Risen
Introduction
Introduction
Earlier today, I wrote something down on a piece of paper that’s over on the desk- a short note to remind me of something to include in tonight’s intro, since I’m running a bit thin in regards to things I feel compelled to stand on a chair and yell at strangers.
I don’t mean that the well is running dry, rather, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this prolific (I think that’s the word I want) writing (even if I don’t know how to use it correctly) in years, so… the torrent isn’t as backed up with pressure as it is on some days.
But the piece of paper is still over on the desk, so it’s not doing me any good. I’ll go look at it in a second, when I need more coffee. There’s one thing, my dear friends, that I need to share with you. My wife- Mrs. Perfect and loved by everyone and really good at people skills like smiling and baking and remembering people’s names… well, not only did she cost us our safe driver discount (yup. Still harboring that..), she also finally broke some glass last night! Yes!
I mean, I’m not psyched (siked) that we no longer have a carb-cap, but I am appreciative of the fact that I’m no longer the singular destructive one. Now she’s got some culpability too. I may be the *more* destructive of the two, but now it’s subjective. Before it was digital, and I’d gone quantum vs. her restraint and chastity.
“Gone quantum”. It sounds like something one of Ricky Bobby’s sons would say threateningly during dinner. “Don’t make me go quantum on you, old man!” I’m not exactly sure what quantum means. I think it means, like, folded over another time? Or is that more telling about me, and how I view things? Like, regular computing is ones and zeros- digital. I think quantum counts up to 4? Or more? I’m going to look it up now. We can learn together.
According to Wikipedia: “In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be “quantized” is referred to as “the hypothesis of quantization”. This means that the magnitude of the physical property can take on only discrete values consisting of integer multiples of one quantum.”
So, I think this is saying that I’m wrong. I think this is saying that our computer’s math is built on singular whole number or no number, and quantum computing is going to allow for no number, partials of number, and singular whole number. Is that right? So, instead of binary with 1 and 0, computers would think in .34 and .82 as well a 0 and 1?
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? Let’s just wrap this all up in a neat bow under the heading “I really didn’t understand what Quantum meant before I looked it up and I still don’t have any comprehension of it now either.” Alex, I’ll take “Other things besides Calculus that have made me cry?” What is a Scorpion Pepper for $200?
What are we watching tonight? More importantly, why? I can’t remember what I watched last night. Oh, yeah. Re-Animator. I really wanted to like it and I didn’t. And that’s ok.
But when I was thinking about tonight, I realized I really wanted something science fiction. I mean, I wanted Resident Evil in Space. Has that occurred yet? If not, I call it, I thought of it first and I get to write it. But only if Mila is on board. Big Badda-Boom.
I googled a couple different variations of “Space Zombies”, and I think there’s a movie called Zombies From Space, but I also found a musical album called “Bike Porn and Zombie Pee”. I listened to a bit of a couple of the songs and was pretty much repulsed.
I think the label was named Fish on Toast. That’s… good. I can’t unthink that. My mouth cannot un-imagine that. I want my gagging back. If I was feeling like cartoons, there’s the Dead Space series, but I want something kinda smart. I want the convenience store version of smart. I want M. Night Shamalyion to make a movie about space zombies.
I went to war with google like a far-sighted kid on a sugar rush swinging for the fences at T-ball, but I couldn’t get it to spit out any smart science fiction zombie shit that I haven’t already seen. Then I remembered a couple on Amazon that I’d put away weeks ago, when I first started chewing on The Guide for realsies.
I’ve had this one on ice and I just realized why. I feel ravenous, like my wife demanding “$80 worth of sushi!”. And then breaking the glass at the table. Risen “In an isolated farming town, a contamination occurs after a meteorite explosion that threatens life as we know it.” That’s what we got on the table tonight, kids.
The picture is a man staring off into space, looking frozen, with very pale blue eyes- milky, you’d call them. I took a slightly different approach to Risen and this review as well. I normally do not watch the trailers or read any reviews on the movies that I’m going to dissect, but something about this one… I didn’t feel at any point like watching it was going to be a waste of my time, but I do enjoy non-zombie movies as well.
Fargo was a great example of a movie with no zombies. So is No Country For Old Men. The Little Mermaid. I can do this all day. But my point is that I knew I wanted to watch this, but I wasn’t sure if I should review it. I mean, what if two weeks ago, when I stuffed it into my “To Watch” list, I’d watched the trailer and it’d looked awesome but didn’t have anything to do with zombies?
I don’t mind reviewing a movie and declaring it foul and a cheat and not actually about zombies- if they’ve said they’re about zombies and it’s a bait and switch. But this one- Risen doesn’t say anything about zombies. So I googled “Is Risen a zombie movie?” and this shit is funny.
I was listening to a lesson on Search Engine Optimization- you know, because when I took the class in it, shit… 9 years ago? Fuck. Time. Passes. Yeah, 9 years ago-ish… I didn’t pay attention. Who? Me? A website? That’s stupid! Then, jokes on me, I end up recruited into a website development company and STILL manage not to learn anything.
Now my pasty tubby ass is sweating to the Search Engine Optimization YouTube tutorials at the gym… So after thinking about that image, go ahead and do the google search yourself. Well played, production company responsible for Risen, Well played indeed. I’m not putting it here simply ‘cause they deserve the traffic. Bravo. It’s the little touches like this that both make me feel like I’ve chosen wisely and I’ve got something good coming down the pike, but I feel fairly comfortable moving forward under the assumption that Risen *is* a zombie movie.
I’ve just been struck by the realization that an undergrad art teacher who failed me gave me excellent advice. This whole time, I’ve thought that it was a hilarious conversation, but I just realized that I should have taken him seriously. I did my final for the class- an intro to art- after taking LSD. Instead of showing my mastery of greyscale and shading, I put all my paint on my canvass, wrote BMW in white on the black, and then circled it all in red with a slash-out.
Dude asked me what I liked to do, and I think I was honest enough to say “Smoke pot and play guitar”, to which he replied “Then go do that.” I think it’s not too late. I’ve got the whoo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oooh part of Spacehog’s “In The Meantime” stuck in my head. I believe Helmet has a great song also of the same name.
I keep thinking I need to refill my coffee and then almost spilling it on myself when I check it’s level to confirm. It’s still quite full. I’m twitching and my eyelids are bouncing like a SoCal Impala. Let’s get this Risen thing flying.
Review Notes
Review Notes
I feel… inadequately prepared to start this movie. I’m not sure what exactly I feel is missing. It’s like I feel compelled to have watered the plants before I start this. Not that I’m obsessing over watering the plants. Just regular houseplants. Well, not regular. I have 8 large… plants. I don’t know what kind. But they’re all clones from two originals. So do I only have 2 plants?
We start off with an old B&W set up about UFOs. Military guys and radios and stuff. Reports. Sources. Sightings.
Major Keyhole?
We’ve established that we’re going to be in UFO realm
THAT’S PAUL’S HOUSE!!
I like the little girl’s dap rhyme. Not going to repeat it all, give it a handshake yourself.
Dad looks like Andy Dick. Jesus, that’s a scary thought. Worst dad ever?
“Boring chickpea Tuesday night” I love chickpeas. I love Falafel. I actually wrote about falafel on an earlier draft of tonight’s intro before erasing it all. I did that a couple times. I’m gonna pay attention to it.
Mom, you are a crappy mom. It is crappy to guilt your kids like this.
Oh… I think something just blew up in the yard.
Boring chickpea Tuesday dinner just got a whole lot more exciting!
I can’t stand the reflexive “Turn to prayer”. I mean, say what you want while you’re moving, but freezing and mumbling? I’ll be leaving you behind as I try out new vulgarity combinations while I still have the chance.
Coughing like a bunch of freshmen hitting a bong for the first time.
Kid is creepy.
Everyone has a small, measured amount of red on them.
Plane crash? Terrorist attack? Toxic air?
Oh! Fuck. This is fucking terrifying. I don’t like this scenario.
I think the little girl got away? But the rest of the family… died of poison gas?
It wasn’t a gentle go to sleep…
Oh. I can’t look away.
Fuck.
Uh… That’s one of the most frightening beginnings since 28 Days…
New York.
Sports radio… Drinks… books… Nasa stuff… climate change
Until 2030 to avoid catastrophe?
DUI for Peace Prizes?
“Antidepressants”? That’s what’s on her prescription bottle. Come ON!! I want to know the name, the details! These things flush out a movie. In my humble opinion, of course.
Badger in Penn. Casualties.
Samantha Brainsgrove?
The entire town died.
The air is toxic. Hazmat suits.
Terrorists? Nah.
She’s an astronomer. In the tub.
Trippy little sequence.
The army is here for Dr. Stone.
“We’re also authorized to use excessive force if needed.” WTF? I think I’d swing on general principal if someone said that to me.
X-Files called. They want their SUVs back.
Werewolf man.
Meteorite. 20 mile radius of unleashed hell.
As my wife would say, they just got… shit. I can’t think of the term! Dammit. For when you’re told you’re taking a battlefield promotion against your will.
They’re gonna drug test her? Fuck them! I didn’t ask to come! You want my expertise, you get my irie lifestyle, mon!
Nice yellow suits. One size fits all.
Science chatter. I like the werewolf. He talks a lot, though…
Baseball! I love Baseball!
This is a little bit pretentious of a script for idle chatter. Especially unreciprocated.
Wow. That landscape looks like Alasker. Or parts of Iowa. Equally God-forsaken.
Jokes aside it looks like the Alvord Desert, one of the best places to drive 80 miles an hour with no hands and your eyes closed. You can go for a full minute without worrying about anything. Unless, someone else is doing the same thing and you both picked shit vectors. But the chances of that are nil. So buckle up and enjoy the ride!
Got a hole in the ground. Big.
“I think I wish I had a more form fitting suit. Really bunching up in the nether bits, you know? I think I just stepped in shit.” I like the werewolf.
Here’s a term that’s fun. GWC. Guy With Camera. If you know, you know.
She found a sprout thing that looks like a Venus flytrap and she sticks her finer in it? Didn’t she see that documentary Life? Big things come from small beginnings!
This is well-shot.
I like sprouts. I like plants. I like cloning plants. I like caring for plants. Universe’s sense of humor here, bringing the movie full circle with my earlier rantings.
One hell of a big badda-boom!
Some sort of Russian conspiracy… Sounds a bit familiar?
Some kind of tree grew out of the sprout that killed everything.
Shit looks just like the Ukraine right now. Sucks. Fuck Putin.
The informant woman was shot down. Oops.
REC. Hell yeah!
We about to take apart a body. Lotta people watching.
“Far too normal, if you ask me…” Sorta like “Yeah… TOO quiet.”
As you might know, I’m not an autopsy fan.
Uh… That’s black oil. The effect.. is amazing.
But that’s some X-Files black oil shit. Full circle.
Oh, yeah. THAT’S what I’d written on that note. Something about slide far enough to either side of a circle and you come back to starting point.
The oil’s going back in…
Dude- SAT UP. Startled!
Ok, just took a moment for a little stretching. These reviews are starting to kill me, considering I’m sitting on a day bed with two precariously balanced laptops on an uneven table before me. My posture is suffering.
Back to the show!
“I’d like to leave the room.” Understatement of the year.
Got a corpse sitting on the table. Sitting.
Don’t ask for directions if you don’t want to get told what to do.
The corpse just blinked! Was it supposed to? Did anyone else see that?
No pulse. Body is cold.
Why take your helmet thingy off? No! Bad idea!
I wouldn’t look away for an instant. I’d also be waving a sharp things with both hands. As I sprinted out of the building.
All the phones are ringing?
Everyone is fleeing outside?
Screams?
Oh shit. The hall is packed with naked dead people standing around.
Chaos and people acting crazy. But normal people. News and shit.
This doesn’t feel right.
I don’t know why she’s taking this so bad? And he’s not?
Zombies don’t seem to remember anything.
White face paint of death is absent from the zombie’s arms and legs. Come on. Could have caught that. *I* did.
She’s Mrs. Archer.
They’ve inhaled fragments of meteorite. That’s why they came back. So these are a new form of life.
Startled!
Yeah. How DID you come up with this idea?
Resequencing. The zombies are changing.
I think I’d vote for incineration as well.
So… here’s a thought. I was an alcoholic for a couple decades. I never intentionally drank Jack Daniels. Most alcoholics I knew weren’t too fond of it either. Or maybe they’d started off liking it, but booted it too many times, or simply couldn’t afford to drink the quantities that they wanted to, so they choose to sacrifice “quality” over cutting down. I’m just saying. Should have gotten an alcoholic to consult if they were going to have an alcoholic as a character. Coulda used Bam. He needs a job these days.
More flashbacks…
Don’t ever say “I was just…” to a cop. Always state it simply. “I was…”
Come on, that’s not how people really abuse pills either.
Please! Stop storing them in dark rooms! It’s fucking scary! Turn some lights on!
She’s confessing to a zombie? And giving her a book? Makes sense.
Yes, zombies are good listeners.
Phone’s ringing.
Oh shit. Startled.
Zombie just grabbed her arm. Made her drop her phone.
A philosopher idiot.
I would agree that not including the plant in your report… you’re an idiot.
That’s crazy. He’s point to the map on his phone and I recognize the highways from when I was a kid.
They’re all attuned to Badger. This is kinda slow.
That man is half frog!
Seems like that tree thing is growing. Like, a LOT.
Stone looks f’n deranged. Loopy as hell.
Zombie in a box. That’s one hell of a cool image. Que Alice In Chains
Gotta say, ½ way through and it’s pretty slow. Sounds like it’s gonna pick up though.
That’s the Fargo fence! Full circle!
That thing is HUGE.
It… would have had to have been growing visibly for it to be that big after 2 days. She would have seen it’s growth.
So you’re going to chop it down. What are you going to do with it? What is it comprised of? Looks like a couple tusks sticking out of the…
WHY is the zombie out of the box?? This is a bad idea.
“Shouldn’t we be getting him a blanket or something?”
Zombie took a breath…
Blue eyes. Very blue.
I think I’d be ok with him pointing the rifle. I think I’d be ok with standing behind him, too.
Have you ever… looked at your hands, man?
Zombie is in awe…
Looks like a nuclear winter.
Zombie playing with snow…
Zombie talking! Zombie has British accent!
Portals? Wormholes?
Who is that guy?
Why is the therapist leaving all this crap on the answering machine? Major violation of HIPPA.
Neil Diamond stopping by… Insulting the cooking…
Reminiscing about a science lab. The old shed. Science! Space!
Things got out of hand?
With about half an hour to go, I don’t want long lost Daddy showing up and expressing his feelings, I want zombie mayhem! YAWN!
What the hell was the point of that waste of time?
The general wants her to go talk to it…
Sitting on a bench like Forest Gump!
The zombie says they were given the coordinates to the planet by a human named “Supernova 94”? This shit has gone off the rails.
Oh shit. I don’t think the zombie likes them fucking with the tree…
Crappy little CGI there. Why? Why bother? Just don’t shoot the fucking shot!
Zombie pretty sure that they gonna win this brawl.
“We have… abilities.”
Feels like The Prophecy and The Thing rolled together.
Oh. That can’t be good. Zombie eyes gone black.
Mop. Mop. Mop.
Ok. Fucking stop it.
1:13:27 through 1:14:22 -The piercing shriek sound effect. GO FUCK YOURSELVES. You don’t need to deafen the audience, just show it happening to the actors. That was stomach churningly painful.
Now the soldiers are freaking out and killing each other because of zombie telekinesis.
VERY poorly CGI’d drone…
The zombie can sorta make things like Event Horizon when he wants to.
So the drone no go… a couple fighter planes…
This scene is pretty Cthulhu’esque… while just kinda ripping off Independence Day.
The zombie is creepy. That’s for sure. But… no longer creepy. I… have become accustomed to his face.
Just throwing money at crappy CGI at this point. Everything looks surreal in a fail sort of way.
Radio people talking crap… I hate radio personalities.
Back to the Supernova 94 thing. Or not. Maybe just an old guy making a model.
People are hearing sounds. Hooting and hollering. Noises. Fog. Smoke. Explosions.
So the entire world is going to shit. The ground is shaking. People are panicking.
Oh, some of this “cultural” shit is just plain cliché painful.
The dog. The dog. Why she go in the woods? Is bad idea!
Bless me. Bless me. I just woke the Pitbull up.
She’s looking around the woods… for the fourth minute.
How hard is it to film someone walking by a train? Once again, you chose poorly with your CGI.
I no longer know or care where she is.
Oh. She went home. I still don’t care. In the least. I can’t stress my not caring enough.
The flag, the dad… What is this? Looking around in slow motion? Walking in snow? This is the kinda shit that REM song lyrics are about, but REM doesn’t write about zombie shit, so…
Yeah. I’m kinda disappointed.
Who are you? What are you? Suffocating? Trapped in your own body? Why all this existential shit? Why do you think you have the right to waste our time with this?
Just stop talking. Just stop talking. Just stop talking. Thank you.
She’s gone back to see the zombie guy staring at the space-plant. Yeah. It’s that stupid.
Use some of that CGI money to fix the colored contacts gap next time, eh?
Now the zombie is giving her credit for… of course this is all tied together back to when she was a kid. The only difference is that this isn’t Paul and Paul is a much better movie.
Back to her as a kid again. More flashbacks. Creepy flashbacks.
Worst parent ever. Makes Andy Dick look attentive.
Back in time, there’s an alien in a tank.
The alien in the tank touches the glass near on the other side of her hand and he Paul’s her- completely rips off Paul- and fills her head with ideas. And like, she kinda turns a little alien or something too.
The little girl… So, I guess the little girl is the alien who got stuck on earth. She’s… wait… yawn… Supernova 94.
Damn, her mom is a horrible person. No wonder she lost her shit.
This… is a great story, but… you all told it wrong. So fucking wrong. Criminally inept wrong.
Yeah, I feel like sobbing too.
Back to the woman looking for her dog.
Seeds or eggs or something are all over the place now. They’re horribly CGI’d.
Spores.
“Where did these roots come from?” Who gives a shit. Outer space. It’s binary. Not earth.
I like the desperation of the last oxygen tank… very romantic.
————End Transmission——————–
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Boring chickpea Tuesday gets interesting
- We meet some characters we never connect with
- An autopsy finds evidence of plagiarism off of the X-Files
- Zombie-in-a-box visits Bad-CGI-Plant-in-a-field
- Would the sound engineer stand up please? You’re an asshole.
- We get to tag along on unresolved daddy issues and shitty CGI
- There’s no real plot or anything- just a smug sense of pretension I’d love to kick down the stairs.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
Not. Not. They’re not zombies. The production team are assholes. An asteroid lands, and poisons everyone, but if you inhaled a little bit of the asteroid (in dust form?) as well as the gas, your corpse would be possessed by… an alien entity with telegenic powers and blue eyes, but you have to stand next to these two rams horns that are sticking out of the ground or you’ll suffocate. Right? At no point was there anything truly zombie here. No biting. No lurching. No aggression, even. (Big fat raspberry sound)
Where the money went
Where the money went
Lying to the public. Your CGI sucked, you couldn’t even remember to paint the rest of a body to match the face, your script is fat-skinny. You know what I mean. You got a soft gut and little pale stick legs and arms. Your endomorph is “Unattractive”. You know where the fucking money went?
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
The best weapon was the near-minute sonic assault on our ears when the zombie made the soldiers go Event Horizon. A fucking minute of the most painful tone imaginable. It added nothing! It was not enjoyable! You make art for all the wrong reasons and one day you will stand.
That was new!
That was new!
I don’t think I’ve seen a movie rip off so much other shit so obviously yet fail so spectacularly to make anything of consequence. I’ve never had a soundman hate his job so much that he attacks his audience. I’ve never had an entire story back-filled in the last 12 minutes of a movie after wasting an hour on bullshit nothing.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
No. There were a couple spooky or creepy things here, but nothing zombie. You cannot get a hand, but stay the hell out of my wheelhouse or you’re gonna catch a fist.
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
I am furious. This is such a bullshit bait and switch. There’s nothing at all zombie about it. Whoever I was praising for the smart SEO in my into ought to have their kneecaps broken. You’re a fucking sinner. If it’s not about zombies, what is it about? Aliens wanna colonize earth but first gotta do their terraforming thing. The atmosphere poisons humans. The aliens inhabit the corpses of humans and then stand around doing nothing except occasionally talking cryptically in a British accent. I’m gonna be blunt. This movie sucks. It is not worth watching. However, all the ideas that were incorrectly assembled into this jigsaw-jig-shit actually make up a really good story! You know how Pulp Fiction is all chopped up and told out of sync? That’s kinda how this is too, but not in a masterful way. This is more like the waiter dumped your tray and then glopped the food off the floor back onto the plates sorta like it was before but way worse. The pacing and focus here- it was like a drunk on icy stairs. Things that should have been noted and moved on were obsessed over, and the shit that we actually wanted to see? It didn’t fucking happen. This isn’t a zombie movie, this isn’t a good movie, this isn’t even a movie that tries in the least. If they had any talent or integrity they’d have skipped the grandeur of “having a CGI budget” and just told a better story simpler. As for the story? You ripped off Paul, you ripped off Independence Day, you ripped off, uh… shit. The Prophecy AND Event Horizon. Did a great job building tension just… You’re… you’re like… You’re a really crappy and inattentive lover who lied about everything. Just shut up and go home already. I’ve got ice-cream in the freezer. Oh, yeah! And you ripped off the X-Files. Shame on you! Shame on you!