Marble Hornets

I love the internet. You surf your merry way through its various nooks and crannies, and suddenly you find something, sometimes this something is funny, other times it's exciting or sad, and yet again other times, it's flat out fucking terrifying. You see, from the dark dungeons of Tvtropes, I was lead to a... well, I'm not certain what I should call it, so I'll just call it a series for now, on Youtube, called Marble Hornets.

The story of Marble Hornets follows the tale of the filming of the eponymous student film, and how the set, and the director in particular, is harrassed by a mystical well-dressed character of some considerable height, or wait, that's not quite how the story goes. You see, a friend of the director gets his hands on massive amounts of raw footage from the unfinished Marble Hornets. The director, Alex, doesn't want anything to do with it, as he has given up the entire project and refuses to elaborate as to why. After some persuasion, the friend, only referred to as J, gets the entirety of the tapes recorded for and around the movie, in trade, J agrees to never mention the film to Alex again.

In some sort of jumbled order, we are presented with cuts of the film and other segments recorded with a handheld camera, detailing Alex' progressive paranoia and the strange tall man whose coming is heralded by the audio on the camera cutting out, or possibly being cut out. To add to it all, the youtube reply segments are added from a second user, a mystical user by the name of "totheark." These are definitely more cryptic, alien almost, but occasionally show signs of being related to the segment it replies to, some times being parts of the happening from a different angle, implying whatever's stalking the set, and eventually J, is the one uploading them. All in all, it's one big clusterfuck of layers and layers, where the narrator occasionally takes on the mantle of hero, or victim, while some alien force seems to be able to transcend the bonds of narrative structure. It's eerily familiar.

Yes, you could say this whole experience reminds me of House of Leaves, and that's a good thing and a really, really bad thing all at the same time. You see, while the postmodern take on the role of narrators is refreshing, and the mystery surrounding the whole thing is very interesting, it's frankly starting to unnerve me. I feel I shouldn't even be writing this, lest I turn into some third-rate Johnny Truant-copy, tormented by the maddening truth of the fiction (?) I'm confronted with, haunted by a spectral beast that either is the monster of the story or the monster of my mind. And still I write. Wonder what that says about me? But I digress.

Much of the absolute terror that's inspired from this meta-narrative is extremely subtle. For example, there's one segment which is essentially one character in front of a window, talking about the titular film, and I still can't decide whether the mysterious tall man is standing on the other side of the window or not. You'll see, while watching this story, that a man in a tux is disturbingly difficult to pick out from a poorly illuminated background dominated by dark colors. Either that, or I've been imagining things, which definitely isn't good. Don't get me wrong, there's the occasional jump scare too, but they're fairly clever. For example, audio glitches of various types plague the film, and when one of them comes 'round, they come 'round LOUD, and since you're so immersed in the story, such sudden boos hit hard. Of course, that's to say nothing of the violent brainfuck that happens in Entry #19, but I'll let y'all cross that bridge when you get to it.

All in all, I like the Marble Hornets experience. I think it's a good thing when young filmmakers try to really play with the mediums at their disposal, in this case Youtube and Twitter, and make a story that really uses every aspect of these sites. I'm yet again drawing parallels with House of Leaves, but the two works have a lot in common. The series is still ongoing as far as I can tell, and it can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets Don't say I didn't warn you, though. I watched the 24 episodes available in one sitting, and I'm starting to regret it.

Paranormal Activity

Occasionally, I get very pessimistic, usually around the times when I feel the horror genre in general is loosing steam. Then, along comes a movie called Paranormal Activity, and things take a turn towards the awesome. Yes, there, I said it, I love Paranormal Activity. If my opinion on the film was the only thing that matters to you, you can now click "back" in your browser and go on your merry way. Some spoilers, but nothing major.

I must admit, I did not have high hopes for Paranormal Activity, at all. You see, the trailer was surprisingly unhelpful, and the synopsis didn't really tickle me. Guy and a girl, something haunts their asses, guy tries to document it... it gets worse. As far as I could see, it was a movie about a haunting, shot in a semi Blair Witch-kind of style and it apparently frightened a cinema full of moviegoers. Yay. Well, I must admit, as far as marketing goes, just showing a crowd's reaction to the movie is actually kind of a smooth move, sure, it doesn't beat the "this was real OMG"-approach to Blair Witch, but I doubt anyone is stupid enough to try retreading that particular ground anytime soon. Oh Wait. Anyway, it wasn't until I heard one particular spoiler, together with a rather glowing review, that I got interested. You see, it's not the house that's haunted, it's the female main character.

Granted, the thought of person-centered haunts isn't all that new either. For example, I think there was a Supernatural-episode themed around such, but it's still not something we see all that often. Also, it solves a rather old problem with haunting stories, since 99% of these rely on the main characters all being massive morons, staying in a house that you have to realize, even if you're massively genre blind, is full of some seriously fucked up mojo. Also, it raises a very interesting question: What does this entity want with its designated victim? This question and many promises of this film being seriously creepy made me check it out despite my initial lackluster enthusiasm, and I'm glad I did.

Well, as I mentioned, this film is done as a sort of Blair Witch Project-thing, albeit with a lot less wavy camera. You'll notice my favorite First Person Movies, Rec and Paranormal Activity, both have less frantic wavy camerawork, whereas FPMs I'm not that crazy about, for example Cloverfield has... well... more. A lot of Paranormal Activity's scares happen with the camera mounted on a tripod during the night sequences, so even when stuff gets crazy, we get a good overview. I think one of this movie's biggest strengths is that it keeps it simple. A lot of times, we just get the sound of approaching steps or something small being moved, from a sheet to a door, it makes you wonder, is whatever's doing the haunting just warming up, or is it for some reason not strong enough to do more? Well, either way, we do get some heavier stuff later on, but it's still fairly subdued, leaving us with a slow burn of fear, if you will.

In particular, one scare that doesn't feel that bad on paper, but was wickedly effective in the movie, was that the female character got out of bed during one of these nightly filmings, stood still for four hours, which we thankfully fast-forwarded through, before looming over her sleeping beau. I also noticed that the movie had managed to make its audience fear video not being fast-forwarded. You see, it shows nights as recorded by the man's camera, and when nothing happens, it fast-forwards, but about a minute or so before creepyness ensues, it goes back to 1x speed, and thus, in the cinema, I could hear clearly scared whispers of "it's going slow, oh god it's going slow." It was, in short, delicious. It's that kind of reaction to something that's not in itself scary that I hope to one day achieve.

As for acting, it's not going to win any Oscars for that, but the two main characters do their jobs good enough, and their fear feels fairly genuine, so I'm guessing I can't really complain too much. I've been thinking about the characters in general, and although I didn't exactly wish bad upon him, I realize the husband came off as a bit of an idiot. I mean, yeah, he doesn't trust the spirit medium the wife ends calling in, which is forgivable pretty much everywhere else than in a horror movie, but when he, contrary to prior agreement with his better half, gets an Ouija-board and tries to communicate with the spiritual being, well... not only does it sound like a very bad idea, but it's also kind of jerkish. Still, the characters are sympathic enough that you doesn't want the horrible things that happen to them to actually happen to them, so in that respect, he's still better than your average horror movie character, jerkish tendencies notwithstanding.

So, yeah, check out Paranormal Activity if you have the nerves and is in the mood for something different. Check by next week, when I will write about something... out of the ordinary.

But first:

Yeees, I figured after talking about a really good movie that made me want to die a little, it would be better to write about a bad movie that made me want a lot of other people to die, just as a change of pace. In other words, no Paranormal Activity today folks, today I'm taking on I Know Who Killed Me. This rant is spoileriffic.

I had heard about this film, mostly about how horrendously bad it is, and when the stars aligned and I finally got my hand on a Voddler invite with my name on it, and Voddler had the movie available, I decided to check it out. That was, in short, a mistake. I spent an entire afternoon, just methodically going through this film and writing down all that was wrong and bad about it, and still I felt like I didn't get to cover everything in appropriate detail. This, however, is more the condensed version of that.

So, the movie is about Aubrey Fleming, a high-school girl and alleged talented writer who gets kidnapped by a serial killer, only to be found again, insisting that her name is Dakota Moss. Are there really two almost identical, yet very different, girls, or is Dakota just fooling herself. The answers, in short is: Yes and Only into thinking she can act. So, this movie stars Lindsay Lohan as both Aubrey and Dakota, and her performance does not lift the movie to any mentionable heights. If something, she's the ballast on an U-boat in that respect. You see, as mind-numbingly poor as Ms. Lohan's performance is, the negative impact she has on the quality of the movie is far overshadowed by several other elements, most noticeably the story. Yes, the story is bad enough to outdo Lindsay Lohan in the failing department, you should be very very afraid.

You see, this story clearly has an idea or two that the author would love to show to the world. No wait, it has exactly one idea, the idea of non-religious stigmata involving some supernatural bond between twins. The entirety of the main plot revolves around this in its entirety. This'd be very boring, hadn't it been for the subplots. Oh dear merciful abominations against nature, the subplots. You see, the movie seems to do pretty much the same thing as M. Night Shyamalan more or less insists on doing every movie he makes, that is halting the main plot in favor of character development and character development-subplots. You know what, I'm not overly fond of this approach, but I'm going to go over Shyamalan's career and my two cents on him later, so I'll leave that alone for now.

My point, though, is that at least Shyamalan does what he does well. I Know Who Killed Me well... doesn't. I remember one particular instant where our intrepid heroine Dakota searches through the room of the killer's previous victims and spots a trophy. We're not told what the trophy is, but the way the cinematography and characters work it let us know that this is important in one way or another. So, Dakota reaches out for it, and for a brief moment, it looks like we might actually get some progress on the main plot, seconds later she's hauled out of her house by her parents. At this point, I had to pause the movie and just let the rage pass. You see, it's not that the main plot is very good, it's just that up until that point, we hadn't gotten a single clue about the killer, and except for the reveal in the last part of the movie, we wouldn't get another. The whole "killer" part seems like it had been cut, trimmed and then cut again before it was thrown into a wood chipper, we never learn why the killer kills and we never learn why we should care.

Another thing about the movie, both of the main characters, Aubrey and Dakota, are both as likeable as a serial killer dressed entirely in dead babies. To take the one that vexes me less first: Dakota. Stereotypical Bad Girl, so incredibly paint-by-numbers "bad" that it approaches parody. Aubrey, on the other hand, is in the movie all of... what, fifteen minutes total, and I not only dislike her, but also hate several aspects of her more than I've hated any other character. You see, Aubrey is an equally paint-by-numbers Good girl, approaching Mary Sue-levels at lightspeed, and only to make it better, or worse, you be the judge, she's a writer. Great, can you say "author avatar," much? The fact that everyone seems to be deeply fascinated by her crappy writing doesn't exactly help. Oh, and to top it of, Aubrey does what every fucking author does according to fictionland, she writes about herself, except not quite, as she writes about the life and times of her lost identical twin, except she seems to be clarvoyant... somehow. I'd rather not dwell on that aspect of it, but let me just ask one thing, why on earth does all author write solely about themselves in the most transparent way possible in fiction? I mean, the people who makes them do this are all writers, why do it? I'm not sure, but I'm convinced a writer has a duty to write about something else than his own problems and beliefs. One of my first books on scriptwriting told me "Just because it happened to you doesn't make it interesting to others." and from this, I've always assumed that it's a rather basic writer thing to not gab on endlessly about you and yours. Then again, it'd be unrealistic for a writer to write a writer who writes better than the writer who writes him (that sentence kind of got away from me,) but come on, at least a little effort, please?

Well, if that wasn't enough, the director seems to be convinced he's destined for greatness. There's a very Lynch-esque feel over the movie, or at least a very "Wishes it was Lynch"-esque vibe, heavy use of colors, a vague attempt at mixing reality that seems surreal with surreality that seems real, the whole package. The thing is, of course, that the general feel of the movie is more like something an over-eager film student would put together if given the funds. Every time I say that, I feel bad for the over-eager film students of the world, after all, they have potential to become better, potential to surprise, potential to lead the way in a new and exciting branch of cinema, heck, I am one of those young hopefuls, but I have at least reached the point where I recognize our most common mistake, and I Know Who Killed Me plays as an itemized list of them.

I musn't run away

Ok, the time has come to stop messing around. The reason I haven't been posting for two months is that I've been dreading to write about Antichrist, but the time of faffing about is over. Come on, Antichrist, let's dance.

So, the basic story of Antichrist is fairly standard for a horror movie, although I'm debating whether this is actually a horror movie, but the horror/thriller line is sort of dodgy anyways, so let's just assume that this is a horror movie for simplicity. A couple goes to a cabin in the woods to battle the grief of loosing their only child. A set up, I might add, that's fairly similar setup to one of my horror favorites, The Strangers, except you change the outcome from "masked psychopats with nothing better to do" to "The inherit evil of mankind," but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, the roles of Him and Her kind of balances between knowing them just a little too well and not knowing them at all, for example we don't get to know their names. as for getting to know them, we get very close to them, into their intimacy, at least in the first scene, where we see a sex scene between the two in black & white and a mesmerizing sort of slow-motion. Lemme just go right ahead and say we probably wouldn't see anything like this in an american film. Of course, David Lynch would probably like to, but I guess the producers are a bit more persuasive over the pond. Well, this scene, except for setting us up for the brainfuck that is to follow with the accident, also sets us into the mood of the movie. Lars Von Trier's got our attention now, and he's going to do horrible, horrible things with it before he lets it go.

I won't go into details with the plot, but basically, He decides to try to cure Her grief via psychotherapy, since he's a psychologist by profession. A part of this therapy is taking her to an old cabin She once visited with their son. On the way, it's pretty obvious this is a really bad idea, at least from the standard genre savvy perspective. For example, we get a little subliminal fuck you via snarling faces superimposed over the woods the couple drive by, or through. Once they reach the cabin, the treatment begins, but things soon go straight to hell, neither passing start nor collecting 2000$. It's a bit hard to describe what happens, but She gets convinced she's evil, and tries to convince Him, quite violently in the end.

In the end, I feel that I should leave it to more capable hands to try to analyze this movie. I don't know anything, after all. I'm just a film geek with half a year (and counting) worth of Psychology education and my own little nook in the intertubes. Of course, I have realized that people rowing themselves out on deep waters and burning the oars is what the internet is for, so this is why I'm writing today. Anyway, as far as I see it, Antichrist can either be about the bottomless evil of mankind or the depths of depravity to which one is willing to sink to escape grief. Granted, a straightforward interpretation of this film could also say that it's only women that's evil and that men just have to defend themselves from the sadistic hell harpies known as womenfolk.

I'm a bit sceptical to that, mostly since it appears to be a bit too much of a simplistic interpretation. Call me elitist, but I think that if you find the answer to what the movie is about without copious amounts of digging in both the movie and your own mind, you're not doing it right. This, of course, applies extra strongly to movies like Antichrist, but it holds true for most other movies, and is mostly the reason why I do not consider Fight Club as an anarchistic manifesto. Also, in the end, He winds up killing his wife, and you can argue that as self-defense all you will, but I maintain that there's a difference between trying to subdue someone or gain enough distance to flee, as one will want to do when defending yourself, and killing them. It could be the pacifist in me speaking, but I figure the end is His descent into darkness as much as it's Hers.

My second interpretation, I'm starting to doubt a little, but it's worth a shot, I would say. You see, what it would appear is that He is over his grief, or has processed it by the book, to the point where he's capable of functioning normally very quickly. Me, I think he's in it just as deep as She is, or maybe more. What makes me say this is that I'm fairly sure you're not supposed to try psychotherapy on your own family or close friends, and if He wasn't at his wit's end, he'd probably know that. In a way, trying to treat her is in reality him trying to treat himself. You could say there's a level of cognitive dissonance at work in the character of He. He considers himself a man who knows enough about the workings of the human mind to treat grief, but he himself feels grief he can't overcome, and therefore the grief gets pushed aside, at which points it manifests as a focus on treating Her of her grief. I'm certain this paragraph would make several of my psychology professors cry, but hey, I've still got a lot to learn.

She, on the other hand, is unable to concieve a setting where unfortunate circumstances alone could end in the death of her child, and therefore adds a factor contributing to this, herself being evil. Of course, it's hinted that this particular problem is actually older than that, since it would seem She somehow let her research into medieval witch hunts and misogyny in general get to her back at the above mentioned first cabin trip. That is, of course, if you accept that there's no supernatural snake in this paradise, literally as the cabin is named Eden. Me, I believe this is mostly an in-their-minds experience, but I realize a lot of things would make sense if there was some supernatural presence.

Well, I'm about ready to wind down. Antichrist is a film you should see, at least if you care about what good filmmakers make when they are severely depressed, but it's probably not a movie you'll want to watch again. It's a bit like Irreversible, in that I haven't been able to watch it a second time, and neither will most people, I suspect.

So, happy 2010, I guess. Here's hoping this year will be a good one for horror. Speaking of which, I'm planning to cover Paranormal Activity rather soon, so tune in for that.

Madness

So, turn out my little Halloween-prank earned me some bad karma, so I have found myself computer-less for a while following Halloween. The problem gets its fix, but before I know it, the exam season is upon me. Oh well. I was going to review Antichrist, but that's a freaking huge job, and I don't have all that much mental stamania left nowadays, so instead, I figured I could let y'all in on my most recent positive horror movie experience.

Lemme tell you about Lovecraft, or rather, I did earlier, but I might not have told you why there's few Lovecraft-inspired movies. The short version is, of course, that Lovecraft's forte is the unmentionable and unimaginable horrors that live in old and dark places of both the world and the universe. Needless to say, the unimaginable does not translate to the silver screen all that well. About at the time you break out the concept art, you look back on what you've created so far and realize it's not as much Lovecraft any more as just your average monster flick with, depending on how faithful you are to the source material, varying degrees of racism.

So, how does one make a good Lovecraft movies? Being parts insane, parts dedicated and 100% a fan does help. That's the guys at the HPL Historical Society for ya. The movie in question is a filmification of Lovecraft's most famous short story, Call of Cthulhu. The story about one trying to uncover just who this Cthulhu creature is, and the unfortunate consequences of seeking out his seabound home.

This movie is interesting for several reasons. For one, it's produced in 2005, and it's a silent film. How often do you see that? For the most part, it's a fairly good faux-retro effect, but the framerate is higher than one would expect from that era. Of course, without the higher framerate, one of my favorite effects would have less impact. You see, portraying good old Cthulhu is harder than it strictly speaking should be to show a giant, winged, squid-faced humanoid. It takes a little to make people really believe this guy will end the earth if given half a chance, and a little more to make people realize that anyone who looks at him directly gibberingly mad.

The people at HPLHS went a rather untraditional route in that respect, stop-motion animation. Sure, stop-motion looks uncanny, but I never attributed that special kind of lovecraft madness to it. It makes sense though, if one assumes that the Great Old Ones, like Cthulhu, has an otherworldly side to them that doesn't fit with the human idea of three (four really) dimensional reality. Like if a hypothetical two-dimensional creature saw a three-dimensional being move, would probably see it move as in 2D, because that was all it could fathom, and you can bet it'd look odd, so therefore, the stop-motion jerkyness fits ole' squidface like a glove.

If there's anything negative to say about this movie, it is that their attempts at mimicking the ocean is rather poor. Of course, a sparkly blanket and some fog works better than nothing, but it is noticeable. So, short post, check it out.

Something different

I figured this was a good a time as any to tell you a little tale of computer troubles. Don't worry, this is no off-topic rant post, I don't do those. No, you'll see a common theme with the other writings in my blog. It all started back in November last year. I was working on my contribution to the month-long novelist frenzy, the national novel writing month, the one thing I would do that would forever tell me that although writing screenplays might be my business, I would never as long as I live even think about writing a novel ever again.


During this time, some of my friends had an odd fascination with the strange and grotesque things one might find on the internet. Anyone who knew us at that time could tell you that the things that was unearthed from the damp restraint of the world wide web on nights during that time was ranging from slightly unnerving to flat out disgusting. So, when I recieved a mail from a friend with an attached link, one could say I wasn't feeling optimistic about the contents. The link itself told me nothing, it was to a video to some minor video-hosting service I'd never heard of. Let it not be known that I don't trust my friends judgement, because I did end up checking it out.

It was an odd sort of flick, amateur artsy horror of a kind, titled "Boys and Girls Come Out To Play." The first part was nothing I hadn't seen before, intercutting bizzare flashes of disturbing imagery with more surreal shots, every shot cutting away too quickly to get a good look at what was happening. It kinda reminded me of the "Le Fin Absolue du Monde"-sequences from John Carpenters Cigarette Burns. As the movie progressed, though, it became very freaky. I can't quite put words on why it freaked me out, it just pulled me in, slowly. It was then they appeared. Again, the exact descriptions eludes me, but they were grotesque sights to behold. They were human, or had been, the dead eyes that stared at me from beyond the LCD screen. There was feral strenght about them, even though they all had large chunks of meat missing from their bones, probably some cut tendons too.



The movie ended a bit abruptly after that, and I did my best to forget the cold unease the movie had given me. It was just another flick. Some ambitious director had hooked a makeup-person of some kind and decided to have a freakout. Luckily, I had a lot of other things to do at the time, what with the novel-writing and whatnot, so I managed to stop thinking about it. That is, untill my computer started acting up. Naturally, this being in the middle of a major writing job, computer problems did not go well with me, but these problems were plain unnerving. I had heard of similar computer problems, and with the popularity of screamers and other malicious trojans, written semingly solely for the lulz, I figured some asshole on a forum somewhere had a good laugh on my behalf. It started so subtly, quick flashes of images I could just manage to see was there. After a while, the flashes grew longer, and I recognized the creatures from the film.


Now, I'm not particularly computer-savvy, so I decided that if my antivirus-programs couldn't do the job, I'd do a clean install of the OS and let god sort 'em all out. The problem persisted, it shouldn't have, there's no way it could. If anything, the flashes became longer, and I couldn't Ctrl-alt-del my way out of them, neither was alt-f4 any help. I started to notice one prominent character amongst them, a blond girl with a rusty butcher knife, eyeing me. I'm not talking "looking at the camera" either, she didn't look at a camera, she looked straight at me. At this point, I was rightfully freaked out and decided that no ammount of computerwork was worth this. I started keeping the computer off, but it didn't seem to stick, even when it was closed and unplugged, I could hear it hum, and when I opened the lid, I saw them, closer to the screen this time.

Removing the battery and keeping it stored in a separate compartment from the computer helped, for a while. One night, I woke from the sound of my computer humming to life. I didn't want to look, but I knew from the soft, odd light that spread across the room that they were there. I tried to keep my cool after that, after all, I had heard of hardware-dependant viruses or malware before. So, I stuffed the computer away and got a new one. Not the best of fiscal desicions, but I had the money and valued my peace of mind higher than the money my new notebook PC cost me. For a while, this solved the problem. After all, there was no concievable reason for it to continue, and this pc running on Linux, I felt my defences were pretty impenetrable.

A short while later, I was working with a script project of mine in the dark. I find that inspiration takes more often in the night, and I seldom have anything else to do at that time of the day, so I do most of my writing at night. That's when it hit. I don't know if you've ever had the feeling something is behind you, crouching in your blind zone, where you can't look without twisting your upper body, and by the time you do that, it'll be too late. Let me tell you, it's not a comfortable feeling, but it was plesant in comparison to what happened.

The picture came back. I wish I could say it was a figment of my sleep-deprived imagination, but it was as real as any link of this story of the grotesque. They closed in on the screen, the knife-wielding blonde soon occupying the majority of my screen, dead black eyes penetrating screen as if it were a thin veil, and then, the screen went black. It just so happens that when the light is right and the screen is black, it works as a mirror, and you can see what's behind you. Even given its mirror-like qualities, my body took up most of the reflection, but behind me, I could see it, a sleek, pale and bloody hand grabbing my throath from behind and, even worse, a rusty knife comming into view from the other side.

Now, at this juncture, I believe it's time to confess. I've been lying to you, dear readers, there never was a movie called "Boys and Girls come out and play," or at least there isn't one as far as I know. No, I read a story, not quite unlike the one you are reading now. Sure, the wording was different, probably better too, but I'm fairly certain the effect will be the same.

Now, I'm no cruel person, so I won't be too mean about this. Things has to be done, of course, but I can promise I'll get it done a bit quicker. I can't promise the knife will be much less rusty or any sharper, but I'll try to concentrate on the arteries. Don't misunderstand, I don't want you to post this to five or ten or hundred unsuspecting victims or anything like that. First off, I hate it when people do that, and secondly, it won't help. Nothing will. Happy Halloween

Zombieland

I've got no witty or insightful introduction today, so I'll just drop right to the review. Zombieland is, in one simple and catchy word, awesome. Sure, it contains runny zombies, but they feel proper zombie-esque, probably the "dead"-look that a good makeup artist can help you with. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a primarly slow zombies guy, believe me, I don't have to change my URL yet. All I'm saying is this kinda works, keeps the pace good n' strong.

In this post-apocalyptic tale of flesh eaters, we follow the nerdy zombie survivor "Columbus" who teams up with utterly badass zombicalypse cowboy "Tallahassee," and eventually ruthless swindler duo "Witchita" and "Little Rock." So yeah, they don't operate with their real names, if you couldn't tell. The characters are pretty interesting, which they have to be, considering they're the only four left, except for one, but I won't spoil it. The genre savvy Columbus does the narrating, and this does add a good bit of humor, especially given his nerdy deadpan. Said nerdy deadpan comes to shine in lines like:

Columbus: [Tallahassee] is in the asskicking business
[Cut to Tallahasse taking on zombies, chainsaws akimbo]
Tallahasse: And Business is good

I'm guessing that line is taken from somewhere else, but honestly, who can disagree to that when one is wielding dual chainsaws against the undead, the asskicking business is, indeed, good. Sure, Tallahassee has his other moments in the movie, most notably a Deliverance reference, complete with banjo, but in my mind, the moment described above was easily one of the most effective ways to establish a character as a (probably insane) badass, I have ever seen.

Of course, the other characters get their moments too, Columbus, for example, faces down a zombie clown, a creature combining his fear of getting eaten and his fear of clowns. It's not quite the "holy shit, did you SEE that?"-level of awesome, but I'd still say he had his time to shine.

Zombieland is, all in all, not a movie that takes itself too seriously, and I think it does it good. Sure, I have nothing against the more heavy political statement-zombie films, although I have realized Romero, the champion of allegorical zombie-thingies, might be loosing his touch, what with Diary Of The Dead being about as subtle as an anvil, its major saving graces being a dynamite-throwing amish and a pretty cool professor. This action-filled zombie romp is a hoot to watch, it's not very scary, but it'll entertain you, and it can be considered a feelgood-movie for people who don't watch feelgood movies because those aren't manly enough.