The Walking Dead S2E3 "Save the Last One" (10/30/11)

In the farmhouse bathroom, Shane shaves off all his hair.

Flashback: Shane and Otis run through the halls of the high school, the drooling hordes of zombies lurching along behind them, as Rick, in a voiceover, tells Lori some story about Shane's high school derring-do.  Rick and Lori are sitting by Carl's bedside.  Their son is still comatose.  At the RV, Darryl and Andrea can't sleep and decide to walk down the road a bit, looking for Sophia.  Darryl is thinking positively: he thinks that kids are resourceful and Sophia will make her way back to them.  Shane and Otis split up, Shane slipping through a small window in the gym while Otis flees through the locker room to find another way out - he's too fat to fit through the gym windows.  Glen and T-Dog finally arrive at the farmhouse (seriously - what took them so long?) to learn that poor Carl is really not doing well.  Lori tells Rick that maybe it would be for the better if Carl were to die, getting free of this hell on earth in which they live.  This thinking tears Rick up considerably.

Shane and Otis meet back up, but they are out of rifle ammo and only have their pistols.  More staggering and running away from the high school zombies.  Some time later, back at the farmhouse, Carl wakes up and starts to tell his mom about the beautiful deer he saw.  Then, suddenly, horribly, he starts to seize.  When the seizure has passed, Herschel says it's because his brain needs more blood.  Rick rolls up his sleeve to provide another transfusion, even though he's given too much already.

Out in the woods, Darryl and Andrea come across a campsite with a zombie swinging by the neck from a nearby tree.  They read the handwritten sign: the guy got bitten and when the fever kicked in, decided to kill himself rather than become a zombie.  But instead of shooting himself in the head, he hung himself ... which meant that he zombified after all.  Andrea upchucks when Darryl points out that the hanging zombie's legs have been stripped of their flesh by other zombies.  She asks him to kill the zombie but he doesn't want to waste an arrow, so he says he'll do it if she tells him if she wants to live now or not.  She answers that she doesn't really know and even though Darryl doesn't think that's much of an answer, he puts an arrow through the zombie's skull, silencing it.

Shane and Otis keep trying to outrun the high school zombies.  They're down to their last two bullets.

Back at the farmhouse, Herschel tells Rick and Lori that they either try to operate now, without the medical equipment Shane and Otis went to fetch, or Carl will die for sure.  Rick looks at his wife and she, realizing that what Carl remembered from the day was the deer and not the horrors, says okay, let's try it.  Just as Herschel is about to make the first incision, Shane drives up, without Otis but with the equipment.  As Herschel rushes inside to operate, Shane stands there, twitchy and shell-shocked.

When Darryl and Andrea get back to the RV (without little Sophia), Dale returns her gun to her and asks her forgiveness for not letting her kill herself as she wishes.  She tells him she's trying but she's not there yet.  After the surgery, Herschel comes out and says that Carl seems to have stabilized.  Lori goes in to see her son while Rick goes with Herschel to tell Patricia that her husband is dead.  Shane stands in the front hallway and twitches.  When he looks in on Carl, Lori asks him not to leave.  He nods without saying anything and backs out of the room.  Herschel's daughter gives him some clean clothes (formerly belonging to Otis) and shows him where he can shower.

Flashback to Shane and Otis lurching along, barely staying ahead of the high school zombies.  Shane turns to Otis and says, "I'm sorry, man," and then shoots him in the leg, dropping him.  He yanks the pack off Otis's back and Otis grabs him.  They tussle, Otis ripping out a big hunk of Shane's hair, before Shane can manage to get away from him.  Shane runs back to the truck, clutching the two packs, while behind him the herd of zombies has descended upon poor Otis, messily devouring him while he shrieks, letting Shane get away.

In the farmhouse bathroom, Shane shaves off all his hair.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead

'Tis the season

Just to get y'all in the mood for Halloween:

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #8: Quarantine

Quarantine is the American remake of the very excellent Spanish horror film, [REC].  It's a pretty faithful retelling too:

Set in Los Angeles instead of Barcelona, [and I'm allowed to copy from my [REC] review because this is my blog] a cute little television reporter (Angela) and her cameraman (Scott), shooting a puff-piece on L.A.'s firemen, tag along with two of said firemen on a call to help an elderly woman trapped in her apartment.  When they get to the apartment building, the other tenants are milling about in the lobby, disturbed by the screaming coming from the old woman's flat.  Two policemen take the firemen and the t.v. crew up to the apartment and when they break the door down, all hell breaks loose.  The old lady, fat, foaming at the mouth, nuts and wearing nothing but a blood-covered slip, attacks the rescue party, chewing a hole in one policeman's neck.  Leaving one of the firemen behind to deal with the now-restrained old lady, the rest of them drag the wounded police officer down to the lobby, only to find out that the health department has sealed the building, allowing no-one out for any reason.  Then the formerly upstairs firefighter plummets down the stairwell with a splat, face nearly chewed off.  And now the screaming starts.  The sickness spreads quickly, picking off the trapped people one by one.  There is a lot of screaming - things get very tense very quickly.  This is all shown as a real time POV movie, filmed on Scott's camera and narrated by Angela as they first hope to bring word to the world of what is happening in the building; later, when the power is shut off to the building, the filming is incidental as Angela and Scott make use of the camera's light, and then night vision scope when the light is broken.  Towards the end, the only things we see are what little is illuminated by the camera's light, and then its night vision.

I had my doubts that Quarantine could be as good as [REC] - it very nearly is, and if I hadn't seen the original Spanish movie, this one would have been very scary indeed.  The remake has made a few changes - what is possessing the apartment building's tenants is a particularly virulent, contagious and fast-acting form of rabies, and the editing is a little more frantic, making it difficult to figure out the action at times - but by and large sticks to the original plan.  I knew what was coming but that didn't stop me from watching through my fingers a couple of times.

Another point in Quarantine's favor is its cast, including Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) as Angela, Steve Harris (The Practice) as Scott, Jay Hernandez and Johnathon Schaech as the firefighters, and, as some of the tenants/fodder (undeveloped for the most part), Greg Germann (Ally McBeal), Dania Ramirez ("Maya" on Heroes), Denis O'Hare (True Blood and American Horror Story) and Rade Serbedziji ("Boris the Blade" from Snatch).  While I think Spanish Angela was braver as a character, kudos to Jennifer Carpenter for friggin' knocking it out of the park in this movie.  I seriously don't think I've ever seen an actor do "terrified" quite so well, even if the never-ending hysteria was wearying towards the end - I was getting a little concerned for Carpenter that she might pass out from all the hyperventilating.

I would still recommend [REC] to everyone but for folks who are unwilling to deal with subtitles, Quarantine will do you fine in its stead.

Next on the list: Piranha or maybe eXistenZ (Mr. Mouse is hoping October ends soon so I will rent a movie he would also enjoy watching).

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #7: Nadja

Well, ... that was weird.  Nadja is an arthouse vampire flick, filmed in black and white with some truly striking shots interspersed with fuzzy-focused vampire-vision scenes.  A post-modern revisiting of Dracula, this strange little movie has Romanian twin siblings Nadja (definitely a vampire) and Edgar (maybe a vampire) Dracul trying to come to terms with their lives in the wake of their despised father's death in 1990s New York City.  Edgar is in love with Cassandra, his caretaker, and living the reclusive invalid's life in Brooklyn, while Nadja, her enthralled young Irish Renfield doting on her every whim, tries to find meaning by going on dates and dancing in clubs and picking up Lucy, a depressed young woman currently estranged from her husband Jim.  Oh, and Jim's paranoid uncle, the one and only Van Helsing (a tripped-out Peter Fonda) is trying to kill the Dracul twins, just like he killed their father.

Nadja is not for everyone.  I'm not sure it was for me as it is abstract and moody, very slow-paced, dreamy in spots, with lots of talking about the emptiness of life (although there is a fair amount of black humor too) and only a little soft-focus vampire violence.  But for folks who prefer their vampire films sleek and stylish with a side of weird - the movie was produced by David Lynch, who has a cameo as a morgue guard - Nadja is perfect.

Next in line: Quarantine - we'll see how the American remake holds up.

The Walking Dead S2E2 (10/23/11) "Bloodletting"

We begin with a flashback to before the zombie apocalypse, with Laurie confiding to a friend that she's not sure she loves Rick anymore, and being interrupted when Shane comes up to tell her that Rick has been shot.  Cut to now, with Rick running across a field, Carl in his arms, Shane and a fat guy, Otis, the hunter who accidentally shot Carl, following behind.  At the farmhouse where Otis lives, the patriarch, Herschel, takes charge immediately, hooking Carl up to an IV, arranging for Rick to provide blood for a transfusion (he and Carl are both A+).  From Herschel's examination, the bullet has broken into fragments which will need to be removed.

The remainder of the search party is still making their way back to the RV, while at the RV, Dale checks T-Dog's arm and sees that he's got a bad infection.  They search the nearby vehicles again, hoping for some antibiotics they might have missed before.

Herschel manages to remove one of the bullet fragments from Carl's belly, but the boy is shrieking and crying from the pain.  Finally he passes out.  Herschel says that the other fragments are in even deeper, plus it looks like there's some internal bleeding, so they need to anesthetize Carl, and put him on a respirator, and open him up.  They'll need additional equipment and supplies for that.  There's a high school about five miles away that had a FEMA shelter set up there - they should have the supplies, but last time they looked, it was overrun with zombies.  Rick wants to go but Shane says no, he needs to stay here with his son.  Shane and Otis volunteer to go and Herschel gives them a list.  One of Herschel's daughters says she'll go find Laurie and bring her back to the farmhouse.

The infection has caused a high fever and T-Dog starts to rant, paranoid, alarming Dale.  As the rest of the group nears the highway, a zombie attacks Andrea as she wanders away from the group.  Before it can munch on her, Herschel's daughter rides up on a horse, bludgeons the zombie with a baseball bat and tells Laurie that she needs to come with her to Carl.  Darryl thinks that's a bad idea since they don't know this girl, but she shouts directions to the farmhouse over her shoulder as she rides off with Laurie.  When the group reaches the RV, it is decided that Dale, Darryl and Andrea will wait overnight at the RV in case little Sophia shows up, and make a sign for her telling her how to get to the farmhouse, while the rest of them will go now to the farmhouse.  When he hears about T-Dog's blood infection, Darryl pulls a baggie of medicine out of his motorcycle saddlebags - Merle's stash, which includes crystal meth, painkillers ... and penicillin.  He hands over the antibiotics to Dale at once.

As they wait at the farmhouse, Rick and Herschel talk.  Herschel is hopeful about the future and finding a cure but Rick is pretty despondent.  When Laurie gets there, Rick takes her in to see their son.  A little later, she questions Herschel about how many times he's done this surgery and it comes out that he's a veterinarian, not a people doctor.  She is not happy about that: "Aren't you over your head?"  Herschel, calmly: "Ma'am, aren't we all?"

When Shane and Otis get to the high school, it is indeed overrun with zombies.  They wait until nightfall and then distract the walkers with flares found in an abandoned police car.  They get inside the FEMA trailer and collect everything on Herschel's list but they've taken too long and when they exit the trailer, the zombies see them.  After quite a bit of running around, fat Otis amazingly able to keep up with the fit Shane, they take refuge inside the high school, barricading themselves behind a metal gate.  The innumerable zombies growl and moan and reach for them through the gate (wouldn't you move out of their line of sight in hopes that they'd forget about you if they couldn't see you, instead of standing there in full view?)  That gate isn't going to last long against all that dead weight.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #6: I Sell the Dead

I Sell the Dead is a funny-ish little (85 minutes) horror-ish movie about two 18th century grave-robbers who, finding their vocation not quite ghoulish enough, end up snatching undead bodies as well as dead ones.  The story is framed as Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan, a/k/a Charlie from Lost, a/k/a one of the LoTR hobbits who wasn't Frodo) has been arrested for murder and grave-robbing.  His partner and mentor, Willie, has already been executed for those crimes; when the movie opens, Arthur is telling his tale to Father Duffy (a misused Ron Perlman).

There are a lot of loose ends in IStD, a lot of false starts where you think something is going to lead somewhere and never does.  For example: Willie and Arthur were accused of murder by a trail of body parts leading to each of their abodes.  Arthur says he was framed, yet nothing comes of this - who left the body parts?  I think I know, but it's never mentioned again.  Willie and Arthur are hired by a creepy doctor who needs lots and lots and lots of corpses, the fresher the better - but why?  We never see what he's doing with them or why he needs so many, so what's the point?  When Willie and Arthur begin collecting and selling the undead (vampires, zombies and, very strangely, an alien), we're told that this is much more lucrative work but we don't know who wants these beings or why.  And so on.

There's a little violence and gore but not much and the movie really isn't scary.  There's an awful lot of just talking (and talking and talking - I may have nodded off for a couple of minutes) and while some of Monaghan's line readings are funny but the movie isn't a farce or satire or even just funny enough to be a black comedy.  I give it a resounding "meh."  I seem to be giving those out a lot lately.

Next time (for sure, after TWD):  Nadja.

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #5: Open Water

Okay, if I do this movie series again next October, all y'all have to give me some movie suggestions because I'm not doing a very good job of picking them out myself.  The latest less than stellar offering?  Open Water, a tepid hybrid of when-animals-sort-of-attack and man-at-the-mercy-of-the-elements, based-on-a-true-story film about a couple who are inadvertently left behind on a diving trip in shark-infested waters.  Spoilers ahead, mateys!

The pluses: independent, low-budget movie, shot realistically (on video?) with natural light and no CGI, real sharks, actors actually bobbing about in the ocean and not in a shark cage or indoor tanks.

The rest of it:  the actors, unknowns, are pretty bad, although in their defense they weren't given much to work with.  When Daniel and Susan resurface and find the tour boat missing, they take it too calmly - it isn't realistic.  I think there would be some immediate panic, then subsiding to calm/shock.  Their physical condition didn't deteriorate as the hours passed: even though they were in tropical waters, hypothermia will set in after prolonged exposure, not to mention dehydration and salt sores.  Once Daniel was bitten by the shark, I don't think the other sharks would have left him alone to bleed out overnight - I think they would have gone after him, and Susan too, what with all the blood floating about.  And I found Susan's death unsatisfying: I can see how she would just give up but she was wearing a wetsuit and would have been far too buoyant to slip beneath the surface to drown, especially since she'd dropped her dive weights.

The whole thing was just unsatisfying.  I've read reviews saying that people expecting Jaws will be disappointed, that Open Water is more about fear and dread and hopelessness.  Which would have been fine if  any of that had been conveyed by the actors.  Instead, this mercifully brief movie is boring, basically amounting to watching two unlikable characters tread water for 81 minutes.  Ugh.

P.S.  I did manage to get Mr. Mouse to watch it with me and he gets points for calling: (1) no survivors, (2) Daniel dying first; and (3) the camera being found.

Next up (I think): Nadja.

The Walking Dead S2E1 (10/16/11)

This was a 90 minute season opener and they probably could have condensed it down to an hour.  Yes, I realize that this show is about more than zombies - character development and interactions among the survivors being as important as the zombies ... but I am of the more-zombies-is-better camp.  I found this episode a tad slow, although certainly suspenseful and exciting in parts.


Our group of survivors is leaving Atlanta for Fort Benning, 125 miles away, in hopes of finding something, anything there in the aftermath of their visit to the CDC.  Rick gives a long monologue about being a survivor, etc., etc., over the walkie, trying to reach his buddy from S1E1 (Morgan?) and warn him away from Atlanta.  Finally, they move on in a small caravan: motorcycle, RV and SUV.  They cruising down the interstate when they are stopped by two things: a huge wreck/traffic jam across the highway and a blown radiator hose in the RV.  As Dale tries to repair the radiator hose, the others search the stranded/abandoned cars for supplies as they need almost everything: water, clean clothes, medicine, gas.

After a while, Rick sees a "herd" of hundreds of zombies lurching towards them, as if migrating.  The survivors quickly hide under various cars, trying to stay silent as the zombies go by.  Andrea is still in the RV, trying to reassemble her gun after cleaning it; a zombie decides to investigate the RV and she hides in the tiny bathroom. When the zombie tries to get in after her, Dale - who is up on the roof of the RV - drops a screwdriver down to her and she ends up staking the zombie through the eye with it, eventually killing it.  You see, they can't use their guns because to do so would alert the rest of the zombie herd.  So when Whatsisname the token black guy, badly cuts his arm on some metal, and a zombie goes after him, Darryl (Norman Reedus, my new favorite, hot off his gig as Judas in the video for Lady Gaga's eponymous song) has to silently shove an arrow by hand through the zombie's brain to save him.

Finally, the herd has passed ... except for a couple of stragglers who see little Sophia when she climbs out from under the car she was hiding under.  Sophia runs away into the woods, the two zombies chasing her, and Rick races after them.  He finally catches Sophia and tells her to hide as he draws the zombies off, and then she is to retrace her steps back to the others.  The zombies follow him further into the woods until he takes them out, one at a time, via a large rock to the skull.  Unfortunately, Sophia does not make it back to the group before Rick does, so he and Darryl head back out to track her.  They find and kill another walker, and note that it has fed recently, so Darryl cuts its stomach open (with many squishy sound effects) so they can see what it ate: a woodchuck.  They suspend the search for Sophia when it gets dark.

In the morning, everyone goes back out to search for the little girl, except Dale (who's supposed to be fixing the RV - but who actually fixed it the day before but doesn't want anyone to know because he's afraid people will want to leave before Sophia is found) and Whatsisname (who is recovering from his cut arm).  Before they leave, Andrea gets in Dale's face: she's pissed that he wouldn't let her die in the CDC explosion like she wanted.  After they've been searching a while, they find a church with several zombies inside.  After Rick, Darryl and Shane kill the zombies, there's a bunch of blah blah blah of talking to God.  Outside, Laurie and Shane argue because he's decided to leave the group since he can't stand being around her and Rick any longer.  After Laurie walks away, Andrea - who overheard their argument - tells Shane that she wants to come with him.

It's getting late but Rick feels guilty and doesn't want to give up the search.  He and Shane decide to search for another hour or so while the rest of the group head back to the RV.  Rick's son Carl wants to stay with his dad since Sophia is his friend; amazingly, Laurie and Rick agree to it.  As Rick, Shane and Carl are walking through the woods, they find a huge deer.  Fascinated, Carl approaches the deer while the men watch, smiles on their faces.  Suddenly, a shot rings out from across the clearing.  Both the deer and Carl fall to the ground.  Rick and Shane rush towards the boy, stricken looks on their faces.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #4: The Devil's Backbone

FINALLY!  A very good movie!  The Devil's Backbone, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro (a favorite here at FMS), is a Spanish (English-subtitled) ghost story, set in 1939 Spain.  Young Carlos has been orphaned by the Spanish civil war and has been left at a remote Spanish orphanage, run by Republican sympathizers.  Carlos is a bright and gentle boy, soon running up against the orphanage's bullly, Jaime, the nasty caretaker, Jacinto, himself a former denizen of the facility, and Santi, the ghost of an orphan who died not too long before Carlos's arrival.  Carlos is given Santi's bed to sleep in and the ghost seems to attach himself to the newcomer, appearing to him often and warning that many will die.

When Franco's Nationalist forces begin to prevail, the Republican sympathizers decide to evacuate the orphanage, but an explosion decimates the place, killing many of the staff and the children.  The remaining orphans, Carlos and Jaime among them, must band together to survive the onslaught of scavengers looking to pilfer Republican monies hidden in the building, as well as to avenge Santi's untimely death.

I don't know what it is, but between the RECs and all of del Toro's work that I've seen, I have a real affection for Spanish horror.  The Devil's Backbone is lovely, beautifully shot, suspenseful with building tension and a couple of jumps, but not at all over the top with gore and violence.  As in Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro has a very nice touch weaving history and scary stuff together.  It won't be for the slasher/traditional horror fan, but for those who like a little bit of sophistication (and subtitles) with their ghosties, The Devil's Backbone is a very good choice.

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #3: My Soul to Take

Oh dear.  Oh dear oh dear oh dear.  Why the HELL didn't someone tell me NOT to watch this movie?  What an unbelievable waste of 108 minutes.

A schizophrenic serial murderer is killed on the night seven babies are born, and vows to come back and claim them all.  Sixteen years later, someone is murdering the "Riverton 7" ... is it the killer, back from the dead?  Or is it one of the seven, possessed by the killer's soul?  Seriously, though, who gives a shit?  The story is confused and confusing, dialogue and actions jumping around meaninglessly sometimes even in one scene.  The characters are stupid and undeveloped, caricatures really, and I found it impossible to care when they started getting killed off.  The kills were boring, unimaginative and not scary - and mostly took place out of frame or even off-screen.  Ugh.  I can't even talk about this anymore.

This stinking pile was written and directed by Wes Craven.  WES CRAVEN!  How far the mighty have fallen.

Up next: The Devil's Backbone (which by gawd better be good or else).