What I'm Watching: Rapture-Palooza
On the 'not my usual fare' for Trisk pile, which let's be honest. That's what the What I'm Watching posts are all about. Either new horror, or stuff I just wanna talk about, highlight, or warn you the hell away from.
It's good to make that reminder just what these posts are.
...Where was I?
Right, Rapture-Palooza. It's a horror comedy, with the emphasis clearly on the comedy side of things. The horror is so very minor. We have some talking locusts, rains of blood, some undead wraiths, the apocalypse, and Satan.
But really, that's all in service of the jokes.
What we've got is a story that takes place after the Rapture, the (According to some faiths) religious event that calls the faithful up to heaven, leaving behind everyone else to suffer through plagues and the coming of the Beast.
Sadly, they don't mean Hank McCoy, but the earthly avatar of Satan. Things do not go well. But, people persevere.
And honestly, that display of the human spirit is one of the best things about this movie. I honestly think a lot of the attitudes shown by characters is how people would really react if they were left behind in the Rapture and had to deal with meteors shooting down regularly, blood pouring from the sky, and crows telling you to fuck off before they shit on your car.
That very worn down, "Sigh, just another day after the Rapture". Hell, I know I would get that way. I'd be one of the people going, "River of blood? SURE let's go kayak down it!!" We get used to shit, it becomes everyday, and we persevere.
The Beast, a politician named Earl Gundy, wants a nice girl next door type, since most girls left behind are less honourable and not his type. So when he runs into Lindsey, he uses his Beastly ways, and outright threats of killing everyone she knows and loves, starting with her boyfriend, to get her to agree to being his queen. But they formulate a plan to entrap the Beast, since killing him would just release Satan incarnate upon the Earth, and hopefully save everyone.
And yes, this is a comedy.
That resigned attitude, the blase whatever to it all is where a lot of the humour comes from. Anna Kendrick as Lindsey brings another side of it, as she wears a face of "I am taking no more of your shit than I have to, in order to shoot you dead" in all her interactions with the Beast. The jokes are...okay. The humour is nothing that creative, and it's more putting them against such a dark subject matter that makes it creative. But when you have such a top notch comedic cast of Kendrick, John Francis Daley, Craig Robinson as the Beast/Earl/Satan, Rob Corddry, and so many others, they at least make an enjoyable ride.
There are a few laugh out loud moments, a few more that are just painfully long, but overall it's a decent enough movie to kill 90 minutes with. The jokes never get in the way of the actual plot, and the plot is never there JUST to make a joke, two things that happens too often in comedies.
If you want a few good laughs, and don't mind a little bit of sacrilege (Seriously, Jesus gets lasered, God has a fouler mouth than most sailors, and Lindsey tells God off in no uncertain terms for what he did to the planet) then hey, check this out.
