Alien

 Oh man. This movie. I've seen it quite a few times (though definitely not quite as many as I assume others in our class might have) but I feel each time I watch it, it gets better. I first watched it back in high school with an old friend, when our main motivation for watching it was actually because we included it in a story we were writing together. The two characters were watching the movie and, because we hadn't seen it before (or at least I hadn't), we decided to watch it together so we could have more accurate reactions to it. I also watched it a couple times in college, once for a science fiction class, and now for a horror class. Now don't get me wrong, it's creepy and terrifying, but it's also got Sigourney Weaver and cool aesthetic choices.

I just saw a comment the other day talking about Alien in relation to current events, regarding the fact that Ridley is the only one to survive the alien, and she's the only one that didn't want to break quarantine and followed appropriate measures. But maybe that's besides the point- I don't know if currently breaking quarantine and going outside would necessarily result in either a face hugger or being attacked by a xenomorph. (Wear your masks folks, might not be the best time to test it out for improper following of guidelines.)

Truly though, this movie does have an impeccable aesthetic. The setting of the moon in the beginning, where they find the eggs to begin with- you have the creepy, suspenseful music (which the soundtrack for the movie is, as everyone knows, incredible) that correlates to the discovery of the eggs and is revealed to us as the viewer gradually to heighten the suspense. The inclusion of the sheer amount of eggs lends itself to the mystery of the narrative- where did all these eggs come from? Why are they here, unprotected? Is this whole moon inhabited by these aliens, or do they just use the moon as an incubator? Most of these questions go unanswered, as they gather one of the eggs and bring it aboard, only for it to turn into the dreaded alien- which grows at an alarming rate. Though you can't help but question, is the alien truly fully grown? It's only been a matter of days, and though the alien is definitely man sized, I wonder what the actual xenomorph life cycle is like, especially considering that all the other eggs were still unhatched in the chamber.

What follows is survival- a battle in which only Ridley (and the cat) survives. The alien possesses an unnatural intelligence, yet also an adherence to instinct as it slowly makes its way through the ship to kill all of the living inhabitants there. Ash describes the xenomorph as a "perfect organism" that is "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of mortality" yet, as always, I find myself wondering the true story as to this alien's backstory- or rather, maybe not this specific xenomorph, since we pretty clearly get its origins, but what of its others? Has anyone else ever encountered others of this species, yet just not lived to tell the tale? How long have the eggs been in waiting? I've always been interested in this species, though have not yet done digging on their history, or perhaps seen it in the sequels or related movies, which I haven't yet watched. 

Night of the Living Dead

I'll admit, it took me a little bit to get through this movie. Self admittedly, I'm not the best person when it comes to watching older movies, since I generally don't like the picture quality or acting style (I'm very shallow, I know) and a movie released in 1968 isn't typically on my top list of things to watch. Secondly, there were many instances where I just got frustrated with the characters in the movie- Barbara in particular. While I don't think her character was the worst thing in the world, especially because I feel she had a valid trauma response, overall she was just very unhelpful during the course of the entire movie.

Certain things also felt too convenient- the addition of five characters being hidden in the cell where they didn't show up until a while into the movie felt cheap, an easy way to add drama and tension when there was already a lot between Ben and Barbara to begin with. They had an interesting dynamic, and then there were a whole lot of other wrenches thrown into the mix- and that's where the real problems started. You have the obligatory "asshole" character that we also saw within Breeding Ground with the character of Harry. You have Judy, who at the last minute proclaims that she wants to go with Tom to help get the gas (even though she has no skills to add to the situation) that ultimately leads to Tom's death because she can't get out of the car. You have the mother figure with the sick daughter. You have Ben in there too, who is one of the highlights of the movie because of his common sense and survival instincts, though the movie did him dirty which I'll get to.

Overall, I did like how the movie rationalized the appearance of zombies and the sprinkling of information and answers throughout the narrative through use of experimentation and radio reports. It was the classic answer of radiation of course, but I did like the fact that it was a short lived phenomenon and how it was explained to be such, because they were able to eliminate the problem and the source. 

However. The ending. The ending. I didn't expect everyone to survive- quite honestly, I was expecting most of them to die from the beginning. Maybe Ben and Barbara would survive, but the rest not so much, especially when it was revealed that the daughter wasn't feeling well (which obviously means she's going to turn into a zombie.) I held out hope to Ben, especially as the ending was getting near and it was clear that he knew what to do, and he knew what he had to do.

Then the final scenes came, with the people going around in the morning and shooting extra zombies that survived the previous night. And I knew. And I hoped that I was wrong. But then it happened- they shot Ben and killed him. Whaaaat. Listen, I get it- there's the whole tragedy of surviving this awful event and having enough wits to make it through, then dying because of the one thing that you thought could save you. But honestly, it was frankly ridiculous. I literally closed out the movie with "Really? Come on. No."

World War Z

 World War Z was actually one of the first books I read for this class- right after Cycle of the Werewolf. I wasn't sure what to expect of it. I had seen the movie a few years back but didn't remember much of it, and I was rather underwhelmed when I did watch the movie. Something about zombie media for the most part doesn't really do it for me- I like things to be completed, to be finished, or at least "finished" in some sense. 

Yet with the majority of the zombie media I've seen (mostly seen, since I was never really one for horror books until recently), honestly the only one that comes to mind that has a definitive "ending" was the horror romance for Warm Bodies. Honestly that really hit the happy medium for me- yeah, it was creepy cause it did show the eating of brains and zombie attacks and such... but it also had a fairly well thought out plot, even if it was a little cheesy. And by the end of it, there was a clear end to a story, with the zombies being rehabilitated into human society. This does generally happen within In the Flesh too, a tv series that didn't run for very long in 2013-2014, though it might have just been canceled before it got to the point of not finishing the story.

The thing that I mostly get annoyed with in regards to most zombie media is the fact that the story doesn't end. Take The Walking Dead (still ongoing even after 10 years), the show Glitch, the movie version of World War Z- all pieces of zombie media that either don't end or they have a vague "ending." World War Z frustrated me for this exact reason, because it focused on a singular family trying to survive this zombie apocalypse and the ending is the family reaching a safe zone... yet the threat of zombies is still very much high and the zombies are still, in fact, a very real thing. Where is the satisfaction in that? It's a vague hopeful ending of "We're going to be okay (but just ignore that the rest of the world is still in deep shit)."

Yet in complete contrast, I absolutely adored the book. Having it take place as an interview format, with the stories themselves indicating that these events have taken place in the past, and that the "Zombie War" is effectively over... it gave me hope and assurity that this story did have an ending. I wanted to know how, and I wanted to read everyone's accounts on how they personally survived it. One of my friends commented on how they actually disliked the book because it was an interview format and all took place in the past, which they felt took away from the suspense of the book, but I had no such qualms. The interview format was something I hadn't seen from zombie media before, and honestly I feel like that's immediately where a movie adaption would fall short and impossible- though I would love to see a documentary style zombie movie. With how vivid Brooks was able to make the interviews, especially jumping from so many different characters, there are a lot of cinematic qualities to it already.

I did have a few sections that stuck out to me the most. The first was the interview with Jesika Hendricks in Manitoba, Canada. She tells her story of going north with her family at the first sign of The Great Panic and discovering that the zombies freeze during the winter, buying some time for the others that also went north. Yet what really struck me about her section was how she, ever summer, volunteers to go north to find and mark the frozen zombies. Her interview ends with them finding a half-thawed zombie, and she "raises her weapon, a long iron crowbar, and casually smashes the creature's skull." Something about it kept with me- it's an effective demonstration of just how much life has changed, and what people do now, and how people have gotten used to it. It's just another day for her, in the aftermath of this war. 

The other sections that struck me were the interviews with Kondo Tatsumi and Tomonaga Ijiro in Kyoto, Japan. However, it was less about the content and more about the continuing, partner nature that is present within these two sections that show up right after one another. Tatsumi's narrative starts with him alone, then eventually meeting Ijiro and joining forces with him- then the next interview is Ijiro's time right before Tatsumi finds him. Even after the war, these two are still partners, having formed a martial arts for defending against zombies, and are seen with each other even in Ijiro's interview. It was the first, and I believe only, set of interviews that really interlocks with one another, showing the shared experience between the survivors and how things have changed.

All in all, there were a lot of parts of the novel that really stood out to me- there's a clear ending to this story, even if technically the zombies are still there. But it didn't make me feel like it was unfinished in the sense that I get from most other zombie media.

The Yattering and Jack

Clive Barker has a particular way of writing. After reading Rawhead Rex and The Yattering and Jack, I have to say, there's a specific style I feel I'd be able to recognize if I read any of his other works. The first word that comes to mind is "crude"-- though maybe "brutally honest" might be a nicer way of putting it. Emphasis on the "brutal" part. 

The Yattering and Jack deals with a demon sent to claim the soul of a human, though the human is too dumb to realize it. The Yattering does whatever he can to try to get negative emotions out of Jack, which leads to possibly the most uncomfortable part of the short story which is the death of the cats. For the most part, I'm okay with animal death in stories- but this was just excessive (another good word to describe Barker's writing). The first was not an accident at all, but at least it seemed to fit the story aesthetic and I didn't mind it. Then the second cat was drowned in a toilet (??) but the last cat had to be exploded? Yes, the Yattering is a demon, yes demons are terrible and evil, but in terms of Barker's writing it mostly just reads to me as excessive.

As the story progresses, I felt that the character of Jack became a little less concrete like the one we saw in the beginning. He grows more cunning, more affected by the Yattering's attempt, and overall more devious. I wonder if the Yattering being within Jack's house affected Jack's personality, making him slightly more demonic. Especially given the ended, where Jack is almost proud that he's managed to enslave a demon and has no qualms at all about starting to give orders. Plus, how did Jack know that he had enslaved the demon through these actions in the first place? It wasn't like I was missing these answers in the midst of the story, but they definitely came to me after, especially when thinking on how Jack's character changed. Of course there wouldn't be a story without the plot and some change, though I wonder how it would have turned out if Jack's character had remained a little more, in my opinion, consistent. 

Jack's constant repetition of the phrase "Che sera, sera" was also very prevalent throughout the story. Since it wasn't outright explained and also did seem to have an actual meaning, I looked it up and discovered that it can be translated to "what will be, will be." It definitely fit the theme of the story, but I think the most representative of the repetitions was the end, with the Yattering. It has to resign itself to being stuck with Jack, with the knowledge that Jack doesn't seem to care that he won't be able to get to heaven. It's applicable for both of them, in terms of resignation and reluctant acceptance.

Cycle of the Werewolf

Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King was actually the first book I read for this class, and honestly one of the few novels I've read by King. The first book I read of his was On Writing, which I think counts as somewhat tangential, just because he's mostly known for his horror, but I've also read Carrie for a class I took in undergrad called "The Making of Monsters"- though I should mention that the class was more focused on "real" monsters at least when it came to our final project. Since I haven't read much of King's work, it was an interesting experience reading... well not quite his "early" work, since the novel came out ten years into his official writing career, but certainly an earlier work considering today's date and the frequency of his releases still. 

The formatting of the novel was an interesting one. It's short enough to technically be considered a novella, though most still consider it a novel. It follows 12 short stories, one per month of the year, and all revolving around the concept of a werewolf terrorizing a small town. Ultimately, I did like this novel- the format kept it quick and fast paced, and there was an air of mystery surrounding the identity of the werewolf. I had a feeling that the werewolf would be one of the narratives found in the novel, and I was correct at the end, when the werewolf turned out to be the pastor. One of the biggest things to add to this mystery was the month of June, when the werewolf's victim, a diner owner by the name of Knopfler. Though we don't get the identity of the werewolf in this section, he sees the werewolf transform and makes the comment that this is someone the whole town sees every day.

I did have the thought early on that the pastor would be the werewolf, for the sheer purpose of it being a pastor in a book like this, coupled with his vivid dreams of fire and the horde of werewolves... followed immediately by there being a death in his church. There was also the telltale literary design of the reverend passionately desiring to be the hero to the town, finding out who the werewolf was and either damning them or saving them.

Overall, the narrative of the werewolf was effective. King made a comment at the end how the technical dates of each of the full moons doesn't line up, but he couldn't resist using the holidays or more well known days as focal points for each of the stories. While reading, I had thought that the full moons didn't seem to line up, but didn't think too much further on it, since ultimately it was a fictional story and I didn't mind the full moons lining up on more significant days.

I've mentioned it in the other stories we've read so far and I don't want to sound like a broken record (and I don't think I will for one of the future books at least, and hopefully more) but I did find the lack of female characters in the book a little annoying. There is one forefront main female character, but she holds the title of sad and depressed virgin, and is described none too politely. I did appreciate the little bits of insight to her character we were given, though I felt it was a little excessive the fact that she tried to have sex with the werewolf.

The narrative was a little simplistic, though the mystery added some interesting elements. Without the mystery of trying to figure out who the werewolf was, I think I would have felt a lot more bored, even given the short length of the book. It ended with a few bangs- both in terms of firecrackers and gunshots- and I did appreciate the diversity of characters in the book, even if 95% of them were male. We definitely had a mix, in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys," even excluding the werewolf as a character himself. 

And finally, to end once more, I'll count the main character as the werewolf in this one, and would I feel safe with them? The fact that he's a werewolf does no favors on his part considering that he's a pastor bent on hellfire. Big Hunchback of Notre Dame Frollo vibes honestly, so absolutely not.