Top 10 Childhood Terrors

Let this blog post serve as a grave marker. An epitaph. To what might have been. To the real horror, the horror of seeing something promising disappear under a mountain of bullshit. I refer, of course, to Silent Hills, about which I wrote many, many words (I was pretty much drooling on the keyboard) before it was unceremoniously canceled due to some falling out or other. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they dig up Silent Hill again...ever.

Meanwhile, to prove how amusingly subjective fear can be, here’s a list of things that scared the ever-loving piss out of me when I was a kid. You look back on this stuff and chuckle. Or, in some cases, nod and say, “Yeah, I was right to be scared, that shit’s still pretty freaky.”

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN CHILDHOOD TERRORS

All Dogs Go to Heaven
Case in point. Why the fuck is this even considered a children’s movie? Re-watching it for the first time in aaaaages, I came to suspect that child therapists have entire file cabinets devoted to Don Bluth. Look, a cute doggie who is also an alcoholic creep and who gets MURDERED ten minutes in. Who, at one point, goes to Hell, where he’s terrorized by fire, skeletons, and demons. Meanwhile, the villain, Carface, is truly the Boogeyman in bulldog form, what with his child kidnapping, murder, arson, cigars, and tying the hero to an anchor so he can slowly drown. An adorable little girl suffers PTSD-worthy levels of peril, and the fun-loving sidekick is savagely beaten by thugs, and...weirdly enough, the one part of the movie I could not watch as a kid was the campy singing alligator bit. I know, right? I hated that gator! He ate people! Fast-forward! But, really, the entirety of this film is one long Bosch painting. Which actually makes it kinda cool, huh?

Borrowed Black
I wouldn’t be surprised if no one reading this knows what I’m talking about. If you do, awesome, you encountered the same sanity-wrecking children’s book as me! My dad read me Borrowed Black and it messed me up for weeks. Set on the coast of Labrador, this freaky fairy tale stars the creepiest of all creepers, Borrowed Black, a...man-like thing...whose body is constructed entirely from bits and pieces he “borrowed” (stole) from other creatures. He steals the moon one day, casting the land into darkness, prompting some talking animals to save the day. All this is depicted in bleak, monochromatic illustrations that quite literally popped up in my nightmares. Again: who dreams this up and thinks it’s for kids? As an adult, I tracked down Borrowed Black and found that the heroic animals are gratuitously whimsical and the rhyming prose is clunky. But he’s still there, the patchwork demon staring into my soul. Borrowed Black was my Babadook.

Doctor Who vs. Vampires
This one is vague, a shadow from the past, and pretty silly. One day at my grandparents’ house, I found myself watching an old Doctor Who episode with Tom Baker. Bless the internet for allowing me to pin stuff like this down! The ep, I now know, is called “State of Decay,” and in it, the Doctor battles medieval-styled vampires. I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the plot, but I remember the images that freaked me out. Images like a woman lying helpless while bats bit her neck. Or a giant hand (some kind of final boss vampire) bursting from the ground. The special effects were terrible, of course, but children don’t notice that sort of thing. You tell a little kid there’s a giant vampire clawing his way up from underground, they take it at face value. It haunts them. Today, I don’t give two shits about Doctor Who, but show me Baker in his hat and scarf and I’ll instantly go, “Yep, that’s the one who gave me childhood heebie-jeebies. Jerk.”

No Jumping On the Bed!
A few years back when I found Tedd Arnold’s No Jumping On the Bed! at a book sale, my heart swelled with joy, because I could finally make peace with the scariest picture book from my childhood. This “cautionary” tale stars a kid named Walter who loves to get some serious air time on his mattress. One night, he jumps so high and lands so hard that the bed breaks through the floor...and proceeds to crash through every floor of his apartment complex, picking up more and more people, animals, furniture, and random items. The presentation is in no way scary (the characters seem rather amused by their downward journey), but when I was little...you have no idea. Walter’s act of property destruction was the most horrifying thing I could imagine. I’d stare worriedly at the ceiling in public settings, wondering if a bunch of people and furniture were about to crash down on my head. I never entirely got over the dread...well, until I found the book again and chuckled at how benign it really was. I think there’s a sequel where Walter floods his bathtub and...actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want to fucking know.

Peter Pan (The Parts with Kidnapping and Bombs)
We all know Disney is dark. While Mufasa’s demise certainly left me an unhappy camper, the Disney flick that I owned on VHS was Peter Pan. Nobody dies in Peter Pan! But there are some close calls. Basically, an entire stretch of the film, I couldn’t watch. Had to skip it. It begins when Wendy and all the boys get kidnapped by the pirates, after which Captain Hook tries to reduce Peter Pan to gravel with a bomb disguised as a present. Tinkerbell saves Peter’s life but is herself blown up, and the movie tactfully doesn’t show her gruesome, well-mangled little fairy body, but you can imagine. Meanwhile, Wendy has to walk the plank while her little brothers watch. Dafuq kind of fetish does this movie have for drowning girls? Needless to say, Peter saves the day and everything is fine (Tinkerbell’s miraculous recovery from FUCKING EXPLODING is expertly glossed over and ignored). So if you skip all the scary, kids-in-mortal-peril shit, it’s like it never even happened! You do miss the cool pirate song, though.

Peter Rabbit (and Farmer McGregor)
This might be the oldest childhood fear of mine, since I barely remember it. But my mother can fill in the details of my meltdown. Beatrix Potter wrote a lot of weirdly downbeat books about cute talking animals, starting with Peter Rabbit, who was really a disobedient little punk for sneaking into Farmer McGregor’s garden to pilfer veggies. As a tot, you naturally root for Peter, and in my case, it helped that I found Farmer McGregor unbearably scary. Something about his face...about the way his opaque glasses and Santa Claus beard obscure his features, turning him into an implacable force for murdering underage bunnies. My mother remembers one image in the book, a closeup of the farmer’s face searching for Peter, that made me wail and hide under the blankets, unwilling to continue being read to. I also had the story on tape, and listened to it a lot, despite my dread. I guess even at the age of...what? Three?...I was interested in what scared me. Farmer McGregor and his blank, judgmental glare were only the beginning.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
MOTHER. FUCKING. COBRAS. Other kids think there’s a monster under their bed. I kept my limbs tucked in so I wouldn’t be bitten to death by evil cobras. Thanks, Rudyard Kipling, for trolling the children of the future with your messed-up jungle stories. I never read the original Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Nor did I ever see the 1975 Chuck Jones cartoon. No, I owned a picture book based on the cartoon. And that was more than enough. If you don’t know, it’s about a plucky mongoose who must defend a missionary family from malevolent cobras. In the cartoon, the cobras are kinda goofy to me now (Chuck Jones characters tend to look like their cheeks are stuffed with maple syrup), but in my early years, I stayed fetal in my little bunk bed (I was an only child; the upper bunk was for my stuffed animals) because I absolutely knew that Nag and Nagaina were slithering down below, waiting. And I had no mongoose. Why didn’t I have a mongoose, DAD?

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark...On Tape!
Well, duh, my entire generation got scared by Alvin Schwartz’s trilogy of spooky tales. And we all know why: it was the smeary, terror-dripping illustrations fever-dreamed up by Stephen Gammell. The penetration of Scary Stories into our zeitgeist is quite remarkable, as evidenced by how furious everyone got when Scholastic changed the art on us. And here’s what’s funny: yeah, Gammell’s awful, awesome art scared me, but what really got under my skin was listening to the stories on tape. Blame actor George S. Irving, who performed the reading with almost inappropriate relish, accompanied by eerie music. I sat around the tape player with my classmates, in broad daylight, and I might as well have been lost and alone in a dark forest with...sounds...steadily coming closer. I was petrified. And is it a surprise to learn that I willingly sat down to listen to Irving moan and growl and cackle more than once? Oy.

Superman Fights a Giant Gorilla
Back in the 1940s, Superman starred in a series of cartoon shorts. One of them, Terror On the Midway, was on a VHS collection owned by yours truly. I invite you to watch it, and then tell me I was wrong to be scared as a child. Proving that it’s an awful idea to put dangerous animals in cages with fucking latches, a massive gorilla escapes during a circus and runs amok. Lois Lane is, as usual, in peril, and Superman saves the day, the end. I swear the bare-bones plot is merely an excuse for weirdly stylized, almost impressionistic visuals. Slanted angles, deep shadows, a murky red color palette...this feels, not like a gee-whiz superhero cartoon, but like an animator’s drug-fueled nightmare. Yes, it’s goofy when Superman puts a panther in a full nelson, and yes, those doll-eyed children are scarier-looking than the killer ape. But the images tap into some kind of primal dread: people can get hurt, everything can crumble and burn, and Superman might not be there in time. Y’know, for kids!

“True” Ghost Stories
If Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark didn’t scare me much, it might’ve been because I was busy being scared by a totally different set of tales. The “True” Ghost Stories books (I’d guess there’s some legal hooey behind those quotation marks) were by different authors, but I had the complete set in one anthology. Every time I read it, I wondered why I was subjecting myself to this. Jim Sharpe’s illustrations weren’t as balls-out horrific as Stephen Gammell’s, and many of the stories didn’t bother me (UFOs? Eh. Haunted dolls? Meh), but a handful of them...brrr. One particular tale, about an air force pilot who has a vision of his friend’s corpse floating in the ocean, still bothers me when I recall it. That image. That face, eyes gone white, mouth twisted into a rictus. I don’t recall where some of these scary childhood books wound up, but I know exactly what became of “True” Ghost Stories. I burned it. One dark night, I tossed it into the woodstove. I adore books, and I fucking destroyed one because of how badly it scared me. True story. Without quotation marks.

What about horror movies, you ask? Well, The Ring did scare me a bit, but I was a teen by that point, and it’d become cool to scare myself. The Ring was, at the time, unlike any horror movie I’d seen before, but the resultant tiresome onslaught of increasingly stupid J-horror remakes did it no favors. I still like it. And I still think The Thing is horrifying. And I own both these films, obviously.

Also, I got scared by Rien Poortvliet’s gnome, because I had a nightmare where he grew fangs and attacked me. And once I dreamed that my elementary school had a torture chamber in it, but I found that one more interesting than scary, so I guess that makes me a kinky bastard? Whatever. Bottom line: don’t laugh at a small child because they’re reduced to tears by something you find silly and harmless. We’ve all been there. We’ve had some visual trigger, book or cartoon or game, that awakens the terror we’ve carried deep inside ourselves since sabretooths ate us for breakfast. Even when we grow up, we fear the unknown.

And we love that.

Broken Age, Act II

And so, Broken Age concludes on the same mild, inoffensive note with which it began, leaving behind a legacy of.......something or other. Probably a horde of wannabes waving their own Kickstarter banners, wondering why they aren’t reaping mountains of strangers’ money. This game may be remembered simply for the stubborn goodwill of its many, many benefactors. We all helped make Broken Age happen, guys! It’s our baby! Kumbaya! I almost wish it had dared to alienate somebody. If crowdfunding is the last hope for original, creative game development, awesome, but I worry that crowdfunded games will fall into the same trap as mainstream mega-releases: comfy mediocrity in the name of never, ever causing buyer’s remorse. Only worse, because everyone who donates to a game’s Kickstarter has their own idea of what they want, and in order to please as many folks as possible, you gotta slap margarine on white bread as opposed to constructing a mighty, spicy, cheesy, saucy grinder. Maybe nobody’s stomach will be full, but we have to consider that one guy who’s allergic to sriracha!

But enough weird sandwich talk. What does Act II of Broken Age do, or not do, with its premise? I see no need to recap the entire plot; read my post about Act I for that. We left off with the predictable yet sophisticated twist that the tales of Shay and Vella exist concurrently, and that Shay’s “spaceship” is, in fact, the monster that’s been terrorizing Vella’s people. More fascinating to me was how Act I ended with Shay and Vella switching places. Vella is now trapped inside Shay’s half-destroyed ship, while Shay wanders the villages outside. What great implications! Implications that...never really go anywhere. Yeah, it’s fun to see how both environments have changed during the intermission, but it wears thin when we’re just galumphing around the same old places, talking to the same people. Act II came out eight months later than projected, and I assumed this meant the developers were cooking up something huge, for which Act I was merely a teaser. Instead they just juggled some details and called it a day. Lame.

So now, funnily enough, Vella inhabits the more interesting part of the game (Shay’s ship, which she must sabotage), while Shay’s stuck in the bland half (where he must help jumpstart a 200-year-old derelict ship). The result? Vella’s shipboard adventures became my favorite part of the entire game, while Shay’s quest is so...so...so...fucking...tedious. Good lord, what a contrast. Vella is discovering a sinister conspiracy that redefines her entire world...and Shay is purchasing a cupcake at a junior bake sale. Vella must somehow infiltrate the deepest workings of the monster-ship and bend it to her will...and Shay has to make a tree laugh. And it’s not just story-based tedium; Vella’s puzzles are interesting and well-conceived, arising organically from her circumstances, while Shay’s puzzles entail hiking all over the damn place and interacting with no less than nineteen different characters. It’s exhausting. Completing both halves of the story became a punishment-and-reward process for me: “Hey, if you make it through another of Shay’s stupid fetch quests, you can switch over to Vella for a bit! Stay strong!”

I complained that the puzzles in Act I were easy. I may not have been the only one, and boy, did the developers ramp up Act II’s trickiness. There’s that challenge I was looking for! Except some of the puzzles kinda suck, because they unfold in unfair ways. As I said, Shay’s story has to juggle a huge supporting cast, and it’s easy to forget who he’s spoken to about what...and every time he does something, he has to make the rounds again in case a new dialogue prompt has popped up somewhere. Vella fares better, and I loved one puzzle that entailed searching a room for clues, because I had to make my own deductions based on the clues and it felt great. Problem was, the game gave me a handy chart to help with the puzzle but gave me no way to fill out the chart, unless I wanted to use a Sharpie on my laptop screen. WTF? What really bugged me were instances where a clue from one environment was necessary to complete something in the other. It breaks the reality of the game! Shay may have revealed the name of his childhood plushie to me, the player, but Vella couldn’t possibly have that knowledge! And if Shay is stuck on something, do I need to switch to Vella and scan the entire ship for answers, or not? See the problem? Difficult puzzles are only fun when they don’t cheat.

In the end, puzzle deviousness aside, Act II of Broken Age is just more of the same. Yes, we learn why Shay’s space journey is a sham and why maidens are being kidnapped and so forth. It’s cool, I guess, but it felt like the developers began the game before they knew their own plot, and just made shit up as they went. When the game bothers to unveil some villains, they’re interesting enough, but they feel like they belong in a different game, or maybe one of those Star Wars novels that are now non-canon, HA HA, WE DRINK THE BITTER TEARS OF NERDS. A twist involving Shay’s computerized parents is cool, but nobody reacts strongly enough. Actually, nobody in the game reacts much to anything. Oh, hey, we sacrificed our daughters on a complete lie! Let’s fail to be shocked or guilty in any way! Shay is a vanilla cone of blandness, and the only character I gave two shits about was Vella, who retained her knack for sweetly wreaking havoc (honestly, she’s one dead family away from becoming a supervillain). Sure, I found the supporting cast amusing (I particularly liked Curtis the hipster lumberjack and the trio of dysfunctional sentient dinnerware), but none of them behaved like human beings, probably because their sole function was to require something from Shay, give him something in return, then cease to matter. What about the endgame, the point at which Broken Age might have broken free? Eh...a final puzzle that resets itself if you don’t topple the dominoes in the exact right order, and that, again, involves Shay and Vella apparently reading each other’s fucking minds. Then a heartwarming ending that completely ignores the powerful, murderous bad guys it took the time to set up. Kumbaya.

Soooo, Broken Age was fun. I liked it more than I disliked it. I’ve been criticizing it so much because I’m just so let down by how it never took its own potential seriously. Its art design is outstanding. Its voice cast are skilled. Its plot follows current trends (yay, a seemingly idyllic quasi-dystopia secretly controlled by shadowy puppetmasters!), but it threw some great details and serious twists into the mix. And if the landbound half of the game was as fun as the shipboard half, I’d have been way more forgiving. But why don’t I feel sated? Why am I left pining for more? When I played Monkey Island, a game that came out ages ago, it satisfied me to my very core. And Broken Age is meant to be the offspring of Monkey Island-style adventure games. Its technical improvements can’t mask its watery presentation, I’m afraid. I’ll play it again someday and maybe it’ll age well, but for now, it illustrates the dangers of overhype. We gave them our money and got something merely decent. Not great, not awful, just...a thing. A game. Point, click, win.

Forget.

Myst Series, pt. 8

The Dig -- A Tale of Three Idiots and Some Archaeology

I’ve known for a long time that The Dig needed to go in my Myst review series, despite seeming, on the surface, like a refugee from an entirely different genre. I mean, we’re talking about a 1995 point-and-click adventure game from LucasArts, a relic from the days when a character’s face was blotchily constructed from seven or eight massive pixels and gamers didn’t need a fanfare and a meaningless “Achievement” every time they clicked on a thing. Yeah, The Dig may be a weird third cousin on Myst’s family tree, but step back and study the parallels. We find ourselves stranded on a strange world, solving puzzles across a series of interconnected islands, blowing the dust off age-old machinery and compiling an account of the mysterious world-builders who came before...see what I mean? The Dig is a proud third cousin indeed, merely exchanging the tropes of fantasy (worlds being written into existence) for science fiction (super-duper-duper advanced alien technology). It’s cool as fuck. If you can get around the slow, boggy bits.

Wrapping one’s mind around the pacing of an old-school point-and-clicker takes a little time. The Dig starts slow and never picks up momentum, even when you have to save somebody from a giant spider-monster. Myst was just as sedate, but with Myst, you never felt like you were in danger. With The Dig, it’s all spider-monsters and murderous Bavarians, but you still have time to meander through the entire gameworld looking for a lump of pixels you missed. This blasé approach to peril begins with the discovery of an asteroid headed for Earth. Yawn. NASA cobbles together a team to, you guessed it, divert the rock by planting bombs on its surface. Thus, the intro sequence consists of floating slowly around in spacesuits and engaging in tedious dialogue trees. Things get more interesting when the “asteroid” reveals itself to be some kind of advanced alien craft. Three cosmonauts are catapulted into the final frontier: the ridiculously named hero, Commander Boston Low, and his colleagues, journalist Maggie Robbins and scientist Ludger Brink. Don’t ask how they prepped two civilians for astronaut duty in less than a month. The prologue barely matters.

What matters is where Low, Robbins, and Brink end up: a barren, seemingly lifeless planet that gradually blossoms into a place of great beauty and mystery. Huge kudos to the gamemakers for crafting an alien world that seems alien. The lighting, the rosy color palette, the very geometry of the place...wow. Everywhere you explore is visually compelling, even with the aforementioned grapefruit-sized pixels, and thank the gods, because Boston Low is destined to wear out his NASA-issued shoes hiking from scenic view to scenic view. Another nice touch: the characters are swiftly engaged, not in survival or alien-squashing, but in archaeology. Ancient alien technology sprouts here and there, organic as the rocks themselves. Who built it? Where’d they go? Is the ghost in the machine (both literal and metaphysical) issuing an invitation...or a warning? The humans discover a type of crystal that reanimates the dead -- with, shall we say, alarming side effects. This foreshadows gradual revelations about the aliens themselves, and the game’s presentation of its aliens makes me swoon. I won’t spoil too much about them, but they ain’t Star Trek types, that’s for sure. They are strange, eerie, and wholly unique. In the best of ways.

For a computer game, The Dig succeeds at being pedigree sci-fi in its own right. Based off an idea for Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories TV series, with dialogue penned by the venerable Orson Scott Card (well, venerable until he commenced with all the gay-bashing, cough cough), it takes itself very seriously indeed, and gets away with it. The gameplay is fine, if meandering. The Dig has been both praised and criticized for having unusually difficult puzzles, and...well, maybe it’s because I’ve played it more than once, but I don’t really agree. Most of its puzzles can be untangled through simple trial and error, and usually, when I get stuck, it’s because I’ve overlooked something stupidly obvious. (Oh, I’m supposed to hold the button instead of just pressing it!) Okay, yes, your inventory winds up clogged with inscrutable single-use knickknacks, and at times, you may be reduced to rubbing every item against the latest puzzle-related thingummy while Boston laments, “It won’t do anything!” over and over. And, yeah, the game’s mechanics make some puzzles a pain in the ass (that fucking planetarium...). But at least everything ties together in a neat logical bow; like Riven, the puzzles are thematically connected and serve a purpose beyond merely padding the run time.

Now. Know one of the great things about the Myst games? With minor exceptions, you spend them alone. The luxury of exploring strange new worlds without someone bitching in your earpiece is, I’m afraid, somewhat absent from The Dig. After all, Boston has his two fellow stooges, Robbins and Brink, and while they at least have the decency to vanish for chunks of the story, their existence adds little beyond a headache. Why did they have to be so unlikeable? What was wrong with depicting a trio of friendly humans making amazing discoveries while getting along? (For an example of a similar scenario done right, see the amazing indie treasure that is Waking Mars.) Robbins and Brink seem to have come from a mail order catalogue of annoying archetypes: the Acerbic Female Reporter (responds to every prompt with icy sarcasm!) and the Humorless German Douche (guaranteed to turn evil and/or insane!). I really wish the game’s other two supporting characters wound up space-marooned with Boston instead, but, no, they vanish forever after the prologue. Boston, at least, makes a perfectly tolerable protagonist; as voiced by actor Robert Patrick, he’s a humble working man who takes a pragmatic approach to his extraordinary situation. Weirdly, though, I wish the game didn’t have recorded dialogue at all, because I read faster than they talk. Not helping matters are the low-rent animated cutscenes that make Saturday morning cartoons look like Miyazaki. Must the glorious alien vistas be broken up by such crude snippets?

I can be mean. But The Dig is definitely a worthwhile endeavor for the patient gamer. I didn’t dig it as much the second time (hardy har har), and I think that’s because a game like this benefits from the sense of awestruck discovery. Imagine what it would be like to visit an alien planet! I’d go in a heartbeat, provided I could get back, and that’s why I respect The Dig for its thoughtful, almost joyous take on sci-fi. Yeah, its ending is a bit too upbeat (somebody basically waves a magic wand and makes everything all right again), but I like what it implies, how it suggests a future for humankind and alienkind that doesn’t involve explosions and death rays and the usual bullshit. Just as the Myst games relish the simple joy of exploration, so too does The Dig. That’s why I hope it doesn’t vanish from the annals of gaming history. It offers a world unlike any other.

Myst Review Series

Myst • Riven • Myst III: Exile • Myst IV: Revelation • Submachine • Kairo • The Talos Principle • The Dig • Daymare Town • Fez • Tri: Of Friendship and Madness • The Witness

Dang-Blasted Video Game Theories, Spooky Edition

Dang-Blasted’s Spooky Scary Video Game Theories

OOOoooOOOoooOOO! It’s Halloween! No it isn’t! Not at all! But considering my fixation on the horror genre, we might as well go ahead and make every day Halloween here in Dang-Blasted land! Time for a third batch of weird, random, largely unwarranted theories about what’s really going on in certain video games! (Check out the first and second posts too.) Just take care -- these games are scaaaaary and shit!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2: You’re the Murderer

With three games out and a movie on the way, Five Nights at Freddy’s is certainly one of the speediest underdog success stories. The games are cool in how they tease at what’s really going on, practically inviting fan theories. Malfunctioning robo-furries run amok, or something more? Well, FNaF 3 neatly sabotaged my cool theory by confirming it: the animatronic mascots contain the ghosts of children, all of whom were murdered by a sinister man known only as Purple Guy. Cool, now let’s back up to the second game, a prequel in which you play as nighttime security guard Jeremy Fitzgerald. Each night, psychotic mascots roam the halls and attack you, and it’s implied that a police investigation into the disappearance of several children is happening concurrently.

Using the almighty rule of “Why the hell not?” I theorize that the mascots are so intent on killing you because you killed them first. Jeremy Fitzgerald and Purple Guy are one and the same. After all, a security guard would have thorough knowledge of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, the better to lure children to their doom. Guess Jeremy didn’t count on the children’s spirits possessing Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and the rest. You’re not a hero; you’re a loathsome murderer facing ghostly vengeance. This would also explain why the mascots wage war on a different security guard protagonist in the first game: it takes place years later, but the children’s ghosts still associate the guard with the man who killed them. FNaF 2 ends with the restaurant being shut down and Jeremy getting a promotion, probably to his relief. But, as the third game showed us, Jeremy met a ghastly fate and became a haunted robot himself. As well he deserves. Creep.

Fatal Frame 2: Mayu Amakura is Dead

I had a good theory about the Fatal Frame games as well, until I replayed the first one and realized I was wrong as fuck. But never mind. In this scary-ass series, you explore haunted spaces and battle hostile ghosts with a specialized camera. The second game, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, focuses on twin sisters Mio and Mayu Amakura, who become trapped in a ghostly village. You play as Mio, the capable "younger" sister. Mayu, who is emotionally fragile and crippled from a childhood accident, is lured deep into the village by spirits and must be routinely rescued. Long story short, the village was massacred due to a botched ritual in which one twin sibling must kill the other. A portal to Hell stands open, and in order to close it, the ritual must be completed, with Mayu as the sacrificed twin. Heavy stuff.

Okay. What if Mayu’s already dead? What if she’s a ghost the whole time? And what if Mio knows it? The accident that crippled Mayu as a child occurred when she fell down a ravine while chasing Mio. Let’s say the fall actually killed her. Mio grows up alone, wracked with guilt at having (in her eyes) gotten her sister killed. However, when she returns to the same forest, whom should she find but Mayu’s lingering spirit. She routinely sneaks out to the forest to be with Mayu (the game never mentions the twins’ parents or how far they are from home), and because ghosts aren’t bound by the laws of the living, Mayu appears to age along with Mio. Mio feels responsible for Mayu and wants to protect her, even knowing she’s dead. Play the game and you’ll find little to contradict my theory. Plus, Mayu’s knack for vanishing at odd times and getting into and out of locked cells makes more sense if she’s a ghost. In the game’s canonical ending, Mio kills Mayu and the village is released from its curse. And by “kills,” I mean Mio finally lets go of her guilt and allows her sister to pass on to the next life.

(PS: If you must know, my original theory was that Mio and Mayu were the granddaughters of Yae, a girl who escaped from the cursed village. However, Yae appears as an older woman in Fatal Frame 1, which I had forgotten, and...yeah. My theory fell apart. Good thing I formulated a Plan B.)

Fatal Frame 3: Two of the Main Characters Are Dead

One big hitch with the whole Mayu-being-a-ghost thing is that the next game in the series, Fatal Frame III: The Tormented, features Kei Amakura, the uncle of Mio and Mayu, as a main character. And Kei makes it pretty clear that Mayu did not die as a child. Well, shit...

Wait. What if Kei’s dead too?

And why stop there? I theorize that the main protagonist, freelance photographer Rei Kurosawa, is also dead. We see Rei dealing with the aftermath of a car crash in which her fiancée was killed. In my version of events, Rei also died, but continues to haunt her house because her grief serves as a ball and chain tethering her to the living world. What we have is a Sixth Sense scenario: Rei and Kei don’t realize they’re dead. Rei’s assistant is Miku Hinasaki, the heroine of Fatal Frame 1. Miku is very much alive and, I think, is trying to help Rei move on. With her psychic prowess, Miku became a kind of ghost-whisperer following the events of the first game, and has been “hired” to exorcise the house of Rei’s ghost. The similarly dead Kei, who knew Rei’s fiancée, is yoinked into the mix, and, due to his limbo state, is confused about past events and doesn’t remember that Mayu died as a little girl.

Is that weak? Well, I think it works. The actual plot of The Tormented is a lot more convoluted; all three protagonists wind up trapped in a dream-space that is dangerous to both the living and the dead. I haven’t played the game in ages (and never finished it, thanks to the fucking Kusabi), so maybe this theory doesn’t hold up, but it’s a neat way to interpret the events as they unfold. Who you gonna call?

The Evil Within: Sebastian Knows the Whole Damn Story

Meanwhile, in an entirely different microcosm of the Japanese horror biosphere...The Evil Within. Which I actually enjoyed a lot, flaws and all. In this blood-soaked romp, you are Sebastian Castellanos, a hardboiled detective with a Dark Past and Nothing To Lose, who investigates a hospital massacre along with two other cops, Juli Kidman and Joseph Oda. All three are shanghaied into a fucked-up nightmare world, which (EXCEPTIONAL SPOILER ALERT!) is being generated by a mad scientist named Ruvik. Long story short, Ruvik invented a machine that could link people’s minds, whereupon his colleagues betrayed him, scooped his brain out, and used it to power his own machine. Ruvik now seeks to escape by possessing a living body. Also, Juli Kidman is part of a mysterious organization trying to take Ruvik down. Sebastian discovers all this very gradually...or DOES he?

Well, yes. But here’s the thing: I think Sebastian knew everything already. He knew about Ruvik, about the machine, about Kidman’s real motives. See, we eventually learn that Sebastian’s daughter died under mysterious circumstances, and his wife, a fellow cop, became obsessed with uncovering the truth. The wife vanished, leaving all her notes and research to Sebastian, who couldn’t get his superiors to listen to him. I think Kidman, recognizing Sebastian’s potential, contacted him and his partner, Joseph, and recruited them for the highly dangerous mission into the machine...into Ruvik’s mind. When they arrive at the hospital at the game’s start, they’re already plugged in. (Cue Inception saxophone.)

The problem is, entering the machine caused Sebastian to suffer brain damage. He forgot everything he’d just learned. Throughout the game, Kidman and Joseph, who know the truth, are subtly trying to make Sebastian remember. They can’t tell him outright because he won’t believe them, and there’s no time to convince him. He has to remember on his own. Tatiana, the cryptic nurse who appears in Sebastian’s personal psychic “safe zone,” is also an agent from Kidman’s group (she is glimpsed outside the machine at the game’s end), and does her part to nudge Sebastian toward recovering his knowledge. At the very end, when he (maybe) defeats Ruvik and escapes the machine, it all comes back to him...possibly too late.

One little hitch: late in the game, we see Kidman attempt to kill Leslie, a mental patient who Ruvik hopes to possess. Joseph stops her. Why would he, if he knows what’s going on? Because Kidman had her own orders: she was to save Leslie if possible, kill him if necessary. Joseph, not being party to these orders, is shocked at Kidman’s ruthlessness and instinctively acts against her. Simple. Well, not simple. But given how confusing The Evil Within is, I’m trying to tie the narrative together as best I can. Did I do good?

Maybe. Let’s wait for the DLC. I hear you get to play as this dude!

To Squee Or Not to Squee, vol. 5

Hmm...anything cool on the docket? Any upcoming pop culture events that fill me with simultaneous delight and dread? Not as much as in past years. I’m still waiting around for a lot of stuff, and in the meantime, there aren’t a lot of Obduction-level game announcements or Hobbit-esque film franchise events that I haven’t written about already. Yeah, there’s Neal Stephenson’s next novel, but I can’t put THAT on a Cautious Enthusiasm list because I am one hundred percent confident it will be amazing and I’ll love it. Sometimes you just know.

Eh. Don’t worry. I won’t let the year pass without doing this. I’ve got a few things to look forward to with trepidation; haven’t run outta steam quite yet! Read on.

CAUTIOUS ENTHUSIASM: THE FINAL CHAPTER UNTIL THE NEXT CHAPTER

American Horror Story: Hotel...With Lady Gaga
WHAT IT IS: What? You mean the show I’ve been recapping for the past three years? No idea. To remind everyone, AHS: Freak Show was fun but a lot of folks, myself included, feel the series is in danger of slipping into a creative rut. Same old cast, similar pacing and story arcs. Season Five needs to be the season of reinvention. The hotel setting ain’t as outside-the-box as I’d like, but nobody was expecting the news to be broken on Twitter by Lady Gaga, batshit chanteuse extraordinaire -- who also revealed she’s been cast in a lead role. Thanks, Obama.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I can’t deny it’s quite a coup to feature somebody like Lady Gaga on this show. But it makes a certain sense when you think about it. She’s kooky. She’s no stranger to horrific costume/makeup jobs. Her act has often drawn upon scary themes, from the meat dress to the murdered models in her “Paparazzi” video to her overall knack for writhing and twitching. I can give her the benefit of the doubt! Plus, it seems she’s leading a squad of refreshing talent; other revealed cast members include Matt Bomer, Cheyenne Jackson, Wes Bentley, and Chloë Sevigny, none of whom are members of the usual AHS brat pack. That, plus Jessica Lange confirming she’s definitely out, makes me think this could be the gore-drenched Second Coming I crave.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Is Lady Gaga an actress? I have no goddamn idea. I can’t judge her by her music videos, where she’s just playing versions of herself. You KNOW a lot of people hate her by default, and perhaps their “I-told-you-sos” will be ringing in our ears as she delivers a performance that’s monstrous in all the wrong ways. Everyone’s weighing the positives (she went to school for musical theater!) and negatives (she was terrible in Machete Kills!), and the casting of Mother Monster can’t help but seem like a whopping stunt designed to get people talking about AHS again. Which ain’t a bad thing. But with more and more anthology shows on the docket, AHS needs to prove it can rise above gimmickry as well as redundancy.
SQUEE FACTOR: 7
DANGER LEVEL: 6

UPDATE: My semi-coherent recaps of AHS: Hotel begin here!

Kung Fu Panda 3
WHAT IT IS: The continuing escapades of Po the Dragon Warrior, pleasingly plump panda protagonist of DreamWorks’ franchise. In previous entries, we’ve seen Po go from fat doofus to...fat doofus with Kung Fu powers...and also seen him tackle the mysteries of his past. The threequel reunites Po with his birth father, and features the same old crowd of voice talent, plus Mads Mikkelsen as the villain and Rebel Wilson as the usual annoying Rebel Wilson character.
WHY I’M EXCITED: DreamWorks Animation is hit or miss. At best, they’re a delight. At worst, they’re forgettable or insulting. But the Kung Fu Panda series is a winner with its mix of gorgeous art design, snark, and lovingly depicted Kung Fu battles. KFP 2 surprised the shit out of me by being about as good as the first one, and Po’s personal baggage and relationship with his adopted dad, Mr. Ping, are super touching. One scene in the sequel actually made me cry a little. So I’m more than ready for more Po, more Tigress (definitely one of the most subtle female characters in animation history), more Master Shifu (cranky Duston Hoffman, yay!), more compelling villains, more Chinese scenery, more of everything the series excels at!
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Name me an animated series (besides Toy Story) that remained good past the second installment. Shrek? Ice Age? The Land Before Time? Don’t make me laugh. Diminishing quality seems inevitable, and the problems that have plagued the KFP series, most notably the lack of attention given to the supporting cast (hey, maybe Jackie Chan will get four lines instead of three!) are still gonna be there. KFP 2 dealt with Po being torn between love for Mr. Ping and a desire to find where he truly belongs. KFP 3 looks to be the exact same goddamn story. Have we run out of steam, perhaps? I’m most worried by the future. DreamWorks wants to make six Kung Fu Panda movies. SIX! No one’s gonna be interested for that long, least of all the voice actors! Why must we always inflate a franchise to tedious proportions?
SQUEE FACTOR: 5
DANGER LEVEL: 8

UPDATE: I watched it! Read my reaction here.

Mr. Holmes
WHAT IT IS: A quiet little movie in the midst of all the megablockbusters, Mr. Holmes stars Ian McKellen as, yes, Sherlock Holmes. Ahh, but this is more contemplative drama than action-packed thriller. The heavily aged Holmes, retired and waiting for death, contemplates his unusual life and, perhaps, is offered one last chance to put his remarkable mind to work solving a mystery.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Don’t you get a lovely tingle from hearing “Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes”? I know I do. Sir Ian has been imprisoned in the CGI- and makeup-heavy worlds of Lord of the Rings and X-Men for long enough. Mr. Holmes looks like the tour de force of subtle acting he deserves, a chance for him to strip away all caricature -- ironic, considering he’s playing one of the most famous characters in history. But after all the recent Sherlock-mania, after the modernizations and Hollywoodizations of the legendary detective...well, doesn’t it sound pleasant to just watch him quietly crime-solving in his twilight years?
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: The previous collaboration between Ian McKellen and director Bill Condon did little for me. That’d be 1998’s Gods and Monsters, about the last days of flamboyant horror director James Whale, and while it provides all the male nudity you could ask for (hellooooo, young Brendan Fraser!), I found it kind of dreary overall. Now these two guys are once again studying the swansong of a legendary man, and it’s hard to imagine they could suck the joy out of Sherlock Holmes, but I wouldn’t put it past them. I believe that Holmes, even an aging and melancholy Holmes, should retain a certain spark of delicious madness; without it, he’s lacking. That’s why he’s so beloved. But, then, so is Sir Ian, so I retain good hopes.
SQUEE FACTOR: 4
DANGER LEVEL: 2

UPDATE: I watched it! Read my reaction here.

Season Three of Hannibal
WHAT IT IS: My favorite TV show currently airing (yes, it tops AHS) is taking itself to a new level. Up until now, Hannibal has been an artsy police procedural, with everyone believing Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) is a good guy as opposed to an insidious serial killer. No more! Season Two ended with Lecter dropping his cover, leaving most of the main cast mortally wounded, and jetting off to Italy with his mysterious sidekick, Dr. Bedelia du Maurier (Gillian Anderson). To Be Continued...this summer.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I’d be grateful for a new season of Hannibal no matter what (it’s one of those shows with niche appeal, which means it’s perpetually in danger of cancellation), but its third season will really push the boundaries, methinks. Italy, a gorgeous nation in its own right, should look breathtaking when filtered through this show’s dreamlike aesthetic. I can’t wait to see them do a manhunt storyline, and I’m so happy Dr. du Maurier is now a main character because Anderson is astounding in the role. As if that weren’t cool enough, the back half of the season will dive into the first Hannibal Lecter novel, Red Dragon, and the creepy killer known as the Tooth Fairy will be played by Richard “Thorin Oakenshield” Armitage, who I have a huge crush on. Hannibal is like a particularly fucked-up Christmas morning for Dang-Blasted.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: First off, NBC bumping Hannibal to the summer worries me, because it implies they’re struggling to boost its ratings, and may give up on it. Beyond that, I’m a little anxious that the show will lose something once it reaches this particular point in the Hannibal Lecter timeline. Yes, Hannibal has thus far provided its own mesmerizing take on the mythos, but it hasn’t had to adapt one of the actual, original Thomas Harris novels...until now. We’ve already seen two film versions of Red Dragon; can the show avoid redundancy? And how will they tackle Silence of the Lambs without the legal rights to Clarice Starling? And can they make Lecter’s backstory less stupid than Hannibal Rising? (Probably.) Considering how well the show avoided a sophomore slump, I’m confident it’ll continue to rock my world. But it faces a new set of narrative challenges. I hope it doesn’t lose its unique, eerie vibe.
SQUEE FACTOR: 9
DANGER LEVEL: 5

UPDATE: I discuss the first half of the season (Florence) here.
UPDATE 2: The second arc (Red Dragon) and my final(?) eulogy to the show can be read here.

Conker’s Big Reunion
WHAT IT IS: A brand-new game* starring Conker the Squirrel, star of 2001’s M-rated, irreverent, violent, scatological cartoon platformer, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. This sequel* will be part of Microsoft’s Project Spark and will entail Conker trying to regain some of the good old platforming glory ten years after his previous adventure.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Ask a gamer for a list of games that desperately need sequels, and many will include Conker’s BFD on the list. I know I would. Now we’re finally getting a sequel* that takes advantage of the latest gaming hardware while still retaining the nostalgic feel of the old N64 era. They even got Chris Seavor, the original Conker-voicer, to return! And it’s not just another revamp of Conker’s BFD, nope nope nope. It’s a sequel*. A bona fide second entry* in the series. Just like we always wanted! All the poop jokes, fourth wall breaking, and soon-to-be-dated pop culture references a Conker fan could wish for*! This should be great****!
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Sigh. Follow the trail of asterisks and you’ll come upon the huge, glaring, hellfire-drenched catch. This isn’t a new Conker game at all. It’s a content pack for the aforementioned Project Spark, which is a...game-like thing...that will revolve entirely around user-generated content. Basically, it sounds like Conker’s Big Reunion will set up a premise, then hand players a big wheelbarrow full of scenery, textures, models, sound and music files, and A.I. routines, and say, “Okay, now make it yourself! Remember, quality will be entirely up to you guys!” I’m not saying a UGC-based gameworld is bad per se, but...well, I can’t get excited about this when the professionals seem too lazy to make it themselves. My prediction is that older fans, disgusted with this lame excuse for a “new” Conker game, will ignore it, leaving the iGeneration brats to turn it into something retarded. Also, the new graphics remind me of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, a game I wish I could banish back to the ballsack of Hades from whence it came. Remember when Rare wasn’t a shitbog of a company?
SQUEE FACTOR: 1
DANGER LEVEL: Ugh.

The X-Files: The New Season
WHAT IT IS: I didn’t even realize how much I adored Gillian Anderson until I put her on a Cautious Enthusiasm list twice. So, thanks to the new wave of moves as TV shows, comics as TV shows, and older TV shows as TV shows, Chris Carter is bringing back that beloved 1990s geek staple, The X-Files, for a six-episode “event series” with Anderson and David Duchovny back onboard as Dana Scully and Fox Mulder. Aliens? Ghosts? Lamprey men? Oh, my.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I must confess that I’m not a huge fan of The X-Files. But I’ve still watched a ton of it and like it a lot, so its return is very intriguing. Everybody’s hope is that they’ll return to form and do some strong one-shot stories, maybe with a recurring mystery running beneath. Y’know, like Sherlock! But who can resist the good old chemistry between Mulder and Scully, or the promise of cameos from fan-favorite characters, or the glory of modern special effects? This could be a sweet treat for the long-term fans, and if it attracts enough attention from younguns as well, who knows? Maybe a full-blown series revival is not out of the question. I’d enjoy seeing Mulder and Scully doing their thang in the post-9/11 Internet Age.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Here’s an article, obviously written by a fan, laying out the ways in which the new X-Files is a bad idea that will suck. I don’t agree with its entirety -- I try to be more optimistic -- but I can’t deny that it’ll be hard to recapture exactly what made the early seasons of The X-Files so special. The new eps must operate under the crushing weight of the entire franchise, so how could they feel fresh? I also agree that The X-Files: I Want to Believe was a shitty and half-assed offering overall, in part because it abandoned the meat of the original show in favor of a generic “monster of the week.” So what do fans want, exactly? More aliens and black oil mythology? Going that route would alienate newcomers. I sure do hope they can make Mulder and Scully as watchable as they once were. And that they find interesting new ground to break instead of digging up a bunch of moldering old bones they already buried.
SQUEE FACTOR: 4
DANGER LEVEL: 8

It’s nice to make a list like this and know with confidence that most if not all of these things will be available reasonably soon. With actual release dates and junk. Unlike, say, The Last Guardian. Or...oh, God, the humanity...The Winds of Winter. My soul hurts just thinking about it. But keep watching anyway.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Broken Age, Act I

What time is it? Time for Cautious Enthusiasm.

Droll. I think that’s the word I’m looking for. Broken Age, standard bearer of the adventure game rebirth, is extremely droll. Is that bad? Nnnnnoooo, but....well, I’ve always used “droll” to refer to something that’s perfectly amusing, makes you chuckle, engages you while it lasts, and never quite reaches the plateau of quality toward which it climbs. But maybe I should forgive Broken Age simply because the damn thing isn’t finished yet. Yeah, after all the griping I did on the original Cautious Enthusiasm post about how I hate it when games are released in installments, how I was totally gonna wait to buy and play Broken Age until the entire product was available...oops. I bought it assuming Act II was out. Act II won’t be out until the end of April. However, given Act I’s overall arc, I may need to eat my words a tiny bit. But we’ll get to that.

Yes, Broken Age is droll. It is funny but not hilarious. It is fun but not life-changing. Thanks to Kickstarter, Tim Schafer and his merry band reaped millions to make this game, and I won’t say the money doesn’t show on the screen, but given that they had the power to create just about anything, they almost seem scared to. Surely most of the money must have come from starry-eyed twenty- and thirtysomethings eager for an anarchic, hair-pullingly convoluted point-and-clicker on the level of the original Monkey Island. But Broken Age breaks no rules, even though its plot is entirely about rule-breaking, and seems geared, not toward those aging adventure-gamers, but to their kids. The heroes are both teenagers, the visual style is kid-friendly, the puzzles are....I have to say it.....fucking easy. Luckily, adult themes lurk beneath the surface, so maybe Broken Age is fun for the whole family, I wouldn’t know. How about on its own merits?

Well, what we have are two separate stories, seemingly unconnected (yeah, right), both promoting the idea of questioning your lot in life. Shay (voiced by Elijah Wood) is a teen boy aboard a cavernous spaceship that seems to have been constructed by a team of elementary school art teachers. The ship is run by a computer who assumes a motherly persona and fusses over Shay for every damn second of his waking life. He’s long outgrown his little world -- the game’s funniest sequence comes at the top, when the computer sends Shay on a series of insipid “adventures” clearly designed for a three-year-old. Bored and jaded, Shay finds a way to “break” one such adventure, which leads him to a shadowy lupine figure named Marek, who recruits Shay for far more dangerous, ethically dubious missions. But has Shay really escaped Mommy Computer, or is this merely the next stage of his training -- and training for what? Shay’s half of the game is definitely superior. His spaceship/playroom/prison is a wonderfully designed, cohesive environment where everything operates on the same off-kilter logic, a children’s picture book written by Franz Kafka.

Meanwhile, in what may or may not be another time and place, we meet Vella (Masasa Moyo), an adolescent girl from a community of pastry chefs. Vella’s world is askew in its own way: every year, girls like her are cheerfully sacrificed to a massive monster called Mog Chothra. The running joke is that everyone but Vella is totally okay with this, to the point where Vella’s plan to kill the creature doesn’t even register in their passive widdle brains. A society embracing something stupid and destructive against all logic, just because of peer pressure? That’s not topical at all! Anyway, Vella’s story entails the aforementioned desire to slay Mog Chothra, and is honestly not super-interesting. While Shay’s adventures have cohesion, Vella’s are rambling and episodic. She wanders through a series of thematic regions and it’s basically Loom crossed with The Hunger Games as directed by Henry Selick, but so what? I did find Vella to be the more enjoyable protagonist. Shay is kinda whiny. Vella is a sweet, charming girl who’s also got a streak of stone-cold badassery and is not afraid to ruin someone else’s day to get what she wants.

Ah, but even the trail of mayhem Vella leaves in her wake seems...safe. The entire game is a safe bet by the developers: we got all this money, we can’t mishandle it! They went-all out on art design, creating luminous environments that look painted into being. The humor is merely adequate, though I appreciate that it doesn't try too hard to be "hip." (Put it this way: I really liked The Lego Movie, but I am damned glad that Broken Age is nothing like The Lego Movie.) The puzzles are what you’d expect -- find items, then use them in esoteric ways later on -- but the problem is, their solutions are loudly telegraphed. Hey, this peach has a large PIT! Check out the PIT in this peach! Remember that word, PIT! It’s a tad insulting. The story doesn’t insult, though, especially when it teases us about how Shay and Vella might be connected. Switching at will between their stories helped in my case, as it gave me a “Eureka!” moment when I spotted a crucial parallel that helped me figure out what was going on. Yes, I guessed the big twist ending, but then the game overturned my expectations anyway. The final scene of Act I leaves us dazzled with its implications, and that’s why I reluctantly admit to enjoying the two-act structure: because I wouldn’t have gasped, “Holy shit! Did that really just happen?!” in quite the same way if I could have immediately continued playing. But then, Broken Age has the same problem as the Mockingjay movies: Act I feels like an extended preface to Act II, when all the stuff that matters will happen.

I like that tease, though, and I’m grateful I’ll be getting my hands on Act II soon. It promises to be longer, richer, more epic. I’ll blog about it. For now, I’m pleased with Broken Age while also feeling a tad mournful that game development as a whole has become so skittish. Gone are the days when developers had the power to toss whatever the hell they wanted on the screen. Even a “quirky” outfit like Double Fine probably has to push a game through a ton of focus groups who fretfully ensure that it’s not too challenging, not too culty. But, hey, they just revamped Grim Fandango to thunderous applause, so maybe Broken Age just needs to crack the door toward a renewed interest in classic adventure games, not fling it open all the way. And Act II might still turn Broken Age into a masterpiece of subversive storytelling, if the narrative clues of Act I lead where I think they’re leading. We’re not done with this game yet! Stick around.

VERDICT: I squee in a droll manner.

UPDATE: How does it all end? Read on!

Top 10 Björk Music Videos

Wow. Okay. So I’ve had this one Top Ten list on my backburner for, like, years, because when I first attempted to write it, I thought, “Nahhhh, it’s dumb. Björk music videos? Too niche.” I am, of course, very niche, and it’s high time I demonstrated my love for Björk. After all, she’s back in the spotlight right now because her new album, Vulnicura, is the best thing she’s done since the new millennium began. Also, there’s a crappy museum exhibit or something. I know she’s an acquired taste, never mainstream, always prone to questionable creative choices. But that exact boundless weirdness is why I adore her, and it’s best displayed with visual accompaniment, so here (with links!) are...

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN BJÖRK MUSIC VIDEOS

Big Time Sensuality
I’m dropping these in chronological order, so let’s start simple, with a fixed camera and a big ol’ endorphin explosion. If Björk wanted to gain some worldwide notice at the dawn of her solo career, she surely succeeded with the video for “Big Time Sensuality,” which finds the diminutive Icelander singing and dancing atop a flatbed truck as it wends its way through New York City. And when I say “dancing,” I mean...well, you have to witness it for yourself. It’s joyous, it’s awkward, it’s performed with a total lack of restraint. Björk’s freckled face is as expressive as her body; she’s a goofball in her own world, sparing barely a glance for the bewildered pedestrians in the background. This isn’t just a music video; it’s performance art, breaking the rules with benign glee. Björk is telling us, “I don’t care what you think; I just want to sing! Keep watching!” We did.

Isobel
More black-and-white? Yeah, but for a different aesthetic. While “Big Time Sensuality” strips Björk down (figuratively, you perv), “Isobel” cloaks her in pleasurable mystery. Directed by frequent collaborator Michel Gondry, this dreamy video casts Björk as both storyteller and main character: she plays an organ that is also a scrying pool, in which images of nature and civilization are juxtaposed. Everything exists in a soft, eerie haze. Gondry’s trademark surrealism is out in force (children in skeleton masks, toy airplanes hatching from a garden of lightbulbs...and foot fetishism?), but Björk still takes center stage as the smiling empress of this twilit, monochromatic world. With long hair and a sedate demeanor, she’s less a pixie, more a mature woman. But still playful.

Hyperballad
This may be my favorite Björk video of all time; it’s deceptively simple, yet so much unwinds before our eyes. For most of the song, the camera is panning back and forth across Björk’s motionless face as lights, colors, and images are superimposed over her. It’s an evocative use of two- and three-dimensionality, and is once again very mysterious. Is she dead? Merely asleep? Are we inside her mind? During this phase in her career, Björk was clearly interested in the connections between the natural and the technological, an interest she’s always maintained -- not only does she become a kind of living circuit board, but partway through the video she takes the form of a pixelated video game character. Both song and video contain hints of darkness (she imagines her own death to make her life feel more comforting), but it’s uplifting in the end; by turning inward, she’s unleashing her spirit to play. Thanks again, Michel Gondry! Every time I watch this, I find something new to admire.

Possibly Maybe
Now we’re definitely inside Björk’s mind, and it turns out to be a bottomless node of visual poetry. “Possibly Maybe” is a breakup song, not the sort of thing Björk tended to do back then (little did she know she’d release an entire breakup album in 2015). Rather than sad, it’s thoughtful. The video invites us to join Björk in a single blacklit room of glowing neon and distant lightning. Throughout the video, the room changes its color and mood. So does Björk; she cycles through different “characters” as she sings her way through heartache. Along the way, she takes a bath, eats watermelon, rocks an afro, and appears to lick lemon Kool-Aid off the floor. This sounds silly, but, as always, Björk makes her quirky behavior interlock with the lyrics and images, allowing us to admire how intensely she’s herself. As a video, “Possibly Maybe” is like a comforting box of chocolates.

All is Full of Love
Yep. The lesbian robots. It’s the one with the lesbian robots. Which is like saying Brokeback Mountain is the one with the cowboy buttsex. Flesh meets technology? Beloved ground for Björk! Step back and appreciate how elegant this video is. I just learned that the “remix” used here is actually the original version of the song. Its scraping percussion and eerie string-plucking are far superior. Robo-Björk inhabits a cold world of porcelain-white and Batmobile-black, but the eroticism begins early, as she’s assembled and serviced by phallic machines while milky fluid drips and flows in reverse time. And then, of course, the passionate and tender tryst between two ’bots, love in a seemingly loveless future. You could see it as a really weird prequel to Wall-E, but how about you just take it as the haunting work of visual art that it is? Love is everywhere. Who can argue with such a moral?

Pagan Poetry
Björk’s fourth album, Vespertine, was rather cerebral, which resulted in some hard-to-like music videos. I can’t exactly say I like the vid for “Pagan Poetry,” but neither I nor the music world can deny its impact. It is, by far, her most controversial: flashes of needles and thread piercing flesh and distorted closeups of explicit sexual acts segue into Björk performing with bare breasts and a “wedding dress” that has been literally sewn onto her body. She looks like she’s tripping balls and she probably is -- on pain endorphins. An alleged act of joy, a woman preparing to consummate her love, is twisted into a weird masochistic indulgence -- and it somehow works. It wouldn’t if Björk weren’t so committed to selling her own take on reality, if she weren’t so fearless. As it is, she embodies the joy and terror of womanhood, shocking us for a good reason.

Who Is It
Flash forward again and Björk’s next album, Medúlla, is a mostly a capella experiment in which human voices serve as every single tool in Björk’s aural arsenal. Well, mostly. The video version of “Who Is It” is all about the bells. Björk frolics across a stark volcanic plain, endless sky overhead, sporting a dress covered in thousands of silver bells. She is joined at various points by a somewhat eerie bell choir of black-clad children, and also by a pair of cute wolves. She and her minions seem to have sprung from the stark Icelandic landscape: playful sprites, icy cold, teasing us mortals with their music. I suppose Björk is part of her nation’s folklore by now. The imagery surrounding her is as evocative as ever and I want to visit Iceland someday, on the offchance I’ll glimpse her jingling amongst the boulders.

Earth Intruders
“Earth Intruders” is...well, I can’t call it mainstream, but it’s definitely one of Björk’s more accessible tracks, with its Timbaland beats and environmentalist slant. Thus, the video is easy on the eyes, but still very cool. Following Björk’s love for mixed media, venerable animator Michel Ocelot slaps the silhouettes of costumed tribal dancers onto a surreal marbleized background, while Björk’s singing face looms over all. Too goddess-y? Duh, it’s Björk; didn’t I just say she makes a good mythological figure? The dancing warriors are both naturistic and warlike; they even wield bazookas at one point, as Björk howls, “Turmoil! Carnage!” Is she saying humanity is destructive by nature? Probably, but she retains her sympathy for us and all our foibles. The ending of the video, which I won’t spoil, is a lovely moment of wordless benediction. Björk said, let there be Music, and it was Good.

Innocence
This one almost seems like a cheat, because Björk isn’t really in it. Well, she is, but...back up. She held a music video contest for “Innocence,” allowing tech-savvy fans to put images to the song. The winners, a duo from France (man, Björk can’t go wrong with French directors), dove cheerfully into the Uncanny Valley and cooked up a singing CGI mannequin of Björk, which is really creepy, but fits just fine with the video. Archetypes of childhood run amok: Björk wears a toylike armored carapace (the same one from the cover of her album, Volta) and is surrounded by horrified-looking dolls and teddy bears, as well as lizards with Cheshire cat grins who perform martial arts. Or something. I wouldn’t call it profound but it’s super fun to watch. You’d think it’s just a meaningless parade of darkly whimsical images, but the filmmakers pull off a slick “twist ending” that I wholeheartedly approve of. It’s Björk in a nutshell...or a candy-colored cartoon shell. Whatever.

Wanderlust
I’m happy. I get to end with a video that I swear is a minor freaking masterpiece. “Wanderlust” is everything great about Björk in one package. It’s weird, it’s epic, it’s dark, it’s mythic, it’s whimsical. It’s seven-and-a-half minutes of eye-popping beauty. Björk and her latest director, Encyclopedia Pictura, utilize every trick they can: claymation, puppetry, CGI, matte painting, even circus arts. In this dreamy folktale, Björk appears as a yak herder riding her beasts down a raging river, battling balletically with a mournful demon on her back, and attracting the attention of a river god...who may be fearsome but is not without compassion in the end. This video is as visually thrilling as any blockbuster, and while I still like “Hyperballad” better, I’d show “Wanderlust” to people as a more easy-to-appreciate example of how creative, how wonderfully outside-the-box, Björk has always been. She’s made two more albums since Volta and created more good music videos (“Mutual Core” almost made this list), but she has yet to top “Wanderlust.” And maybe she shouldn’t.

But, then, at 49 years old she’s as amazing as ever, and there’s no reason to think she’s gonna run out of steam any time soon. When you enter the world of Björk, you have to keep your mind open and your senses on synesthesia mode, but the rewards are many. Click those links. Feast upon, drink in, and inhale the videos. Give thanks that we have Björk.