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.

What I'm Watching: Warm Bodies

Sticking with the theme of supernatural romances adapted from novels, here's some thoughts on Warm Bodies!

Now, I *know* this movie was hit with backlash because I saw a lot of people saying, "Ugh, no thank you.  it's just Twilight with Zombies."

And that, that is a shame, because Warm Bodies is a genuinely entertaining, if not great, movie.

The story is set in a world with two levels of zombies.  There's your recently dead zombies, who still have a sense of self, ability to think, and sadly, an overwhelming urge to eat human flesh.  Eventually, their humanity fades away, along with their consciousness and memories, and devolve even further into skeletal zombies that  have zero humanity left in them.

We follow the adventures of one such still-humanoid zombie, whom is later named R, as he meets a girl and falls for her.  It's your classic love story of REALLY forbidden love, especially when she starts to fall for him.  Julie can't quite figure out why, but it probably helps that R isn't trying to eat her.

The biggest fault of the movie probably comes from a need here.  They made R too pretty.  You need to make him look dead, look enough like a zombie, but still have him not look like you will lose your lunch by looking at him.  And so R ends up with a look that made people think of Edward's pale sparkliness, and that made people judge the movie before even seeing it.

The relationship between R and Julie somehow works, and the build up is done very well.  They have ups and downs, it isn't really love at first bite...er, sight, and their struggles are believable.  For one of them being a zombie, that is.

Warm Bodies succeeds in actually making you feel for R and the zombies.  The movie is rife with dark humour, which you kinda need, and expect, from the self-aware zombies.  It pokes fun at tropes, and embraces a few others, but runs with them in fun ways.

Rob Corddry as R's friend M brings a lot of humour, as you would expect from the Daily Show alum.  Any scene with him in it, is great, and his performance is worth watching.  And if he's not enough, then you've got John Malkovich as Julie's father and the military leader of the human settlement featured in the movie.

My only problem with the story, is that the zombie plague is turned back by the power of love?  This was just poorly explained and handwaved, more than I would like.  But turning the tide of the undead isn't really the thrust of the story, and save for being important to literally humanising R, it's not that important.  Just more of a, "Oh, come ON!" moment for me.

Warm Bodies is charming, fun, and funny, with a great cast, and good chemistry between the two leads.  It was much more enjoyable than Beautiful Creatures, and I definitely recommend it to fans of zombie movies who want something a little different.