- Where the evil forces of Twin Peaks reside. It is an infinite regression of identical black and white tiled hallways and red cutrained rooms. Frank, Bob, the Man From Another Place and the gang reside here to collect their gobbleygook (whatever their word for fear is). Pretty scary stuff even for a Lynch world. Seeing a possessed Laura Palmer with blank white eyes screaming at an inhuman frequency is terrifying. Even a pure soul like Cooper cannot leave the Black Lodge unscathed.
- Camp they send foreigners in a near-apocalyptic infertile Great Britain. It is a bunch of overcrowded tenements and squalor. An uprising erupts resulting in the army indiscriminately shooting at the angry mob and eventually carpet bombing the place to oblivion. Cuaron's frenetic direction adds a terrifying realism. Evocative of the darker aspects of 20th century history.
- So you are a kid forced to move to a house in the middle of nowhere with seemingly no TV or internet. Plus, it is raining all the time. (I am guessing the Pacific Northwest) I personally thought it looked like a cool place to live but would inevitably get dull fast. What gets even older fast is the fantasy world version of this house where everything outside of the immediate surroundings is the Construct from The Matrix. And the succubus inhabiting this other world creates creepy dopplegangers of your family and neighbors. REALLY creepy versions. And this succubus wants to take your soul as a collectible. This is a children's movie?
- Charlie Kaufman's ultimate meta hellscape. Again, Kaufman writes himself into his screenplay as a playwright who receives a Macarthur genius grant and decides to stage an ambitious play about death in what appears to be the largest airplane hanger ever built. Kaufman desperately wants to create something authentic and true, so what is more real than recreating the surrounding city and all its people inside this hanger? There is the problem of recreating the hanger inside the hanger inside the hanger inside the hanger... Not to mention that Kaufman's stand in, Philip Seymour Hoffman, needs an actor to play himself, but that actor also needs an actor to play himself and so on. I will not spoil the end but things do not work out in this faux New York. Kaufman tells a story about finding meaning in life by creating a facade of his own life. Let's just say he doesn't find it. But knowing you don't know is the first step to knowing, you know?
- Humanity has polluted themselves off Earth. All that is left is garbage, vacated Costcos, cockroaches, and one robot they never turned off. All plant life is gone and the earth has become a giant desert with periodic nighttime dust storms. Would be the ultimate hellscape if it were not for that one robot.
- This is truly the apocalypse. Some unknown disaster wipes out the earth's ecosystem and the minority of humanity that survived is forced to live on whatever existed before the apocalypse (old cans of food, other people). There is no plant in a shoe savior in this future. There is zero chance of humanity surviving this which makes this gruelling story even more painful. What are the man and boy struggling for? Super duper nihilism.
- The Strangers want to learn about love. To do this, they entrap a bunch of unsuspecting humans in a perpetual 1950s era metropolis with lots of steam punk gadgetry. Also, it is a giant Dollhouse where memories are erased and reconstructed into new identities. The lesson: it is not whats in the brain that makes us who we are, it's the heart. I guess so.
- K. is trying to get to the castle. Everyone in the village knows about the castle but are unable to guide him there. K. spends the novel searching for something the reader knows he will never find. Makes you feel like you are taking crazy pills. Dark City features a similar plot.
- Polar bears, smoke monsters, crazy French woman, boring flashbacks, ghosts, 1970s era science experiments, time travel, bloody noses, Others, other Others, Tailies, hatches/cabins/pirate ships/orchid. How can a rationalist like Jack hope to survive in this world?
- Orwellian dystopia featuring Soviet styled architecture. Humanity is enslaved by beings of another world. We got crowbars, they have Striders. Once you blow up the city, there isn't much hope outside. Zombies, subterranean insects and the rest of the Combine await you. Even a portal gun can't make this into a rosy picture.
Any I miss?
1 comment:
garmonbozia! just watched FWWM again the other night.
How's Annie?
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