Darkon (2006)

A group of average suburban youths live out a medieval fantasy by engaging in Live Action Roleplaying or "Larping" in the 2006 documentary film Darkon.

Darkon is a fantasy game where competing tribes battle it out for supremacy. What makes it different from your average D&D session is that the participants actually act out the battles using padded swords and shields, and throwing nerf dodge balls to cast magic spells. The fate of the nations are played out on the battlefields of state parks, and community soccer fields.

A documentary with such an especially nerdy subject is bound to have some hilarious moments, and Darkon does provide a bunch of these. It is hard not to laugh when the film makers show us one of these players practicing his swordsmanship in his backyard, and explaining how participating in Darkon is going to give him the confidence to talk to girls.

But it seems as if there is almost too much seriousness in what should be quirky subject. While a movie such as King of Kong explored a nerdy sub-culture with an interesting mix of humor and drama, Darkon is a film that seems far too concerned with making its subjects seem deep and relevant in order to justify itself. A lot of time is devoted to exploring the psychology of the participants, and what motivates them to engage in such a strange hobby that is bound to get them ridiculed. The film tries to provide answers ranging from the need to escape the drudgery of suburban life, to the longing for respect and comradarie, or the simple fact that we all need to "roleplay" in some aspects of or life.

Some of these themes are interesting, and even may be true to an extent, but they all feel like an attempt to give "larping" a profoundness that I am not sure really exists. One particularly silly scene has members of one of the warring factions making battle plans in their living rooms while a tv set plays a news report about the battle fallujah. The implication being that larping and the war in Iraq are somehow deeply connected, which is an idea that had me rolling my eyes.

Darkon does have a couple interesting human stories, and it is interesting to watch these people play out this complex and interesting game, but I still wish the movie would have just a bit more fun with its subject matter.

6/10

Survival of the Dead (2009)

It must be a mixed blessing to make a movie that helps to start an entire subgenre of horror. It is probably even worse when your follow up to that film is widely considered one of the best horror movies of all time. Those are pretty big legacies to live up to. So it is no real surprise that over forty years after creating Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero’s latest zombie films have been a disappointment. His latest entry, Survival of the Dead, is probably his worst Dead film yet, and is probably enough to convince even the most strident of Romero’s fans that the aging director should probably throw in the towel.

As with all the Dead films, Survival takes place in a world in which the dead have risen and have begun feeding on the living. Society has been destroyed, and the last remnants of humanity are attempting to hold out against the undead. The film follows a group of AWOL soldiers who are looking for a safe place to ride out the apocalypse. When their leader, sarge learns of a possible safe island off the coast of Delaware the group sets out for the island. But when they arrive, they find that the small island has been embroiled in conflict between two feuding families. It seems that the O’flannigans want to kill off all the undead, while the Muldoons want to keep the undead alive, and hope to find a cure to the outbreak. Sarge and his men quickly become drawn into the conflict.

Survival is heavily influenced by the western genre, and with its premise tries to set itself apart from other zombie movies, but I found many of the films elements to be wildly out of place and shoehorned into the plot. I found it curious that this small island off the coast of Delaware was home to cowboy hat wearing Irish Ranchers. The fact that the Muldoons want to save the undead is equally baffling. There is no indication of why they think the undead are salvageable, and their entire plan seems to hinge around trying to train the zombies to eat horses, rabbits, and pigs which doesn’t really mean the zombies will become functioning members of society, or stop eating humans along with farm animals. It is even hard for me to see how a small island inhabitanted by two families would even have very many zombies on it.

One could argue this could just be more of Romero’s often talked about “social commentary,” and that may be true, but the problem is that Survival spends far too much time on this poorly developed family feud, and the zombies simply take a back seat as simple plot devices rather than central antagonists. In Night and Dawn, the zombies were true forces to be reckoned with always trying to close in on the survivors. In Survival, the zombies are simply there, never really posing a threat or creating any tension. Romero’s direction doesn’t help things much. The film jumps around a lot, and often times things just happen for no apparent reason. The film is plagued by terrible cgi gore that looks like it came straight from a syfy channel original movie.

Survival of the Dead is not even a movie that is enjoyable on a basic level. The film is poorly plotted, unscary, and amateurish. Perhaps this is not completely Romero’s fault. It is clear to me that the budget for this movie was not huge, but neither was the budget for the three original dead films. What we have here is a film maker who seems to have gone of the rails, and is content with putting out second rate, mediocre films.

1/10

Feast (2005)

A group of strangers become trapped in an isolated hole in the wall desert bar by a group of bizarre killer monsters in Feast, a gross out horror film that seems to love showering its main characters in torrents of blood, slime, and monster ejaculate. Feast appears to be produced by Ben Affleck and is apparently the product of his reality TV show, Project Green Light. I haven’t seen the show, so I will just focus on the finished product itself.

Feast is a film that wastes no time on characters and even less time on plot. You never really learn what the heck is after these people, and none of the characters of the film are even named. Instead each character gets a quick title card freeze frame laying out their name (the hero, the drifter, the bartender etc), an interesting fact about them, and their life expectancy. This is a strange, quirky way to start out the film, and makes you feel like you will be in for something different and unique. However, Feast is a fairly typical creature feature, with a huge body count and lots of gore. The cast is an assortment of silly horror clinches, the best of which is a motivational speaker who tries his best to keep the groups spirits up, with humorous effects. They all pretty much exist though to be killed in brutal ways, and are quickly thinned out over the course of the movie.

One thing I will say about Feast is the monster attacks are fast and frantic with plenty of people getting killed in mid sentence, and the monsters usually strike in a chaotic blur of blood and claws. In fact, I don’t think there is a single character that sees their death coming in this movie. It does a good job of keeping you on the edge of your seat.

The monsters themselves are pretty creepy looking, and have an interesting twist. They seem to have hyper active sex drives, and reproduce very quickly. Yes, this film contains a monster sex scene, a monster penis, and monster ejaculation. Another great aspect is the fact that most of the monster effects are done using conventional effects with a few cgi shots here and there. Overall, the monsters are pretty well realized, even though the viewer doesn’t really learn much about them.

Apparently there are two sequels to Feast, and I will probably check them out as the film just ends and leaves you wanting a bit more both because of confusion and because you really never figure out where these monsters came from. Overall the first Feast is a slightly above average horror film that could have used a bit more story and plot to make it something truly special.

6/10

Night of the Comet (1984)

1984’s Night of the Comet is a campy post-apocalyptic horror film set after a comet passes close to earth irradiating everyone into a red dust and turning other survivors into intelligent zombies, except for a chosen few who are immune to the comet’s effects. Regina and Samantha are two of these survivors, and are left wandering a abandoned California battling the undead and a group of evil scientists who want to harvest their blood and manufacture a cure.

Of course since Regina and Samantha’s father is a trained special forces operative fighting the commies in Honduras (thanks Reagan!) the girls are expertly trained in combat and the use of firearms. One character puts it humorously “The Mac-10 was practically designed for housewives.” Night of the Comet is essentially a female’s take on the apocalypse as the two sisters get to indulge in responsibility free shopping sprees at the mall, fight over the only remaining male hunk, and fight the occasional zombie.

I do say occasional, because the zombies are a bit few and far between in this film. Most of the conflict of the film comes from a group of scientists attempting to harvest the girls, and a lot of the film is actually pretty slow as the characters explore an abandoned L.A. We seen most of this before in Romero’s films, and most of the attempts at humor do fall a bit flat. But, like Romero’s films there does seem to be a touch of social commentary and parody here, especially in the ending which seems to say that maybe civilization isn’t much better than the apocalypse.

All in all though, Night of the Comet is a bit on the forgettable side.

4/10

New World Order (2007)

New World Order is a documentary that explores the fascinating and strange sub-culture of conspiracy theory activists in the United States. In particular the idea that a global elite, composed of secret societies such as the bilderbergers and the freemasons are engaged in a plot to erode America’s sovereignty and establish a one world government or New World Order.

The film takes detached approach, by not arguing for or against the claims of these activists but exploring the daily lives and motivations of these figures. The film profiles everyone from a Christian who is attempting to establish an independent self governing community in Idaho, to young urban 9/11 truther, who weekly travels to ground zero to hand out flyers claiming that 9/11 was an inside job. However, the central figure of the film is the talk radio show host Alex Jones who runs a popular conspiracy website, and is viewed as the chief orator, intellectual father, and soul of the conspiracy movement.

The movie has some bizarre moments provided mainly by Jones, who travels the country trying to infiltrate bilderberg meetings, and believing that every step of the way he is being shadowed by the goons of a global conspiracy. The climax of the film also consists of Jones interrupting a live taping of the Geraldo Rivera show to expose what he claims are the main stream media’s cover up of 9/11.

However, far from being indictment of a loony fringe of Americans, New World Order explores the real passions and motivations of a group of people who believe in a cause, and determined to try to do something about it. Whether one accepts their theories or not, their beliefs reflect a very real frustration and distrust with government that has been growing in American politics since at least Watergate, and probably before, and in that sense the film shows its subjects in a more sympathetic light. Overall, New World Order is an entertaining and fascinating look at a group of people who are often written off as cranks.

9/10