This trashy masterpiece is the first genuine fun I've had this month.
Llamageddon opens & is punctuated throughout with decently done animation sequences accompanied by rip off Dethklok tunes.
The film itself looks like it was shot on phones in places. The acting is entirely unconvincing, the ages of the actors seem all wrong. & the dialog is both bad & genius. Nothing like opining about the planetary status of Pluto at a house party (followed up with the necessary Uranus jokes ofc).
The effects overall are reminiscent of Plan 9 from Outer Space or Nintendo 64 era video game sequences. & I'm going to guess they used several gallons of craft grade acrylic paint for both blood & llama fluid.
The spaceship is on point. I love it so much.
The electrocution scene was entirely unconvincing, which made it even funnier. Wiring doesn't work like that.
This movie was not "good" no, but it leaned into the badness, the weirdness. It is a passable movie in the VelociPastor/ Wolfcop sense. & I actually had fun watching it.
Current ranking:
Llamageddon
Mortal
The Voyeurs
Sea Fever
Demon House
It Came from the Desert
& I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.
I’m always going to want to like a movie that tries to root itself in folklore and esoteric philosophy. & this one came close to being something I’d like but not quite.
It’s one thing to explore more widely shared folk stories but I think where it started to feel a little weird is when it brought up esoteric books that were unfamiliar enough that the Rabbi character was even unfamliar. A quick search only turns up Hebrew versions of the book available on uncommon, religious-based websites.
As someone who studies the occult, this is a red flag because there are large swaths of Kaballistic mysticism & Jewish philosophy translated into various languages & available to the uninitiated reader. In my experience, something that is not widely translated & distributed is closed to the uninitiated. & much of what we can read & study is not simply open to practice, interpretation, or available to be editorialized or played with.
I guess I couldn’t get past that. The way they build the lore into the plot is interesting but hinges a lot on twins being particularly significant regarding possession & this particular book & the way it is explained seemed a bit flimsy which is what prompted me to google the book.
Beyond that, the film stylistically seemed to be leaning pretty hard on visual effects typical of an early 00s Japanese horror movie. & I get it, imitate your heroes to find your own voice, but paired with the mysticism element it came off very Crowley-esque -- just pull in “weird” stuff from various cultures & white-wash it so it can be gawked at & consumed by a mainstream western audience.
Back to the plot, I want to know the logic behind our dude chilling tf out as soon as the girl says the same thing she’s been saying with the right amount of nice or whatever. But when you had Rabbi shouting it in Hebrew & buddy priest doing his own Episcopalian thing over there our dude was perfectly fine & strong af.
I mean if it was some sort of fetal development point -- which would make a certain amount of sense with the plot -- cool, but there was really not even a hint at that. & anyway we’re talking about a series of minutes, not days.
Admittedly, I may be erring a little too far on the side of caution based on the knowledge I’ve picked up studying the occult. I try to be as respectful as possible of various traditions & practitioners as a rule.
But overall, the movie just wasn’t that enjoyable for me.
This movie was so bad it broke my stride. & while I continued drawing for the rest of this week, I just couldn’t find the time or energy to photograph & write & compile everything.
& because of all that, here I am on the fifth day of November, slowly catching up on the last 2 weeks of October.
I did take a loose approach to this movie as a prompt & ended up drawing a weird dream spider/duck/human thing I dreamed of once. I felt like this was completely fair because I fell asleep on three different occasions trying to get through this.
The first time I fell asleep I was in bed, which fair enough, that’s on me for being overscheduled & trying to binge a bunch of shitty movies as part of this challenge.
The second time, I was in the living room recliner and had been knitting to keep myself awake until my hands got sore. As soon as I put the needles down I fell asleep.
The third time I was sitting upright at my computer desk trying to take notes. No notes were actually taken.
I am only human. The pacing in this movie is off & the story was not for me. & the big problem was that this was one of about half of the movies I watched in October that fell that way.
& this movie was uniquely hard to pay attention to because there were zero likable characters -- the fucked up mom, the overly peppy neighbor (who didn’t deserve to be murdled obviously), the legit serial killer incel boy, & the victim who was cloned so many times we had no way of actually getting to know who she was.
While Great Value Ted Bundy Jr. is a fucking septic tank encased in human flesh, everyone actually sucks here & they suck in a way that didn’t even piss me off. It felt obvious that I liked nobody & had no stake in the story.
So, the movie was not for me by any means but it helped me catch up on my sleep so I’m not big mad I guess.
Last week was a low point in the challenge. I barely finished all the movies & ended up falling way behind in reviews & sketches because I was mind-numbingly bored with the whole process.
To finish the next movie on the list, “All that We Destroy,” I had to make three attempts (I fell asleep twice) & take an entire evening off to marathon movies that did not suck or put me to sleep to remind myself that I really do love the genre. My reset included: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), A Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Hounds of Baskervilles (1939), & Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
The hard reset worked & I’m entirely through this month’s list (the final week’s movies were overall really good) but not caught up with all of my drawings & text reviews & may not start posting again for another day or two.
But since I’m done, here’s my final list (the upcoming reviews/sketches are italicized):
This movie made me mad uncomfortable I’ll give it that.
This is 100% a suspense movie, there’s no supernatural element to it & nothing is hinted at. There is a family mystery that is eventually unveiled but it’s just a crusty ass old rich dude doing regular crusty ass old rich dude shit fucking up everyone’s lives around him. & these are stories I know exist but I can do without.
& that is annoying because I was excited to see a German movie on the list (German is my second language). But tbf, everything I just wrote is just the tip of the fucking iceberg.
& since I’m massively annoyed, I’m about to just spoil it -- so scroll away if that’s a problem.
This fucking movie about a teacher raping her student had the motherfucking audacity for the twist to be that she’s also his aunt & this is weird incest revenge shit.
Goddamn it.
I hate most of the things about this movie & will probably rant a bit on the podcast but I’m going to cap this because there is nothing I have to say isn’t peppered in gratuitous fucks.
I was very tired when I watched this & incredibly frustrated with multiple attempted sketches so I’m dealing with it.
Overall, this movie was good. It was not particularly scary or particularly enthralling but it was solid & well-paced & played with some interesting ideas.
On the surface it seems like a play on the old horror movie purity culture thing. We all know the rules -- especially where young folks are involved -- if you fuck you’re fucked. So a supernatural STD leans hard into that.
But that’s not how it comes off. The characters are sympathetic, they’re all young & doing their own thing. Even the heartthrob who bangs the sister of a girl who obviously has the feels for him is not quite a bad dude. While he’s a fucking dog, he has empathy -- they’ve all been on this journey together & he’s tired of seeing her scared & hurt, he wants to shoulder some of that & maybe disprove it all & set everything right.
Which of course doesn’t pan out & it feels bad.
So with pretty boy fucked off the old mortal coil, the focus of the curse returns to our main character.
& this was a character that they put work into developing. She’s attached to each of her friends in a unique way, she’s invested in people other than herself & even has a weird detached sense of responsibility toward Great Value Nick Lachey. She even hesitated simply passing it off to someone -- as douchebag mc backstreet hair bitch did to her -- & when she did it was more out of a sense of desperate commiseration than any ill intent.
The next element is where a decision was made in a writer’s room somewhere & it’s equal parts bizarre & genius.
The “It” that follows is not a particularly fast or powerful creature. It will kill you if it gets you but it’s kind of slow & the way it presents itself would likely get less scary over time to someone who was constantly dealing with it. Sure the goddamn grim reaper is on your shoulder but how is it any different from any other person -- so you can see it & you should probably skedaddle when it gets up in your business... And?
The statement overall seems to be more like -- We never know whose out there with ill-intent, ready to sweet talk anyone under the bus. If you could see it would you just throw it to the next guy or grow a pair & deal with it.
This movie focused on creating a character believably supported by a group of characters that chose the second option & that’s what made it an interesting movie overall.
This movie was incredibly slow, skipped all story & lore building & played close to archetypes w its main characters allowing for zero interesting deviations or conflicts.
I was more enthralled w reading the wiki page on anthracite -- which is an expensive sort of coal, but only like ×2 expensive. Not exactly sacrifice yourself to guys in bad worm monster costumes to save capitalism expensive.
Really cool premise w an incredibly disappointing delivery.
Current ranking:
Current ranking:
Llamageddon
Sweeney Todd
We Summon the Darkness
A Classic Horror Story
St. Maud
Pure
Mortal
Teeth
The Voyeurs
Sea Fever
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Unfriended
Come True
Crawl
Feral
Demon House
The Devil Below
It Came from the Desert
& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.
Attempting to watch this on a 40 inch TV made me realize that I need to go back to the optometrist.
What I did catch was interesting enough but man, kids are shitty -- but this shitty? I had some bad friends when I was younger but these kids are another sort of fucked up.
I was uncomfortable that the plot hinged on a suicide ultimately caused by a boo-boo-Bennett-esque tape. But appreciate that they were trying to illustrate possible real life consequences for online bullying (suicide) as well as paint the type of people who would pull that shit as over the top awful (if you'd narc on your intoxicated childhood friend you're def the type of person who would do cagey shit in other relationships).
Tbf, I admire what they were trying to do. & they packed a lot of mystique into a very minimalist format.
I think what really sunk it for me was not being able to read/see everything. It was the equivalent of a movie that was too dark, it felt like work to follow because I'm old & my eyes suck.
Current ranking:
Llamageddon
Sweeney Todd
We Summon the Darkness
A Classic Horror Story
St. Maud
Pure
Mortal
Teeth
The Voyeurs
Sea Fever
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Unfriended
Come True
Crawl
Feral
Demon House
It Came from the Desert
& again I’m hoping to come back & do a crisper, digital version of the drawing but for now all I’ve got is my hand drawn sketch.
