Today’s actually been a really good day. It was a low-pressure morning, I got the tracking information for my incoming shinies, I installed and noodled around on Pillars of Eternity, and I went to go see It Follows with the light of my life. (Who discussed doing science to the monster in the car on the way back.)
Pillars of Eternity is fun; it feels a lot like playing Baldur’s Gate back in the day[1], although I haven’t yet resorted to the tactic of summoning kobolds to fight for me and then looting the short bows for resale when they got killed and disappeared in a puff of smoke. It’s a bit crunchy, it feels fairly linear so far, and it has some gleefully creepy moments that I’ve been enjoying greatly. It’ll be good to play through, I think.
It Follows was… I don’t want to say it was surprisingly good, because I wasn’t expecting it to be bad. (Following under cut due to spoilers–mild ones, but it’s a really solid movie and people should get to watch it without spoilers if they so choose.) It was well-paced, creepy, well-acted, smart, and coherent. I came away with the sense that there were rules to what they were dealing with, that the characters didn’t necessarily know the rules–despite Hugh’s warning–and that even if they noticed the rules, they didn’t necessarily say them aloud. It’s a very clean kind of feeling for a horror movie setting. The camerawork was also lovely; low dim light and clear colours and still framings, if that makes sense.
I need to think a bit about whether or not Hugh counts as a Cassandra-type. (I know there’s a term for them, I am just blanking on what it is. Like Randy in Scream, or Lecter in Silence of the Lambs[2], or the keeper of the way in Cabin in the Woods–the one who knows how the monster works and tells the normal people.
It also had one of the lowest body counts imaginable for what positions itself to be a new-century slasher flick. (There’s probably a better term for that, too. I mean, I think, the kind of horror movie you’ve been able to find in the last decade or so; a movie with modern sensibilities that doesn’t hew to tired horror tropes, and doesn’t apologize for not doing so.)
Seriously. Very lovely, very worth watching.
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[1] I date myself, I fear. Oh well.
[2] Lecter really is this. It was kind of surprising to realize.