascot standards) makes him creepier. You can’t trust little guys. They’re sneaky. I went with this picture because that poor lady seems unaware that the stunted yellow frog-thing is behind her, leering at her butt.


Search #4: “Flush”

Why? Well, “flush” can mean the flush of a toilet, or a flush in a card game, or to “flush out” from hiding. Lot of meanings. Plenty of potential for weirdness. Still, there are worse verbs I could have gone with.

The Result:



This is creepy because of its persistence alone. When I Googled “flush,” variations on this device appeared over...and over...and over. It is exactly what it looks like: a toilet that contains an aquarium. Because pooping is more fun when a bunch of guppies are ogling your backne and tramp stamp with their big, unforgiving guppy eyes. Fish voyeurism aside, the hygienic issues of this are appalling. I mean, presumably the aquarium part doesn’t connect to the toilet part, but all you have to do is accidentally hook up some tubes the wrong way, and suddenly your fish are discovering what fish hell is like (it’s like a game of Asteroids where you have no weapon and the asteroids are turds and you’re a fucking fish). Finally, this is the piscine equivalent of the house in Poltergeist that was built atop a graveyard. Sweet dreams, fish!


Search #5: “Dakota Fanning”

Why? Believe it or not, I’m not trying to dig up creepy pedophile photos. That would be too easy. I wanted to do a search on a celebrity name and Dakota Fanning popped into my head for some reason. Can a pretty blonde child actress creep me out? Maybe; after all, Shirley Temple was pretty eerie without even trying. Frighten me, Ms. Fanning!

The Result:

Having a wall of Dakota Fannings smiling at you gets a tad unsettling after a couple minutes, but most of the pics just show her looking happy, maybe wearing a pretty dress or posing on the red carpet. And then there’s this.



“She’s cute and talented...how should we do her photoshoot? I know, let’s make her look like post-fatal-overdose Marilyn Monroe and give her the creepiest old doll we can dig out of the Hammer Horror Studio’s prop warehouse! Also, mustaches!”

These pics tell a little story, don’t they? She starts out looking cute enough, despite that horrifying fucking doll. Then suddenly she gets weirdly quiet...just sitting there in her underwear, regarding you like she’s guessed how you’ll die someday. And then those doll’s eyes lock onto you like malevolent lasers and Dakota opens her mouth, and what comes out isn’t her voice any more.....

PS: Nice use of the Blade Runner font. This must be what Pris looked like before she grew up to be Daryl Hannah!


Search #6: “Play-Doh”

Why? Because, given enough time and enough Play-Doh, a roomful of monkeys could build a scale model of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Or something; I dunno. My point is that I’m interested to see if Play-Doh was ever used to build anything creepy. Google?

The Result:



Boom! Creepy-ass advertising! Have you noticed how many ads feature tiny objects flying out of people’s sliced-open heads? We’ve almost become desensitized...until they go and do it to pallid little Aryan children. Little Aryan children with the knowing faces of the elderly.

This might have worked if they hadn’t gone with the ever-popular Village of the Damned aesthetic. As it is, little kids may look at this and become convinced that one’s innards are a bunch of brightly colored rainbows and animals and cookies and whatnot, and if you’re not careful, it’ll all fly out through your skull and you’ll become a walking dough-faced corpse. Better stock up on innards by eating as much Play-Doh as you can, kids!


Search #7: “Goo Goo Gah Gah”

Why? I’m continuing on the theme of small children, and now going even smaller. This is archetypal baby talk, the accepted onomatopoeia for what those little womb-gnomes sound like before they learn how to talk like Mommy and Daddy. It’s really cute; therefore it can totally be twisted around into creepy land.

The Result:



Here we see the Care Bear Hive Queen, surrounded by her newborn offspring. If you look closely, you can spot the Hive Queen’s latest meal vanishing down her craw, its pleading eyes reflecting the horror of still being conscious while your lower body turns to sludge in the corrosive acid of an unholy gullet.

“That’s not creepy!” you will say. “That’s cute!” And you’re absolutely right, it’s cute...on the surface. But look deeper. Experience suggests that when you’re a baby, one toy is much like another. This baby would have been just as happy playing with a bunch of empty Kleenex boxes. It was the parents who decided that their baby had to have every single Care Bear plus a big bloated Care Bear costume with great white shark eyes. That says to me that this baby’s parents have issues. I’m sure they’re already looking for a back-alley tattooist who’ll imprint a little rainbow on a four-month-old’s abdomen.


Search #8: “Guinea Pig”

Why? ’Cause I want to include an animal, and guinea pigs are about the most hapless creature I can think of. We experiment on guinea pigs. In some places, we eat them. Even when kept as beloved pets, they just sit there quivering and pooping. Of all the pets I’ve tried having, they were the lamest and (accordingly) the least long-term. I cannot picture a scary guinea pig. Can you? Don’t answer that question.

The Result:



Oh, come on! Seriously, what the fuck. There is no reason ANY WOMAN would want to stick this in their hair. Is there? Don’t answer that question.

I mean, I suppose you could make something pretty out of guinea pig fur, but only if you leave off any recognizable limbs or gnashing mandibles. This is freaking Resident Evil shit. This is the moment when the boss splits in half and the second stage of the boss battle begins, the part where it can climb around on walls and spit acid. And you’re all out of green herbs.

PS: Judging by its expression and pose, do you think the poor little bastard was still alive when they turned half of it into a comb? DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION.


Search #9: “Montana”

Why? Because Montana’s one of those states I know jack-all about. Dude, I’m from New England; anyplace west of the Mississippi and east of LA barely registers. Montana is, um...big....and has hills and air and stuff. Right? Time to educate myself, I guess.

The Result:

Wow, this search netted more pics of Hannah Montana than of the actual state. That’s depressing. Pretty lame pickings overall: just that Cyrus whore and some lovely vistas. But I did find this picture of a creepy plant!



I guess it’s one of those bug-eating plants, but with its dense tangle of bloodstained gooey tendrils, it could totally be an H.P. Lovecraft monstrosity at which you go insane just by looking. For full effect, imagine a screaming little man in a pith helmet at the bottom of the image. Now I can go to Montana and ask, “So, where do I find the flesh-melting crimson madnessflowers?”


Search #10: “Shrivel Egg Pie”

Why? Because it’s three random words that don’t make much sense when combined. I want to see if Google can give me anything at all from these three words in that particular order. Maybe shrivel egg pie is a delicacy in some parts of the world! I can’t wait to find out!

The Result:



Dear viewer, I proudly present a cabbage carved to resemble a skull. Why? I don’t have a fucking clue, and it’s wonderful. This comes from a blog apparently devoted to things shaped like skulls (Link). Not only that, but you can view multiple images of this horror as it slowly wilts and decomposes, its gaping eyeholes peering deeper and deeper into the part of your soul where the dark putrid secrets lie waiting. Fear the gaze. And give thanks for the internet, a place where I can type the words “shrivel egg pie” into a search engine and discover a blog for people who love surrounding themselves with subliminal reminders of their mortality. And nightmare fuel.

Speaking of which, it’s late and I should get to bed. And not sleep, ever. Thanks, Creepysearch!

The Fall

Tarsem Singh’s The Fall is a movie made by an ego, the ego of a man who knows exactly what movie he wants to make, is willing to pay for it out of his own pocket, and isn’t all that concerned with what people think of it. It is absolutely and completely a vanity project. You may hear it billed as a “period piece” or a “fantasy film” but it doesn’t really have a genre beyond...well, maybe “Tarsem film” should count as a genre. There certainly aren’t any films quite like the few made by Tarsem Singh, for better or for worse. If you can set aside your preconceptions of what a film should be about, if you can ignore everything that conventional films have infused in your mind, perhaps you can enjoy The Fall, or at least appreciate its artistry. For me, well, it was a rare film that I was happy to be irritated by.

If you know Tarsem Singh, it’s likely from Nike and Coke ads or music videos (he made the vid for “Losing My Religion”). Otherwise, perhaps you’ve seen 2000’s The Cell, a thriller in which Jennifer Lopez ventured into the brain of a serial killer. The Cell was trashed by most critics, partly because the plot blatantly copies Silence of the Lambs and partly because there’s a list somewhere of actors who must be ridiculed, and Jennifer Lopez is on it. But the backlash had a backlash; The Cell has plenty of fans (myself included) who appreciate it for its amazing special effects, which beautifully evoke the dreamlike realm inside a mind. It teased us with sumptuous images, and now we have The Fall, which takes the dream to a new, deeper level (cue the musical chord from Inception: BWWWWAAMMMMPPH.) This is a film that combines fable and myth, tall tales and silent filmmaking and the context of World War I; it’s a story about stories and those who make them. Anyone can tell a story, with words or their voice or just their imagination. The Fall is about that, and, just as importantly, about the reasons why we tell stories in the first place.

There are two storytellers portrayed in the film. One, played by Lee Pace, is a silent movie stuntman named Roy. The other, played by Catinca Untaru, is a six-year-old Romanian immigrant named Alexandria. Both are in a hospital in 1920s Los Angeles. Both were injured by falling, for very different reasons. Alexandria is friendly, chipper, and curious, wandering the hospital with her arm in an awkward cast. Roy has a charm and easygoing nature that masks deep and bitter wounds; he wants to kill himself with a drug overdose, and enlists the little girl as an unwitting accomplice. To ensure her cooperation, be begins to tell her a story -- a story about a deadly bandit (played significantly by Pace again), an Indian, an escaped slave, an Italian explosives expert, an aboriginal mystic, and Charles Darwin, all of whom unite to conquer an vile ruler named Governor Odious. There’s also a princess in distress who looks an awful lot like Roy’s unfaithful girlfriend. Roy weaves the story from threads of his own bitterness, but Alexandria is not the type to get bogged down by angst, and so the story, as we see it, also receives input from her own, innocent mind. Roy in his anger doesn’t stand a chance against cute little Alexandria and her clear vision.



As Roy talespins and both of them envision, we see the heroes of the tale pass through amazing, surreal landscapes, buildings, and dream-spaces. During filming, Tarsem took his production all over the world, looking for real locations that invoke the logic of the subconscious. He also claims that this film was made with no computer-assisted special effects at all. Instead, he turns back time and uses the classic special effects of the early days of cinema, and by God, they still work. The Fall is best when it’s simply lingering on its images. We see the wild-eyed mystic crawl from a burning tree, and later, a map magically appears on his body like a tattoo. We watch as the adventurers descend into a barren, rocky crevasse that unfolds like a magic puzzlebox into a lush, fertile Eden. There is an incredible shot in which a close-up of a man’s face dissolves into an identical landscape in which distant figures and mountains recreate his features. When a corpse is wrapped in a vast hanging shroud, its blood slowly and impossibly stains the entire cloth. These sequences move with a sedate pace, accompanied by echoing orchestral music. Even the action scenes crawl along, taking their sweet time as the heroes do battle with Odious’s guards, whose hideous black armor is inspired by a leather-clad X-ray technician glimpsed by Alexandria in the hospital. This is the work of someone who loves the very act of filmmaking and is not content to compromise his visions as per the demands of some Hollywood studio that can’t see beyond box office gross.

In other words, this is not an easy film to watch and it’s a perfectly easy film to hate. I’m not so pretentious that I’m going to arrogantly dismiss criticism of The Fall for being “lowbrow” or missing the point. The only real point is that Tarsem made a movie that will appeal to a small audience and will likely turn off the majority of the moviegoing public. And that’s okay. I freely admit that I got annoyed by the film’s molasses-like pacing and arch tone after awhile. The storytelling sequences ultimately grow dreary and repetitive. What remains alive is the relationship between the two storytellers and the vitality of their characters. Roy doesn’t think he wants to live, but his self-pity can’t hide his goodness, and Lee Pace plays him as an easily likable man who we’re eager to slap some sense into. Little Catinca Untaru doesn’t “act” in the traditional sense but plays exactly what she is in real life: a smart, no-nonsense little girl who doesn’t know much English but is ready to learn. It’s charming and utterly believable when she gets tangled up in her own sentences; I’ll take her heavily-accented mumbling over any blue-eyed, pearly-toothed child star delivering snappy dialogue like a pro. Both of them convince us that they’re real people, which proves the perfect antidote to the heavily stylized majesty of Roy’s story. By the end, both of them are engaged in a battle of imagination and will, and we pray that the story will end the way Alexandria wants it to, because someone needs to pull Roy out of his funk, dammit!



So, there we have it. The Fall is a vain movie, a highbrow movie, often a tiresome movie. But Tarsem wanted to make it his own way, and he did. It refuses to compromise or pander, it avoids cliché, and the ending sidesteps “they lived happily ever after” in favor of, simply... “they lived.” If you can make it to the end, the closing scenes are well worth it, bringing the movie’s themes together beautifully. Even if you can’t bear the thought of seeing The Fall more than once, do see it that once, just so you can see the work of a true maker of movies. Not a director, a maker of movies. Like Terence Malick or Quentin Tarantino or Stanley Kubrick, Tarsem Singh wants you to check your expectations at the ticket booth and just sit there and look. Look at what it’s possible to put on film. Look at how a story can be told to those for whom stories still matter.

Favorite Games of 2010

2010 was the “Indie Year” for me. A few rather crucial things happened for me in 2010: I got a fancy new computer, my rural home finally got internet access beyond fucking dial-up, and (perhaps most crucial to this list) Steam became Mac-compatible. Yeah, I’m a Mac user, and I enjoy the type of games you’d expect a Mac user to enjoy; namely, indie arthouse games. In fact, none of the games on this list are console-exclusive. Deal with it. What’s important to me is that new avenues of gaming have opened up, and I couldn’t be happier. Sooooo, here are my favorite games of the year!

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP GAMES OF 2010!


Braid (PC/Mac/Xbox/PS3)
I know I’m a little late jumping on the Braid bandwagon, but better late than never! God, this game is good. Pretentious, but good. If you can put up with the somewhat high-minded aesthetic and overly open-ended story, you get an incredible puzzle-platformer, devious and evil in its very simplicity. This is a game that takes the skeleton, the basic architecture, of platforming and subverts it in one innovative way after another, first by giving you the power to rewind your own death, then by handing you a series of time-manipulation powers that turn the puzzles into intricate little ballets of patience and precision. What’s so wonderfully sadistic about Braid is that most of the puzzles are quite easy to complete; it’s figuring the damned things out that keeps you up all night. Playing Braid makes you feel smarter. Factor in the gorgeous, moving-watercolor graphics, the haunting music, and the hilarious/brilliant shout-outs to genre classics (is that...Donkey Kong?!), and you have a game that celebrates the old while ushering in the new. To translate that to non-pretentious-artfag-speak, OMG THIS GAME FUCKIN ROCKS DUDE.


The Dig (PC/Mac)
Speaking of old-school gaming, I have a bit of a boner for point-and-click adventure games, some of which can be found on Steam. I was blown over backwards by The Dig, a 1995 sci-fi extravaganza from LucasArts, back when LucasArts was all about making fun games and less about kneeling to suck George Lucas’s pruney pink lightsaber. I love pre-rendered environments and this game delivers an orgasmic eyeful when three human astronauts are mysteriously transported to a bizarre, dreamlike alien world covered in ornate crystal structures, trippy geometry, and marvelous alien technology that naturally still works. The world portrayed in The Dig is genuinely beautiful, and the designers put real effort into envisioning an alien environment, and aliens, that aren’t like anything you’ve seen before. Few games can capture the wonder of simple exploration, but this is one of them. Now, it’s far from perfect -- the crude animated cutscenes are pretty pitiful and it does occasionally enter the dreaded “madly-click-on-everything-until-something-works” territory. But if you’re playing it in the first place, you can deal with the shittier aspects of point-and-click gaming and simply bask in the glory of its atmosphere.


Ice Breaker (Free Online)
I hate this damn game. I hate it because I love it and it’s the most addictive thing I played all year. I may have tried it once or twice in the past, but this was the year I actually paid serious attention, and before I knew it, I was up all night saving those damn little vikings. If you don’t know, this is a simple physics puzzler, available for free online, in which you have to rescue vikings by making strategic cuts in the ice that imprisons them. Now, all physics puzzlers are pure evil, and this one takes addictive, hair-tearing mania to new heights. In addition to breaking ice, you have to cut ropes, kill trolls, manipulate birds and ramps and boulders, deflate fat ladies (don’t ask), and generally try everything before you find the solution, and the game’s physics are so finicky that even the “correct” method may take multiple attempts before it works right. It’s torture, and yet you can’t....fucking....stop. Because, damn and fuck it all to hell, it is so much fun to rescue those little vikings with their cute little beards. You hold your breath and bite your nails, hoping they’ll land in their little boat, and when they do......bliss. Until the next puzzle, and the next, and the next. Ice Breaker is the gaming equivalent of crack. Beware.


Machinarium (PC/Mac)
Point-and-click odyssey number two! This one is not retro, but brand spanking new, and also amazing. Machinarium is set in a world inhabited entirely by robots, a quirky and vivid metropolis of metal, oil, and rust whose residents communicate their problems in adorable little thought bubbles. It is here that our charismatic robot protagonist must save his girlfriend and foil a terrorist plot by -- what else? -- exploring, interacting with the environment, and picking up random items, each of which has Exactly One Use. So, standard adventure game, but presented in such an innovative and lovable way! Again, the art design and music make the game quite gorgeous, and the puzzles are usually pretty brilliant in how they fit together. There’s a handy hint system, but (in a stroke of genius) you must play an annoying little arcade game to access it. Oh, yeah, Machinarium makes you work your brainbox no matter what, and you learn to pay close attention to detail -- which is good, because this strange, monochromatic junkyard universe never loses its fascination or appeal. I am SO ready for whatever the makers, Amanita Design, create next.


Plants vs. Zombies (PC/Mac/Xbox)
And thus we come to Plants vs. Zombies, which I began playing at the start of 2010 and have been playing on and off ever since. Tower defense games have never interested me that much, but this one is an all-time winner on every front. The zombie hordes are coming and you must defend your cozy little suburban home by choosing from a massive collection of flora, each of which helps defeat the undead in its own way. You’ve got your offensive plants (peashooters, spore-spewing mushrooms, cabbagepults...), your defensive plants (wall-nuts, spikeweed, potato mines...), your explosive plants (cherry bombs, chili peppers...) and so forth. It’s a race against time, and you’d best be using your brains because they’re what’s on the zombie menu. This game is colorful, cartoony, cheerful, and utterly hilarious at every turn, especially when the zombie dolphins pop up and the watermelons start flying thick and fast. Not only is the campaign mode great, but you gradually unlock a wealth of mini-games, puzzles, easter eggs, and a “zen garden” where you can grow and raise your own plants, stress-free. Plants vs. Zombies has so much replay value that you basically get your money back for buying it, and it is just wonderful....so, so wonderful. I’m sick of the zombie fad, but I’ll never be sick of zombies as long as I can drop giant squash on them.

Lost: The New Man in Charge

The New Man in Charge

Well, hallelujah and slap me sideways. It must be a good day if I get to recap and review Lost one more time! I just got the DVD of Season Six, and it includes a nice little tidbit: a short film entitled “The New Man in Charge” that acts as a sort of coda to the show. It’s only about twelve minutes long, but they’re pretty awesome minutes. No, it’s not terribly helpful in terms of answering any of the questions that the show left us with. But for a Lost fanboy, it’s one more morsel to happily devour and digest.

“New Man” was apparently cobbled together from scenes that were intended to be in the finale, but dropped because they took up too much time and didn’t fit into the narrative flow of things. It takes place off the Island and focuses on Ben, running errands for the titular new man in charge, who is, of course, Hurley. Ben’s first stop is a massive warehouse in Guam where two rubes -- a somewhat twiggy one and a somewhat hairy one -- have been dutifully loading Dharma-brand food onto pallets for twenty years, without knowing or caring where it goes. Helloooooo, mythology! Now, of all the unsolved mysteries in this show, I was perhaps most annoyed by the Season Two pallet drop, which was never mentioned again after it happened. Where’d that huge mound of people chow come from? If it was dropped from an aircraft, how come nobody saw or heard said craft? Well, now we know part of where it came from, and I guess that’ll have to do. We still don’t know HOW the pallet drops occur, but I’m guessing that zapping Dharma grub to the Island is similar to zapping people and polar bears into the Tunisian desert. Mysterious metaphysical forces and all that. Oh, those naughty metaphysical forces!

So, Ben arrived and promptly sacked the bewildered Dharma workers, who were clearly pretty dim. It takes a distinct lack of brain power to work a drudge of a job for twenty freakin’ years, apparently never leaving the warehouse, and not wonder why. But Dharma clearly loves the dimwits and their lack of questions. I loved that Ben is still as shifty and cryptic as ever, even now that he’s a good guy. As is his wont, he dangled vague information like carrots for the poor pallet-pushers to grab at, then showed them the Hydra Station orientation video. Or should I say, showed us the video, as it was clearly paying lip service to the fans. Sadly, the video told us little we didn’t already know. Yes, they were tinkering with the genes of live polar bears. Now can you please stop asking about them??!! Nice touches, though. I liked Pierre Chang’s reference to using aliases, and loved the cameo from the infamous Hurley Bird, hidden inside a cage (and revealed by Chang to be some kind of hybrid species. Nerdgasm!). Also, it was intriguing to learn that Room 23 with its trippy video was used on captive Others whose memories were then wiped. Wow, good thing Alpert and the Widmore siblings never found out about that, or the Purge would’ve happened waaaaaayyyyyyy sooner.


By the way, hats off to actor François Chau for playing Pierre Chang with such wit and gusto over the course of the show! Yeah, I know, the character was never all that complex, but Chau gave such a wonderfully deadpan, tongue-in-cheek performance that made all the orientation vids as entertaining as they were mysterious. Bravo!

So, with that loose end more or less tied up, Ben moved on to the good old Santa Rosa clinic, there to meet with another legendary Lost entity. Let’s all say it together, one more time:

WAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLTTTTTT!!!!

I totally called it in advance, and was so damn happy to see I was right. Poor haunted, psychic Walt, unable to be happy or normal in a post-Island life. His appearance underlined the strange power the Island has over the people it deems important. Walt was suspicious of Ben, of course (it’s hard to be buddies with sketchy weasel-men who do experiments on you in rusty old labs), but so deep was his longing that he accepted Ben’s invitation. Now, we kinda have to suspend disbelief here. How likely is it that a random man can walk into a mental health clinic and be admitted to see an underage patient he’s not related to, and then just up and LEAVE with him? I mean, doesn’t Walt have a legal guardian? Well, maybe Hurley did some Island magic from the back of Ben’s van, where he was waiting to welcome Walt...and offer him a job. Hell, yeah! It’s so appropriate that Walt becomes part of the New Island Order. What could his job title be? Astral Projection Coordinator? Bird Control Officer? Official Dead Person Liaison? Whatever he does, it will be where he belongs.


I loved how Hurley was dressed all in black. Rather different from Jacob, no? Lest we forget, Jacob’s ill-fated brother was always meant to be in charge. If this little epilogue told us anything, it was that things are balanced now, on track. Not perfect, but then, the world ain’t. And neither is Lost. But it’s still damn good, and it’s still damn wonderful to see one last hurrah from these characters. Personally, I feel quite confident knowing that the new man in charge is so laid-back about things, and that he has such interesting sidekicks!

Namaste.

Top 10 Movie Monsters

This particular list doesn’t need much of an introduction, except to say that I love monsters. If I had TV, I’d probably spend way too much time watching certain movies on the Sci-Fi (uh, sorry...SyFy) channel, in which somebody like Casper van Dien goes mano a mano with giant crayfish. I like the classic, plus-size critters. I like werewolves and mummies and demons and such, though I’m kinda sick of vampires and zombies. I’m not sure why these Things That Go Bump in the Night hold such appeal, but monsters have been prowling through the human imagination since we wore mammoth-fur undies, and they’re fun. Especially when conjured up by a special effects crew. Here are my favorite beasties ever to grace the big screen!

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN FAVORITE MOVIE MONSTERS
(Okay, one’s a TV monster. So sue me.)


The Beast of Gévaudan (Brotherhood of the Wolf)
Some of the best monsters are based on half-truth and local legend. Such is the case with the Beast of Gévaudan, the bizarre and tragic predator at the heart of one of my favorite films, Brotherhood of the Wolf. Based on a real-life series of killings that took place in rural France during the 17th century, this monster is one of the most unique creatures I’ve ever seen on film, which earns it tons of points. For much of the movie, it remains unseen, suggested. When we do see it, it elicits a “Whoa!” A hulking quadruped bound in leather and daggers, razor-sharp and vicious and enraged....yet strangely pitiable. This monster was made by man, you see, and serves as a hapless tool for human evil. There’s more to the Beast’s story that I won’t give away (Brotherhood of the Wolf is an absolutely nutso movie, bless its heart), but its death scene is really good. Kind of beautiful, really, with a neat revelation thrown in. Watch it and see! There’s nothing else quite like the Beast of Gévaudan out there.


Demon Boars (Princess Mononoke)
I dunno if these monsters have some basis in Japanese legend or if they sprang purely from the boundless imagination of Hayao Miyazaki, but they’re scary as hell and they rock. Using the power of classic animation, Miyazaki creates a truly nightmarish foe for the besieged humans in Princess Mononoke: giant boars, once noble gods of the forest, now warped and infected. Their flesh transforms into a new form of unholy life, a skin of writhing tendrils than can attack, infect, and absorb, leaving blight in its wake. Cursing all they touch, the demon boars are the opposite of growth and nature, so vile and unnatural that the feuding humans must put aside their differences to defeat this distilled embodiment of evil. These monsters aren’t only scary and unique, but so much is invested in their defeat. Godzilla must be toppled to save Tokyo, but if the demon boars are allowed to run wild, the balance of nature itself will be thrown off kilter, and the consequences could be too devastating to imagine. The scariest monsters are good things turned foul.


Elemental (Hellboy II: The Golden Army)
The Hellboy movies are bursting with cool monsters; Guillermo del Toro has a major fetish for them, and we love him for it. I think my favorite is the Elemental, a pissed-off forest deity that sprouts from a magic bean inside a clockwork egg (isn’t that freaking cool?!) to wreak havoc on the city streets in the faerie-centric second film. This beastie is like the world’s most terrifying chia pet, covered in leaves and tendrils with a head that opens like a flower; it’s beautiful and terrible, and gives Hellboy ample opportunities to be a badass while battling it. Ah, but behind the smackdown is sadness, for the Elemental is the last of its kind, and its extinction is inevitable in the midst of the cold, harsh urban hellscape. Here’s another really poignant monster who gets a really good death scene, which I won’t spoil, except to say that it’s lovely and poetic. Yes, monsters can sometimes be poetic, and they’re sad more often than you’d think. The Elemental fits perfectly in with the themes of alienation and loneliness that form the backbone of the Hellboy adventures, while still being one awesome, car-flinging, concrete-crushing behemoth.


The Han River Monster (The Host)
How does a monster flick get rave reviews from highbrow critics? By redefining monster-hood! The slithery, acrobatic critter that somersaults through this Korean horror/comedy like a hellish Cirque du Soleil performer is everything you don’t except a movie monster to be, and boy is it refreshing! Movie monsters are huge; this one is no bigger than a rhino. Movie monsters lurk in the shadows; this one prances about in broad daylight, charging through crowds of screaming picnickers like it’s having the time of its froggy life. And, in a delightfully pointed twist, this (relatively) pint-sized pest throws Korea into a panic and leads to lockdowns, quarantines, paranoia, and human rights violations that make the humans into the real monsters. The Han River Monster is quite the metaphor for the straw that breaks society’s back, and a sobering sign of our times. But it’s also gross, freaky, and funny. Funnier than you’d think, especially when it’s treating a bridge like its own personal Gold’s Gym. Rarely has toxic waste produced a more interesting specimen.


Judas Breed (Mimic)
Entry number two from Guillermo del Toro, because no monster list is complete without giant bugs. And these are no ordinary giant bug. The Judas Breed is a hybrid insect intended to infiltrate and kill cockroach populations, in order to stop a roach-spread epidemic. Created with good intentions, the “sterile” bugs evolve like crazy, growing to human size and...human shape. We become their prey and they learn to mimic us by folding their wings and standing on their asses, and if that sounds goofy, it’s actually fucking horrifying. That tall, shadowy “person” in the subway tunnel? It’s a bug, and it’s about to eat your face. When an autistic kid starts talking to the bugs by mimicking their own clicking sounds, it’s like a psychotic symbiosis that blurs the line between man and monster. Meanwhile, the bugs are spreading out, their population growing. Soon we really will be prey. Out of all the cautionary parables about playing God, this one makes my skin crawl more than most. Because we have met the enemy and he is us...just with wings, mandibles, and extra limbs.


Mbwun (The Relic)
This one’s kinda goofy, but belongs on this list for the sheer nostalgia factor. The Relic was the first true, bloody, rip-roaring monster flick I saw, at the tender age of thirteen (my parents were a tad film-prudish). What could be better to an adolescent than watching a big, hulking reptile/bear/kangaroo/beetle rip people’s heads off to feast on their brains? NOTHING. I couldn’t care less about the bad ’90s special effects or the silly premise that the thing was some sort of hyper-evolving mutant brought about by a type of fungus, or a South American curse, or something. What mattered was that hapless extras were running around the Chicago Museum of Natural History like corn dogs with legs, tasty SWAT team guys were rappelling through the skylights, and the monster was having a gory ball. Mbwun (also known as Kothoga) wins bonus points for originally hailing from a cool horror/thriller novel (Relic, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child), and being done great justice in the cinematic version for once! I guess you could say this monster ate my brain too, ’cause I’ve been into film monsters ever since.


Scottish Werewolves (Dog Soldiers)
I can’t quite overstate how much I love werewolves. I’d even consider watching Twilight just for the werewolf scenes. Sadly, movie werewolves tend to be generic hairy lumps that look like neither wolves nor men. Not so in Dog Soldiers! Leave it to an indie Euro flick with a teeny-weeny budget to produce the gnarliest, most badass furry lycanthropes I’ve seen onscreen. These werewolves are literally just muscular guys with fancy wolf masks on, but damn if they don’t look like the real deal, and when they besiege a squad of equally macho soldiers deep within the Scottish woodland, all kinds of red plasma and beastly hijinks go down. It’s not just that they look legit, it’s that they’re actually scary and intense as they prowl through the trees and break down doors. These critters aren’t mindless animals; they’re people under an unspeakable curse who will do anything to satisfy their bloodlust. That makes them formidable foes indeed. Also, kinda sexy. But don’t tell them I said that, because werewolf rape isn’t as fun as the furries want you to believe.


Smoke Monster (Lost)
So, it’s bad enough being stranded on a desert island with a lot of whiny, dysfunctional hotties. There’s also something large and unseen crashing through the trees, making sounds like a New York taxicab, and occasionally turning some hapless victim into person jerky. It looks like a black, sentient mass of smoke, lives in old Egyptian temples, and can peer into your soul to determine if you are a good person. Oh, Lost, why do I love you so much? Maybe because you gave us (among many other things) a very distinct and intriguing monster with which to torment your whiny hotties. For most of the show’s run, the Smoke Monster remained a thing of mystery, a shape-shifting antagonist that could be onscreen at any time, when you least expected it. Is that really your dead brother, or is Smokey about to bash you to death? Who can say? Late in the series, the Monster got an identity and backstory, but everyone liked it better when it was that faceless, formless nightmare beyond the torchlight, implacable and inscrutable. The Unknown we all fear. Jaws would be proud.


The Thing
I’m usually more scared by ghosts and psycho killers than monsters, but The Thing terrified the everlasting fuck out of me and kept me up at night. It’s not that the premise is plausible -- shape-shifting alien lifeform in an Antarctic base, riiiight -- it’s that John Carpenter uses every trick of suspense and anticipation to milk his monster for all it’s worth. Because the Thing can be anyone, the characters and the viewers are sent into a maelstrom of paranoia, waiting for the next gooey, icky, fucked-up manifestation. The severed head with legs. The flesh like melting wax. And the dog...Jesus, that fucking dog! The big, quiet husky that the alien initially impersonates is seriously the scariest dog I’ve ever seen, especially when accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s flesh-crawling double bass chord on the soundtrack. When the dog turns into a snarling, greasy mound of meat and starts murdering the other dogs with barbed-wire tentacles, I may have whimpered and clutched someone. Maybe. The Thing is everything scary, wrong, and unnatural rolled into one horribly adaptable package, and the terror continues up to the very end, when the last two survivors ponder if they’re both still human -- and whether freezing to death might be the preferable option. The Thing put me through the wringer and invaded my fucking dreams. THAT is what I call a horror movie monster.


Xenomorphs (Alien series)
You may have noticed that my favorite monsters tend to be liminal in nature, things that change shape or have no obvious shape at all. So is it really a surprise that I love the ultimate adaptable movie monster, the Xenomorph? These predatory extraterrestrials are so hardcore that geekdom and moviedom alike can’t get enough of them. Are they reptilian? Insectoid? Or just a deadly mass of teeth, acid, and muscle driven by pure hunger? You decide. But over the course of six films, not to mention countless comics, video games, and trashy novels, they have racked up an unbeatable human body count and cemented their place on the altar of monstrosity. Whether it’s one alien duking it out with an undie-clad Sigourney Weaver, a hive of aliens chewing up space marines, or an army of aliens going tooth-to-mandible with the equally hardcore Predators, you just know that the shit is going to hit the fan. Lest we forget, the Xenomorphs procreate by literally raping your face. And then popping out of your ribcage like a hideous second phallus. Maybe they’re a twisted sexual metaphor, maybe not, but what matters is that Xenomorphs freak us out, gross us out, and make us squirm in the best of ways. And yet....when it’s them vs. dumb humans with guns, I root for the aliens! Everyone does! A good movie monster knows how to entertain, and these greasy, gristly guys just love the spotlight. And we love them for it. Hats off to the king...or should I say, the Queen.

The Box

So, a husband and wife are given a box by a stranger. On the box is a button. They are told that if they press the button, they will receive a large sum of money, and someone they don’t know will die. After much skepticism, debate, and nervous pontification, they agree not to push the button.....but the next day, the wife pushes it anyway. Moments later, she receives a call informing her that her husband has died in a tragic workplace accident and she is being offered a widow’s comp identical to the amount promised by the stranger. Anguished, she calls him up and accuses him of lying. He tells her: “How well did you really know your husband?”

It’s like a weird joke with a ghoulish punchline, and it’s the plot of Richard Matheson’s short story, “Button, Button.” Good story. But I’m here to talk about The Box, Richard Kelly’s film adaptation of said story, which starts out the same but then takes a gleeful sideways serve into utter weirdness. Lest we forget, Richard Kelly made Donnie Darko, a film in which a giant demon bunny tells Jake Gyllenhaal to travel back in time and cause his own death, or something like that; a film that sits upon its own golden throne in Dante’s ninth sphere of Cult Movie Paradise. Richard Kelly makes weird, open-ended movies that force you to think, which means they have unforgiving niche appeal. I really liked Donnie Darko and I really like The Box, which got generally bad reviews and was scoffed at for being utterly preposterous. Well, of course it sodding is, people. But at the risk of sounding like a film-student douchebag (I’m not, by the way; my BA is in anthropology), I think y’all are just scared of a film you can’t explain.

Make that a film with multiple explanations and some sobering insights into human nature. The Box heavily references Sartre, who famously wrote that Hell is other people. By golly, he may have been on to something! The victimized couple are played by Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, two very attractive actors who are really good at playing nice. Boy, are they nice. You want to be their neighbors and get invited over for Thanksgiving. And since the film is set in the 1970s, our protagonists come equipped with awesome retro wardrobes, hair, and interior decorating that renders them sitcom-perfect -- except for her mutilated foot, and the fact that he’s a NASA employee who designed the camera for the Viking spacecraft. How intriguing. Into this sort-of-pristine household comes Arlington Steward, a charming and sinister man with grotesque burn scars, played by Frank Langella, who must be engaged in some sort of “charming and sinister” contest with Ben Kingsley. Steward gives the nice couple a box with a button, tells them that if they push it, they’ll get money and someone dies and blah blah. They debate, they’re skeptical, then the wife pushes the button, blah blah mcblah. Then they start getting stalked by zombie-people and uncover elements of a vast conspiracy involving NASA and the NSA and mind control and floating boxes made of water and BBBWWWWWUUUHHH?

I’d better not get into the plot because it contains many trippy surprises and is impossible to briefly summarize anyway. It has a great deal of ambiguity, which may explain the movie’s poor reception. When you sit down to watch a mind-bending thriller, the last thing you want is to be told, “Eh, figure it out for yourself.” The thing is, The Box doesn’t really withhold information. It gives us what we need to know. It just refuses to draw definite conclusions. There are two possible explanations for all the weird shit that goes down. The movie characters, being people of science and rationality, automatically go with the option that makes the most sense to them. But I wonder. Yes, it’s Faith vs. Reason, that ancient debate that fuels so many sci-fi plots these days, including Lost and the Matrix movies, both of which arguably fell victim to the “Figure it out for yourself” virus I mentioned. I was also reminded of The Taking, a sci-fi/horror/thriller novel by Dean Koontz (don’t laugh; he doesn’t always suck), which seems to be about an alien invasion but may actually be about....well, call it the alternative to an alien invasion. I am carefully circling the revelations that The Box has in store, because anyone who hasn’t seen the movie should have the chance to draw their own conclusions. It’s...more fulfilling that way.

So, it’s a well-made movie that, I feel, rises above its preposterousness. But besides that, I’m fascinated by the moral dilemma presented to the viewer, the one Matheson originally gave us in his story. I mean, what would you do if you could push a button and kill a stranger for money? How badly do you need that money? What exactly defines a “stranger”? If you never know who you just killed, how can you know whether to feel guilty, satisfied, paranoid, or anything? The original story implies that we build walls around ourselves, effectively rendering us a stranger to all, including perhaps ourselves. The movie isn’t quite that pessimistic, but it does carry a message about the responsibilites that come with free will. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, especially when talking about the human race as a whole. But the “human race” is a faceless, generic entity to most people. Even good human beings have an inherent selfishness, a personal bubble to which they assign greater importance than all those strangers out there. It takes real courage to think and act.....outside the box.

You’d push that button, wouldn’t you. I think I would.

I almost wish that Kelly’s Box was more about the ethical struggle and less about sci-fi conspiracies and trippy special effects. Not that I didn’t enjoy the conspiracies and special effects; I totally dig that kind of stuff. But if the movie had devoted more time to the unspoken ramifications, the ethical paradox of the box and its deadly promise, then maybe it would have gotten better reviews, at the very least. It’s not quite ballsy enough to really explore its own themes. But, hey, just touching upon such profound brouhaha is better than nothing. I think if just one viewer is inspired to be a better person by the tale of the box, then that proves this movie has more merit than people seem willing to give it.

Or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. I do that a lot. What I’m saying is, you should watch this movie. Watch it for the sci-fi, watch it for the groovy ’70s fashions, watch it for James Marsden’s gorgeous cheekbones, watch it because you’re a Hot Topic Goth who masturbates to Donnie Darko every Wednesday night. Watch it for whatever reason you see fit. And then, even if you hated the movie....just think about it a little. Just think about it.