This week's column is (mostly) more items I haven't seen, and so am just giving you a heads-up about as possible points of interest.
It seems all of my notes for this week are for items on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu - with one, related, bit over on stalwart, free-for-all, Tubi.
I'm starting with something that isn't a direct recommendation. Instead, it's a quick heads-up on something new - maybe of some interest to someone you know - which otherwise reminds me of technically similar projects I enjoyed.
Something that doesn't appeal to me with respect to any of the branding - I've seldom caught even a glimpse of the appeal of pro wrestling - but where I was somewhat interested in the mechanics and execution - arrived on Netflix this week. It's a choose your own adventure-style, WWE-branded promo piece called Escape the Undertaker. Nothing in this makes it a pro wrestling event, but it involves characters and their mythology from that... universe.
I've not subjected myself to it, but a quick check of reviews confirmed that it's some mild bit of programming that seems aimed at a wrestling-obsessed tween. Ultimately it's an innocuous bit of branding. Nothing bloody, gory nor even potentially frightening unless one's fairly young. The only fragment of a draw here is some mild interest in how well or poorly they handle the story choice pathways. The Go Left/Right, or Listen, Leave, Fight, etc. story branches. A run-through is supposed to take about 30 minutes, though nothing I've read about the details suggests there's anything there I really want to blow the time on. One reviewer noted that he chose the "correct" path of responses the first time through, and that left him much less interested in restarting it just to blunder down the wrong ones to see what happens. All of this may be a different case for you or someone you know.
Instead, I'll suggest the two other Netflix items that have previously used this mechanic.
If you were a fan of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (four seasons, 51 episodes), with its nigh eternally optimistic, wide-eyed, titular character - whose childhood and early adulthood were stolen by a self-styled Reverend who kept her and other women in a doomsday bunker as sister-wives, in her adventures in a modern, urban environment (a scenario which they somehow made work as a comedic premise, which is an accomplishment) - then last year's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs The Reverend is something worth looking at. In it, you get to make a series of choice for Kimmy, and the story unfolds accordingly. If that doesn't appeal to you, or perhaps you don't want to dive in there because you never got around to/into the show that spawned it, then I'll suggest the 2018 Black Mirror special: Bandersnatch.
Black Mirror was a generally dark, sci-fi anthology series (I talked about the series, and some similar ones, in a year one post at the start of 2020) that ended up giving us 22 stand-alone stories plus the videogame experiment above. Elaborate and well-done, it has the additional benefit of being self-contained. Just jump in. The story's set in 1984, which becomes at least approximately apparent pretty quickly by the tech and references. Ultimately, its a very meta concept project, playing with not only the character's but the player's sense of how free will and reality may be an illusion.
Depending on the player's choices, a run-through can be as brief as 40 minutes, with an average play-time of 90. There's approximately 150 minutes of footage divided into 250 segments, with a potential for a possible trillion, unique pathways through it to perhaps a dozen various endings. At most of the endings there are options that allow the player to go back and choose a different path at an earlier junction, expanding the possibilities, though there will still be many paths that would require a complete restart of the game/story to reach. The choices can be as seemingly harmless as which breakfast cereal to eat, keep an appointment or wander off, or deciding whether to speak to someone or attack them.
Bandersnatch landed December 28, 2018, its release only pinned down the day before. I played through it multiple times there at the end of the year, which was a fairly ideal time for such things. It may be time for me to revisit it.
Back to the present: Newly-arrived this week on Netflix is a teen-centered, slasher-style serial killer film There's Someone Inside Your House (2021 TVMA 96 m). The trailer has an obvious, general Scream vibe. In it, a senior year transfer student Makani Young not only has to deal with the unfortunate shift from Hawaii to the town of Osborne, Nebraska, (and a secret that was key in the decision to move) but also with finding herself at or near the center of some gruesome murders.
The killer seems intent on exposing each victim's darkest secrets, and the signature theme for the killer is that they wear a life-like mask of the victim. A suitably large cast of teens, presumably to fuel the body-count as the survivors race to puzzle out the killer's motives and identity. The film's tagline is "Everyone Has a Secret To Die For."
Initial expectations are that it's going to be a story with weak joints, but a likeable-enough cast, and that someone's hoping the killer's theme and style aspects will see this become a successful franchise. It's landing at a good time of year for something like this, so I may make the time for it.
Arriving tomorrow (October 9th) on Netflix is the Australian, alien invasion, sci-fi action film Occupation: Rainfall (2020 128 m). A sequel to Occupation (2018 119 m), which I must admit went past me in the dark, so this sequel migrating here to the states a year later is my first taste of this. I'm not sure how much of it is just the obvious formula and lines, how much the intercut of CGI menaces, and how much the inclusion of Kim Jeong, but the trailer leaves me half-wondering if it's an intentional parody of an alien invasion movie. Maybe, like Starship Troopers, it's one of those films where one, earnest audience takes it as a straight adventure film (the 12-and-under crowd, or perhaps people who watch Fox News), while the other sees it as a send-up. See how the trailer strikes you. Depending on where one looks, this may also be branded as a 2021 release. Much of that may just be via Netflix, which is trying to do what it can to make as much of what they're showing as possible as new and freshly-made for their audience.
Apparently Netflix wasn't able to secure Occupation (2018), the first film in this series, at the moment. A search at first only found it available through Amazon Prime - behind an additional paywall - but, once again, the free service Tubi came through. It's over there for anyone who wants to see it.
My general impression is that the 2018 flick's not really necessary to this newer film - that it's set in a world already reeling from an invasion/occupation should be an easy premise to adjust to - but I know some folks just insist on seeing things from the beginning.
One more on Netflix for this week's piece: Arriving next Thursday (14th) is season two of the alien first contact series Another Life. The first season arrived late July 2019, which was couple months before the Consortium of Seven's launch, so this ends up being a first mention... as I try to recollect the details. It was one of what's become so many instances: Something appears, I binge-watch through it, no one I'm talking with has, so there's no reinforcement by way of discussing any details with anyone. Part of the time this has a sequel event, where someone I know starts to watch it a year or more later, by which time I've forgotten two thirds of it and the story I do remember is mashed together into a block memory, so I have to edit myself because I can no longer react within the context of episode five, and am wary of spoiling one or more late-season payoffs. People with "lives" -- worse, those who do most of their viewing with a significant other, which further delays the process -- are the bane of my video entertainment existence. Perpetually out of synch, I may need to make conversation appointments, so I know where someone is in watching a series and can refresh myself where the story was by that point.
Anyway, the quick arc pitch is this: A mysterious, alien artifact appears on Earth. It lands, grows a crystalline tower above it, and aside from doing other mysterious things it sends a signal in the direction of Pi Canis Majorus. A ship capable of trans-light speeds is sent there to investigate. The 10-episode first season is mostly about events on Earth (more mysterious doings involving the artifact) and onboard the ship as it has a series of problems and adventures on its journey, only arriving at its destination for the final episode. Revelations there set up urgent matters for a second season.
When I watched it that summer there was no immediate info that they were committed to a second season, so there was no assurance we'd ever get the answers. It could have just as easily dead-ended there as so many other series have. I see now it wasn't given the go-ahead until mid-October.
After all this time, I think I'll just refresh myself mostly with the series' wiki entry, and maybe rewatch episode 10 to get myself back in the rhythm of the characters.
On Amazon Prime, two more Blumhouse horror films land today.
In Madres (2021 1h 23m), set in the 1970s, a Mexican-American couple, expecting their first child, move to a migrant farming community in California. The wife experiences strange symptoms and visions, so she tries to work out their origin and meaning. In the mix are interesting and important themes concerning sterilization and eugenics, along with the consequences of trying to force one's children into new cultural molds by refusing them the language and culture the family came from.
The second film in this week's Blumhouse double feature is The Manor (2021 1h 21 m), and if one's going to pick one film from this Blumhouse quartet to watch, this appears to be it. Starring Barbara Hershey as Judith, a young-in-spirit grandmother who suffers a stroke during her 70th birthday. This leads to her being placed at Golden Sun Nursing Home. There she's marginalized, isolated, overly-supervised, sedated and generally gaslighted as she becomes aware of a spectral presence. That's a lot to plug into.
In a much lighter vein, newly-arrived on Hulu is the full 8-season run of the crime dramedy series Castle, which ended in 2016. I know I wandered away from it before the final season, as much for items in my own life as anything else.
The show centers on the eponymous (Richard) Castle (played by Nathan Fillion), a highly-successful serial mystery writer who overcomes his writer's block by killing off a successful, but played-out character, and taking NYPD detective Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic) as his muse and the basis for new character Nikki Heat.
The show plays off the substantial character and method differences between them as they combine to make a formidable, crime-solving team. The expected romantic tension subplots immediately ensue. The combination of scratching that romantic itch, and indulging in a long-term subplot of conspiracy concerning the cold case murder of Beckett's mom, stand out in my memory as two of the things that gradually strangled a series that almost certainly went on two seasons longer than it should have. Still, it's been just over five years since the series wrapped, and longer since I last looked in on it. I know that the final episode gives it an ending, so I'm toying with maybe giving it a controlled rewatch. Without a doubt, I have far better series calling out for rewatches (Justified and The Shield, among them), but I remember enjoying this for what it was. Besides, this fan-uploaded "trailer" for season 1 (just a scene from the first episode) is reminding me how long ago 2009 feels. Shifting gears considerably --
Arriving next Wednesday (13th) on Hulu is a dramatic miniseries, starring Michael Keaton, based on/inspired by the opioid crisis. It's Dopesick. Word from critics is very positive, both for the storytelling as a whole and for the performances.
My biggest reservation is the real-world gut-punch that the Sacklers have already secured the safety of themselves and their fortune, escaping with a fine that they won't even feel, which comes with legal protections they absolutely do not deserve. Wealth brings great power and influence, and evil is routinely rewarded if it's big and resolute enough.
The first three episodes (each approximately an hour long) drop on the 13th, with a single one arriving each Wednesday thereafter, through the November 17th finale.
I'm going to end this week by dodging back into the comfort of fictional infamy, linking back to my immediate pre-Halloween post from last year, which includes links to three Vincent Price revenge arc films which are still waiting over on YouTube - two of which you can watch directly from the post, should you choose, and the third which will demand you pop over to YouTube to watch.
That's plennnnty for this week, even if you have little else going on. I hope the fall's treating you well so far. I continue to generally need a nap, and oh! my back...
See you next Friday. -- Mike
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