Friday 30 September 2016

Chapter One: “Factory Settings”. 30.09.2016.

“You probably think working in a chocolate factory is the best job in the world. It's really not. You don't get free samples or anything, you're not allowed to touch the product except with utensils which you have to clean every three seconds. It's mostly just staring at a conveyor belt of other people's happiness...Well maybe that's a bit over-dramatic, I just meant it gets old really quick.

All this stuff is becoming automated anyway. If it wasn't for our manager getting off on the mass slave labour we'd have probably been replaced already...Heh, some of us joke that he's a medieval torturer reincarnated, just give him the big black hood and he'd fit right in...Um...So yeah it's really not all that interesting but thanks for asking...”

“Oh no, I'm totally interested, I'd love to hear more.”
“Uh...Well okay, I guess. There's different sections obviously, a pretty huge place, I've never even seen guys on the far sections...I work with fudge mainly, dividing the larger clumps into smaller ones...That's kind of it really...Are you sure you don't want to talk about something else? Like, what kind of music do you like? I'm a pretty okay guitar player.”

Darren slides his glass left and right on the table, sloshing the tiny melted shards of ice cube around in his drink. He gulps and brushes his scruffy dirt coloured fringe out of his eyes looking back up at the young woman opposite him. She rests her head on her hand staring over at the toilets at the far side of the club. She tucks her long chestnut hair behind her ear and pulls the strap of her dress back up onto her shoulder.

Darren considers the possibility that he is perhaps the most boring man to ever dare to enter a nightclub. The door to the male toilets swings open and and a tall, muscular Adonis strides out into the flashing strobe lights. He might have just taken the most ungodly shit in there, leaving all the other men as twisted suffocated husks on the floor but no one thinks about that. People mainly think about what's directly in front of their eyes and potentially their genitals.

Tired enough to drop the charade, Darren slumps into his seat and mumbles into the hand holding his chin as he joins the woman's stare at the lithe slab of man meat eyeing up the women on the dance-floor.
“Is that your boyfriend then?” The woman makes a rotating hand gesture with her wrist trying to prompt further unheard monologues unaware that the conversation has long since died. She eventually registers the silence.

“Huh?”
“I said, is that guy your boyfriend?”
“Not yet.” The woman smiles probably for the first time in their interaction and downs her drink. As she stands from the bar stool, Darren feels a desperate energy to attempt one last gambit at convincing her to stay.

“Can I get you another drink?”
“Nah, I'm good.”
“How about your phone number?”
“Look I just wanted to avoid getting pestered while I waited for him to come back. Don't you now pester me, I'm not interested in a literal fudge packer.” She scoffs at verbalising the very idea and struts out into the crowd suddenly more alive than she acted throughout their entire strained parley.

The dwindling shards of ice cube have now completely melted into the dark vodka and coke mixture Darren was nursing. He watches the woman leave for a few seconds, grimacing under the worthless wording of a weary and familiar rebuttal.
“I'm a fudge slicer, not a packer.”

He downs his own drink and pours the remaining drips of icy water onto his palm not unprepared for them to immediately hiss and evaporate into steam. They instead tediously sit in the lines and creases of his hand before he wipes the hand across his brow. Darren's solitude is interrupted by the return of the woman. There is but a split-second of miraculous hope that he had in fact left an unshakeable visage in her mind of a intelligent and charming guy who was compelling in spite of his abnormally square face.

It was actually her and the testosterone mountain just returning to the bar but she decided to point out her prior tool just for amusement points with the man.
“Ah here he is. A literal fudge packer, it's his job and everything haha!”
“Hur Hurr Hurr” The gorilla's chest heaves almost out of his tight, sweaty shirt as he grunts in amusement.

Darren decides that however boring he might be he is not on the level of a zoo animal people can gawk and cackle at.
“Technically I'm a fudge slicer, the packing happens further towards the back.”
“Yeah I bet it does mate.” The ape proves he can indeed form sentences while the woman explodes into laughter and wraps her arms around one of his. Darren decides to keep his mouth shut and the couple eventually bounce away giggling and grunting.

Immediately, without a word, another fit, young guy quickly steals the empty seat left behind and drags it to his own table where he and his good-looking friends entertain a group of good-looking women. Darren sighs and leaves the throbbing glare of the nightclub. He thinks to himself on the long walk back home in the cold black air, how primitive people still are. Just a bunch of animals all competing to try and shove things into their mouth or groin. Maybe everyone else is boring.

This idea quickly dissipates the next morning with the soggy thud of the factory cleaver onto a wobbly brown log. The conveyor belt pauses just long enough to pry apart the sections of sticky fudge with a spatula before juddering along to serve up another loaf. Darren reflects further on questions far too grandiose and philosophical for the backdrop of Droylsden chocolate factory.

Food and sex, that's all anyone is really bothered with and Darren finds himself patronisingly divorced from both. All the great advances of humanity throughout history and we still chase the basest instincts. He thinks back to news reports about the Mars Rover machine currently exploring the red planet. “Discovering alien life would really kick everyone's arse into gear.” he murmurs to himself.

“Simmons! Cleaning!” Darren turns to the table of brown stained rags to his side and miserably wipes the cleaver across them in the short pause between fudge loafs arriving.
“I'm doing it!” He yells back at a grizzly looking manager on the rusty metal catwalks above him. Martin Hackett was an intimidating figure even with his fluttering hair net. He was not adverse to clobbering employees over the head with utensils and seemed to derive such carnal pleasure from bellowing at his workforce that he retained the same ear-splitting volume whether he was across the room or inches from your face.

It was only the five gruelling years of employment here since the age of twenty that gave Darren the nerve to yell back at him. There is no right response to fist-pumping sadists like him but attempting to match his Alpha male hollering would more often appease or at least amuse him.
“No dickhead! Up here!” Darren looks back up at him as he glares authority down like a floodlight before strolling off like a military general with hands held behind his back.

Darren sighs with an audible growl and smacks a large button on the side of the machine. The conveyor keeps moving but his colleagues down the line will have to pick up the slack. God forbid they halt production for a second while he fishes an insect out of the mixture vats. Darren slogs his way up the stairs to the catwalks thinking that if we ever do discover an alien species, our collective human stupidity and narrow mindedness combined won't be enough brainpower to explain our moronic practices of one-upmanship, ego masturbation and the need to exert control over other people.

Darren snatches a net from a hook on the wall lifting the pole above his head as the net and his apron flap around in the closer proximity to the air conditioning. He approaches the vat in question and gazes at the ambiguous black shape bobbing in the dark brown mixture. If someone's thrown their hat in again for a joke, Martin will pour the punishment out over everyone for months to come.

Darren leans across and sticks the pole out over the gallons of gloop in the tank. He scoops at the black misshapen object only for it to somehow fall out of the net's basket. He swipes at it again but no matter how rigidly he holds the net upright, the shape hops out of the basket and back into the fudge before Darren's tired eyes can even focus on what on Earth it was. The object has now landed further away across the mixture towards the far end of the vat.

Increasingly frustrated and baffled Darren stretches over the catwalk railings and extends the net pole as far as he can. Lying almost horizontal across the railings he hooks his foot over the bar on the opposite side. The bizarre and unwieldy pose is in fact Martin's own interpretation on the health and safety regulations and Darren would face worse castigation for refusing to put his life in danger.

Despite this, after five years Darren was quite adept at the monotonous tasks of the factory. With all higher brain functions on standby, his muscle memory and subconscious patterns were firmly ingrained and naturally executed although he would never receive any form of recognition to know this.

A hair's breadth from the extent of his outstretched net, Darren nudges the object against the wall at the far end of the vat, biting his lip and straining to splash the contaminant back towards him. Unfortunately it's nigh on impossible to create waves in an ocean of fudge.
“For fuck's sake, I don't even get paid for this extra toilet cleaning bollocks.”

Suddenly the large metal fan blades used to stir the mixture begin to move, despite such strict regulations that even Martin would demand they remain off when someone is “performing maintenance”. The blades continue to spin regardless and as they speed up Darren realises that somehow regulations have been thrown to the wind and the shit (or fudge) was about to hit the fan(s).

Before he can pull back the net out from the sticky chocolate swamp, the spinning fan blades have made a rotation and caught the pole against it. Darren lets go of the pole but a moment too late having already been dragged the few dangerous inches out of balance. Gravity executes the rest as Darren falls head first over the railings, cracking his skull on the side of the metal vat before sliding into the mixture followed by his torso and legs smacking against the surface. Horrifyingly quickly his body begins to sink into the unknowable brown ooze, swallowed up like a helpless raisin into a monstrous Cadbury Sarlacc...

Friday 9 September 2016

Don't Breathe - Cinema Review

If you had told me that Don't Breathe was adapted from a low-budget indie short film I'd be inclined to believe you. From the simple premise to the mere twelve character cast (if you include a dog) It has the feel of something far removed from typical studio released horror or scare-based thriller films. It seems this was director Fede Alvarez' exact intention, following his successful 2013 Evil Dead reboot with something of smaller scale and budget, achieving less studio interference in the process.

The film's plot follows three young burglars hoping to steal enough money to escape their dead-end lives in Detroit. The film spends just enough time on backstory to get us emotionally invested in at least one of these characters, with the most time devoted to Rocky (Jane Levy) followed by Alex (Dylan Minnette) and the aptly named "Money" (Daniel Zovatto).


They set their sights on the house of an old blind war veteran (Stephen Lang) whose daughter was killed in a car accident and received a huge amount of money in a court settlement. They attempt to break into his home and naturally everything goes to hell. There's really very little more to the plot than that, aside from a few later twists I don't want to spoil but I'll just say, there's an interesting dynamic of morality between all the characters and their motivations.

This simple set-up allows every scene to breathe (no I wasn't trying to do a thing there) and for a really effective natural build up of tension. I'm not a fan of frequent cheap jump-scares and there are some jump-scares in this movie but with the aforementioned tension expertly achieved in other ways as well as them they're not nearly as annoying or disengaging as many other film. I think almost all of them serve some actual purpose in the plot rather than a tacked on jack-in-the-box scenario where a group of violinists all abruptly trip over at the end.

Stephen Lang gives a mesmerising and chilling performance as the unpredictable and unstable blind man whilst the film's writing deftly avoids most horror cliches giving a natural progression to events without you internally screaming at the characters for their hopelessly stupid and unmotivated decisions. As you can imagine silence plays a large part in the film but when the soundtrack is involved it's still effective and purposeful. In terms of lighting and cinematography there also aren't ludicrously dark environments (even if they're pitch-black for the characters) and you aren't always craning your neck waiting for an awkward camera angle to shift.


The film is technically a pure thriller in that there's no supernatural elements to the story. I hope you don't consider that a spoiler but it has been stated by the director himself so I'll take the risk talking about it. I found this really refreshing to see as the film strikes the perfect balance of utilising fear and suspense from real world situations but without becoming mundane in its pursuit of realism.

The only fault I can really mention against the film is perhaps its latter half continuing for too long. This is really nitpicking though and at a run-time of 88 minutes I feel a bit dumb even mentioning it. Nevertheless it may be applicable to some viewers as horror/thrillers work best at shorter durations.

A simple and engaging story with good performances carried by brilliantly crafted scenes full of thick tension, means I would highly recommend Don't Breathe as a great film on its own merits and a breath of fresh air for horror and thriller fans (I did mean to do a thing that time).

Tuesday 6 September 2016

The Killing Joke Animated Movie - Review

It was incredibly bizarre to hear negative controversy surrounding this film when an animated adaptation of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 1988 graphic novel has been generally eagerly awaited for a long time. The Killing Joke story is widely considered a classic and Mark Hamill, iconic voice of the Joker, has long stated his desire to partake in an animated adaptation.

And yet when the production is finally being made, critics crawl out of the woodwork pleading poor taste when they were nowhere to be found before. This leads in to The Killing Joke's biggest problem in trying to appease those critics who felt that Batgirl's character was needlessly victimised. An entirely new story is stuck on the front of the film with the intent of fleshing out the character of Batgirl. Unfortunately after twenty five minutes this rather uninteresting introduction has only made things worse.

In the original Killing Joke story Batgirl is only briefly in it but suffers crippling injury and humiliation from the Joker. What many critics don't seem to understand is the distinction between depiction and endorsement. This is a very dark, mature story and the events within are grim and horrific, this doesn't mean the author or the filmmakers and writers of this adaptation condone or glorify the actions of the central villain.

It feels stupid to even bring up that a psychopathic villainous bad guy like The Joker will do terrible, evil things, because it's storytelling 101, but apparently these critic's concerns were loud enough that the filmmakers here have wasted time and resources bending over backwards to appease them.
No I'm sure they meant to portray this guy as an objective moral compass.
This added section focuses on Batgirl as she grapples with her competency at vigilantism and her romantic feelings for Batman. This already feels awry as the relationship between Batman and Batgirl has personally always felt more Father-Daughter than Husband-Wife to me but I tried to open my mind to a different approach.

A mafia upstart named Paris Franz (Honestly) commits a bunch of robberies and gets under Batgirl's skin by taunting her with unwanted flirtation. In fact, almost all of his lines sound like they're from a creepy lecherous rapist which seems to just be asking for more trouble from the critics of the sexual undertones in the original story. The difference is here, it's overt and blatant rather than an ambiguous interpretation and serves no purpose to the story other than showing Paris is a prick, which we would've surmised anyway from him being an arrogant, thieving mafia punk.

Perhaps it's meant to serve as some parallel to Barbara's feelings for Batman. That Batman is ambiguous in his motives for ordering her to avoid conflict with Paris, either out of criticism of her competence or jealousy of his affections. That's fine I suppose but it feels like a subplot for a different film. The entirety of this new added section feels like a different film and doesn't support or enhance the main story at all, hence my reluctance to even refer to it as a "prologue".

The relationship between Batgirl and Batman never feels particularly engaging either. Batman is characteristically a brick wall of emotion, whilst Batgirl mainly yells at him for leaving her out of missions. This is meant to signify an over-protective boyfriend atmosphere but again for me it felt more like a strict father or teacher forbidding her from dangerous situations.
NanananananananaNOPE.
The tone becomes even stranger when we follow Barbara at her job in a library where she cryptically discusses her relationship concerns with her gay best friend who constantly makes sexual quips and I feel like I'm suddenly watching a poorly written rom-com.

As I continued struggling to decipher what on earth Brian Azzarello was going for with this section there was a hint of Watchmen-esque satire that I can't confidently say was intentional. Something strange and demystifying about Batgirl standing on a water tower yelling at Batman down the phone "It was just sex!" while he drives his Batmobile around a dockyard scowling at the windscreen.

Most Batman films that attempt a romantic subplot bring those elements in during his scenes as Bruce Wayne where he is more relatable, more human and arguably more emotional, but Bruce is entirely in the cowl for this section and at times might as well be a cardboard cut out complete with pull-string that plays "No" and "Stay here".
So this additional section falls almost completely flat for me and I'm baffled by its inclusion when it certainly contains nothing to sate the Batgirl critics nor adds anything to the central plot. At the end of the film they've added a scene where Barbara begins her role as The Oracle which I guess is nice but The Killing Joke was never really about her so it feels very forced and pandering. The only thing I can say is that the action sequences are enjoyable, the animation isn't the smoothest throughout the film but it is tense and well-thought out.

Which leaves us with the actual Killing Joke story of which there is far less to say because it's pretty good and faithful to the source material. There are some lines removed and a few added, shots occasionally angled differently and some art details changed. Some of these changes I'd actually consider improvements whilst others don't always work as well as the source material.

It has enough little tweaks and things done differently to justify its existence as more than a graphic novel in motion but retains most of the memorable moments, writing and dialogue that made the original comic so great. As for the controversial elements, they actually seem toned down from the original comic but not enough to diminish the effect which is probably all the filmmakers should have done in the first place.

Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprise playing Batman and Joker respectively with Hamill on top form as both the Joker and the man he was before the insanity. Special mention to Ray Wise as Commissioner Gordon who also gives an excellent performance. Some of the minor characters, criminal underlings and Joker's freakshow henchmen are less compelling but on the whole the cast and production value is solid.
As I mentioned in the preceding Batgirl segment the action sequences are good but the animation looks a little choppy in places as though there just aren't enough frames in a sequence. This rarely distracted me from the film however but is worth mentioning as a subjective potential niggle.

So when it comes to a recommendation for the animated Killing Joke movie it's not a clear or easy decision. The newly added Batgirl story really serves no purpose and should be an opening half to some other movie at best. The Killing Joke tale itself is faithful to its source whilst standing on its own merits with briefer moments in the comic fleshed out and some individual tweaks to the story proving interesting and not feeling out of place.

If you're happy to fast-forward past the first twenty five minutes and are a fan of the original comic, then seeing it come to life here is enjoyable and worthwhile. If you were critical or uncomfortable with the original comic then this will certainly not convince you. Overall I just wish DC would stop letting opinionated critics and browbeaten fearful studio execs mangle their film productions before they're even released.
Lookin' at you Suicide Squad...