What I'm Watching: Devil's Carnival

Awhile ago, I saw Repo! The Genetic Opera, and if you haven't seen my thoughts on it, they were...not favourable.  I didn't HATE it, and there were a few good moments.  I liked the style, but the music never really landed for me or spoke to me.

Still, I could see why some people would get into it, and if the singing was a little more...I dunno, it's hard to explain just what about it didn't work for me.  It felt too forced sometimes, like the singing wasn't natural enough.  It's a style thing, I guess.

I honestly want to revisit it and see if it's grown on me.  But enough of a movie that came out years ago, this is supposed to be about Terrance Zdunich's LATEST project, the Devil's Carnival!

Obviously I saw some talent in this guy, since I came back for his second project.  His songs in Repo! were easily some of my faves, and the guy's got some serious vision going on.  The trailer was decent, and the concept intrigued me, so sure!  I'll give him another shot!

The plot revolves around a trio of people with darkness in their past meeting untimely ends and finding themselves in a Hell that is represented by a devilish carnival with a slew of rules, and they must navigate their way through, avoiding temptations tailored for their sins, with the chance of some day finding their way to Heaven, should they be found worthy.

Surprise! that's a long shot.  At best.

The stories and songs are based around Aesop's Fables, and that is certainly a rich pit to mine.  Many people have done it before, but never quite this way.  And twisting the stories, and modernising them, and putting them through the lens of Lucifer's trials for the damned is actually very clever.

Remember back during my review of Dark Dealer, when I said I wish that it was an anthology series of people struggling to outwit the devil at games of chance and whatnot?  Yeah, surprise is on me, this IS that series.  Zdunich has every intention of making multiple Devil's Carnival movies with several stories in each, and it was like my request was instantly answered.

And yeah, while there's a lot here I genuinely DO like, it has a lot of the same flaws as Repo! The Genetic Opera.  There is just something about the musical style for some of the songs that just reads as 'off' to me, and I'm not enough of a musical person to articulate it.  Still, there's more songs in here I *do* like, and once again Terrance's songs shine with his distinctive, rich voice.  I'd seriously come back AGAIN just to hear him sing.

On a whole, Devil's Carnival works for me a LOT better than Repo! does, with stronger songs, content that is more up my alley with the morality plays and demonic overtones.  As I watched the movie, and listened to the commentaries, and watched it again, it definitely grew on me, and while a few things do still bug me, I really did almost instantly come around and quite enjoyed this.

It's tough to judge the cast, since acting and singing are two different things, with some similarities, but coming across in different ways on screen.  With most of the story being conveyed through song, and the heightened acting that comes with it, there's a lot of scenery chewing, but it's almost all in the absolute best ways.  Briana Evigan especially, who plays a dual role of a thief and her mirror self, tempting her to take more than she should, eats up the screen and the joy and fun she has as Twin is so SO fun to watch, as her own fun just oozes off the screen.

The weakest story for me was the adaptation of "The Scorpion and the Frog," and a large part of that is my personal dislike of the overused story.  It's a good lesson about people not being able to change, but argh it's everywhere.  But that's my own issues.  They twist the story around to try and make it be about the innocent young girl whose nature is unchangeable and gets her in trouble, instead of the ever-stinging Scorpion (A 1950s style Greaser bad boy, in a perfect bit of style) that can't resist his nature.  They never quite sell the idea, and it didn't really connect until it was outright explained that THAT is what they were going for.

Sean Patrick Flannery finishes up things with a story about a father who couldn't handle his young son's death and took his own life, winding up in the carnival.  Flannery gives a haunting performance as he struggles to find his way through the labyrinth of his own demons, making great use of the carnival setting.  He eventually is released by Lucifer and sent up to Heaven, as a plot point that will grow into the next Devil's Carnival movie.

I really can't say enough about Terrance Zdunich here, either.  The man has vision, he is clearly creative, and has such a great voice and presence.  He is the glue that holds this together, both creatively, and as Lucifer, the common thread that ties all the stories together, sharing them from his book of fables.  It's such a great hook and wrapper to the story, and scratches an itch I've had for awhile for just this sort of anthology.

Overall, Devil's Carnival was an enjoyable, creative musical journey that I found more enjoyable than Repo!, and if you're a fan of that, then you'll probably love this too.  While it wasn't perfect, and still had some rough spots, I was sold enough, and enjoyed enough, that I am eagerly awaiting the next installment of stories in this universe.

What I'm Watching: Mine Games

I've been doing a lot of Trisklets these last few months trying to catch up on the stuff I watched earlier this year, but there've been a few exceptions where a movie has spoken to me, either for good or ill, that I just needed to get things down while they were still fresh in my brain.

Dead Still was one of those, on the side of the not so good.

Mine Games is another, but where does it fall?

I first came across this movie back in, geeze, May of this year?  April?  And the concept sounded fun, the trailer was cool, and it then got delayed from the release date I'd seen, it got renamed to "The Evil Within" if I remember correctly, and THEN it was renamed BACK to Mine Games before it finally got to me.

Which, quite frankly?  Is one of my favourite titles of anything this entire year.

I have a lot of things that I *want* to say about this movie, words itching to come out, but I know they're the wrong words to use.  I want to spit out that this movie is brilliant, but it's not.  I want to shout how great this movie is, but I know better.

Much like Mischief Night, this movie just lands with me in such a way, that while yes, it DOES do some great, fun things, and I *thoroughly* enjoyed my time watching it, I can also acknowledge they are not great movies.

But since when did greatness matter to Trisk?

You get sucked in right away with some very VERY common tropes, of the college gang off to the deep dark woods to spend some time at a cabin, and we even begin right at the typical last gas station before civilisation retreats.

And if that was the entirety of the movie, if this was Just Another Cabin In The Woods movie...ugh, I would not have bothered.  Even the trailer had me sighing at the idea.  Oh.  But oh, it doesn't stop there.  Again, like Mischief Night, it gives you those familiar horror tropes, and then RIPS THEM AWAY and goes in a *completely* unexpected and different direction.  They teased JUST enough in the trailer to make jaded, cynical Jason go from "Seen this before" to "I NEED TO SEE THIS NOW".

(So of course it then took five months to finally be released, but I digress...)

After pulling an "I Know What You Did Last Summer" with a guy in the road, they arrive at the cabin, and tiny little things start to go wrong and get weird.  Nothing TOO out of the ordinary.  The true weirdness doesn't hit until the gang finds an abandoned mine nearby and decide to go exploring.

As one does in these situations.

While down in the mine, things continue to get weird, until some of the group find a few dead bodies covered up in one of the storage rooms.  Which would be more than enough in any other movie, but Mine Games?  Mine Games goes that one extra, unbelievable step.

It's THEIR OWN BODIES.

Yep, stumbling around a dark, abandoned, already creepy as hell mine...and you find your own dead body.

And from that point on, the movie could do no wrong for me.  The plot is inventive, the mystery actually unfolds (And folds right back in on itself) in such an interesting way that shows multiple versions of events, but the same version, and even adds on some great twists and turns to the ride that make things all the more satisfying AND confounding.

This kind of plot can turn out very dodgy, and Mine Games gets a little too caught up in the minutiae of its ideas.  But the fact that they managed to work out so much is actually quite commendable.  It is SO very hard to forget details in movies like this.

Sure, the whys of it all are never explained, but I don't really need them to be.  I am content in "supernatural mine" being the explanation.  I've seen some people argue that everything is all in a certain character's head, but that is A) unsatisfying for an explanation making the entire movie just a dream, B) too many other character - ALL OF THEM - experience the weirdness as well as Michael.

I was surprised at how much I even enjoyed the characters.  There are no real familiar tropes here.  There is no jock.  There's no sex-crazed bimbo.  There's no stoner...well, someone brings along mushrooms, but he's never played up as the jokey pothead we know so well from horror movies and comedies alike.  The characters actually feel like genuine people in their own right, and not hastily scribbled familiar traits.

It's tough to say anything about Michael's descent into madness, because every character goes along for the ride down that road, but Michael's naturally stands out, since he's someone who's decided to go off his meds for the trip.  That doesn't end well, to do that and end up with a creepy mind and familiar dead bodies.  Joseph Cross does a great job selling the struggle this guy is going through, trying to figure out what's real and what isn't, and what to do about it.

Briana Evigan does a good job as Michael's girlfriend, constantly trying to help him, make sure he's okay, and generally trying to take care of the group as everything falls apart around her.  She's easily the character you're most along the journey with, even though the story isn't really about her.

The writing may not be the best, but the dialogue pops fairly well, and feels natural enough.  Everyone's arc comes full circle in ways you wouldn't expect, and I am just endlessly pleased with the movie makers catching almost every single ball they threw into the air in this juggling act, and even a few more balls that we never saw coming.

My biggest complaint is, sadly, with the mine itself.  A lot of it is fine, because they did SOME filming in a real mine to help sell the idea.  But a majority of it, for obvious safety reasons of IT'S A MINE, and for stunt reasons to boot, was filmed on a set.  And it looks like a set.  Badly.  1970s Doctor Who would look at this set and laugh.  I've seen more realistic looking rock climbing walls.  When such an *important* piece of your movie is the mine, and it really needs to exist as its own character, having it's production values be so low is such a shame.  The mine needs to work, you need to believe it, and I just didn't.

Fortunately, the plot is THAT strong, in my opinion.  Sure, it ends with a gigantic ball of "Wait...what?" but I love that, and it really does come together surprisingly well.  Even with it leaving you scratching your head.  I'd *almost* say better than Donnie Darko, but not quite.  But does it ever come close to that.

If you are looking for one twisted mind trip of a movie that starts you off in familiar territory and then drags you along to a whole new level of WTF, you really must see this movie.  Unique experiences like this must be enjoyed and nurtured, so we get more of them in the future.