Breakdown Lane
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
This movie is a car-crash of wrongness and botched good intentions translated via Swiss cheese and morse code. In other words, it’s full of holes, makes no sense, and really should have been left behind and not produced. What kind of movie centers around a woman pushing an SUV across the desert, then meeting a delusional Luke Skywalker, and then rescuing a bunch of people before just ending? The same kind of movie that insults us by declaring ¾ of the way through “If you cauterize a bite wound you won’t turn into a zombie. New rule!” The last scene, where she meets the dog, and they’d have us believe she was bravely setting off into the future? Sorry, it’s hard to believe you, ‘cause there’s a shit-ton of traffic going on business-as-usual in the intersection behind you. This was never a fully scripted project, this was a sketch of ideas that some idiot thought they could tie together with graphic novel cuts. And they almost succeeded, until they went too far with the music video shit and brought in Miss Non-Sequitur 2022 for what amounted to a fake dream sequence. This movie has some funny one-liners, and at times, the lead is pretty funny and charismatic. It’s just not enough. Whole fucking thing is ridiculous and stupid. Put Capleton’s Jah Jah City on repeat, take some tokes, and dance and clean your place for an hour instead of watching this.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Spoiled brat’s car breaks down and she believes the lie that the tow-truck is on it’s way
- She wakes up and puts her crescent wrench in a zombie’s head before a graphic novel cut scene saves her
- What adult has that much stupid crap glued to their phone?
- The same kinda idiot who is going to push an SUV across the desert.
- The same kinda idiot who dates a guy who can’t run Zoom correctly and dates hookers with track-mark-tits
- She makes it to the call center in time to shoot Max in the head
- She finds a dog and by the background traffic, life has returned to normal. Even if the movie would want us to believe she was driving off into the great unknown.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
These are your random “bite and turn into one” zombies. There is absolutely nothing special about them. They are decently done, well done if prominent, but… they’re zombies.
Where the money went
Where the money went
The money went towards fake airsoft bullshit and I don’t know what… someone must have stolen a bunch of it or something. The zombies were decent, the CGI was hella-discount, the script… I could sum it up on the back of a cocktail napkin without a fucking writing utensil, it was so thin and pointless. And then they keep throwing in rock and roll montages? With a stripper with track marks on her tits? I think the only place they got what they paid for were the graphic novel cut scenes, but even those were uneven and uninformative. If they’d gone further in this direction, they could have been Sin City type shit, instead of just shit.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
I think the axe wins it, simply due to the enthusiasm and hackery of the disembowelment part. I can’t really think of much else. I’m really high, I’ll admit that. Like, she shot a bunch of zombies with different airsoft guns, and she stabbed a bunch too… I think. I’ve already forgotten so much of this shit it’s amazing.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
No, there’s really nothing of Zombie lore celebrated here. It was interesting to see them hitched up as mules, and that guy was nuts, but there weren’t many zombies really in this, and the zombies that were in it were… not all that special. This segment is to celebrate the special. There really isn’t any.
That was new!
That was new!
Never seen anyone eating zombies. It’s just fucking gross and wrong and goes against everything and anything intelligent. They’re rotting fucking bodies that were killed by a virus. You think cooking it at 300 for 15 minutes, turning, and cooking for another 5 is gonna make that healthy? Plus, it’s fucking HUMAN. You’re eating diseased human flesh. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? Oh, yeah. I’ve never seen anyone do so bad an attempt at biting Shia’s dick from Fury as this, too. Man, create your own character.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Some twat yelling about heavens and no light and no man and religious preaching.
By some very high blood pressured bald guy.
A Reaper.
Ok, it’s an internet preacher. Some lady is rapt. Another is shopping.
I want some Cheetos.
“I love him.”
“How can you love someone you’ve never met?” Nice. I like her.
Old hillbilly…
An RV… a crazy lady…in the RV… a spasming bloody thing.
Why the FUCK are you still in this RV?
“Mommy, what’s a Sisyphus?” I… I don’t know. So I’ve paused the movie so we can find out together. “In Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos was the founder and king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). Hades punished him for cheating death twice by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity.” Fuck. Upon reading that, I realize that Sisyphus is one of my wife’s… examples that she uses in life as anecdotes… or is an anecdote that she uses… But the point is, this is why my wife crushes me in Scrabble.
“It was a nice thing you did for that lady. Your detritus.” And he pronounced it “De-TRITE-as, where I’ve always pronounced it “Det-RI-tus.” I hate learning I’ve been pronouncing something wrong all my life. It happens a lot. Lately, my wife has gotten the pleasure of explaining words to me, like… fuck… what’s it called when you put, like, pickled crap and cheese and crackers on a cutting board and stick your nose up in the air? Yeah. She’s trying to teach me words like that. And evidently, failing… which I take all the credit for.
Oh! Is this based on a graphic novel? The title sure looked that way.
Just name-dropped The Hills Have Eyes…
“You’ve just got me wondering if you’ve got a head in your freezer.”
How does the phone work with that many sparkles glued to it? Is she 12?
It feels like my right thumb is broken. And yes, I’d know. I’ve broken both of my thumbs.
Oh. She has a cop behind her.
Pulled over.
That was the clowniest-looking sad-face.
Fucking cop played by a 12 year old. So yeah, I bet you both have bedazzled phones.
And she naps… a long time, I guess. I was too busy noticing that they weren’t even filming on a public road.
Dammit- her car just malfunctioned and I just smeared raisin all over my table.
“I’m sure it’s not dead.”
“It’s got big X’s where the headlights used to be.” Ok. I like.
She killed her transmission. I’m very aware of that experience.
Snacking…
A call from Vincent…
Vincent looks like a discount Joe Rogan.
Insert phone sex scene…
Wake up… the next day. Doing the solo walk of shame out of your own car.
“I think I took the exit to the Twilight Zone.”
Some graphic novel stuff…
And she’s out trying to fix the car…
We have our first zombie. She stabbed him in the head with a crescent wrench.
Her car is surrounded by zombies.
And then… America’s Rejects show up to save the day?
Seriously… it was like a bad music video of fat rednecks and skinny rednecks and just rednecks.
“I just got rescued by the cast of Deliverance.” Damn good line. Damn good line.
The rednecks are… being rednecks. Very redneck.
I don’t think I like “bbq” as an answer.
I think… they’re eating the zombies? What the fuck?
Yeah. This is fucked.
Fireside philosophers.
Rednecks blaming liberals.
Doctors, scientists, trying to play god.
Just like this guy is trying to play Shia in Fury. And failing badly.
What kind of date-rape are they going for?
Nice. Nutted him!
Crap about needing to breed.
And she’s got a gun and is shooting. Down goes Shia-wannabe.
The fat guy… gets pistol whipped to death. Like, the butt of the pistol to his temple repeatedly. He’s quite red.
I think… the other female took the working car?
An… artistic montage. Really graphic novel, really good.
Should still be a bike though.
I don’t think the voice really exists. I don’t think she’s actually talking to anyone.
You ARE supposed to stay with the vehicle. I’m not sure how that changes once we’re in a zombie apocalypse, but…
She’s upset now that she killed someone.
A first-aid kit full of lollypops? I want one! Green! And Yellow!
Uh… is she…
Yeah, they’re actually having her push her car.
“I really wish I had a Prius right about now!”
I have a story about this, which also involves me acquiring a Carhartt sweatshirt and a bunch of tools… I was hiking out in the back country, off a trailhead that’s closed to vehicles- and seriously closed- this isn’t something you can just wheel around. I’ve finished my hike with my dog and we’re walking down one of the logging roads, and we find a bunch of beer cans that still smell like fresh beer by a mud-hole that shows signs of recent wheeling, and then we find a sweatshirt and a handful of sockets and adapters and stuff, and we pocket everything of value into our backpack and continue heading down the road, and eventually we come to this kid with a beat-up ford ranger; homemade lift kit, every body panel a different color, and absolutely not running. The kid with it was past hammered, meaning, he’d been drunk earlier, but then shit went wrong and he had to start working, and he’s worked himself sober in the process. The work? He was using a hand-winch; a come-along- to winch his truck down the road. I told him he was a good couple miles from the gate, which he wasn’t gonna get around, and then he’d at least be at the road, so forestry could let him out, but he was pretty fucked and definitely not making it out of there before nightfall at the rate he was going. He didn’t seem inclined to further discuss his atrociously slow rate of speed or the rapidly failing light, so I wandered on. I honestly did not have the thought that the shit I found was his until later in my walk. I have no idea why. But he told me that he got water in his distributor, and tried taking it apart, and things had gone “Sproing” and his truck was dead. So I’m walking along, and realizing I have this kids shit in my backpack and how cold it was for me to not only leave him there, but to have his shit in my backpack while professing my urge to help… So I decided that when I got home, I’d load up the F250 with the recovery gear and make a run at getting him out. I was going to study the gate on the way out to see how to get my rig around it… But I didn’t feel right leaving this kid out there all night. A couple minutes later, a white pickup comes up the road, and I pull my dog over to the side to let it pass, and they stop to talk, and I say “Are you here to help that kid with the broken down truck?” and the old man in the passenger seat leans over and starts yelling about how no-one is allowed to be out there and how did the kid get his vehicle in, and I didn’t see any reason to be nice to the guy so I said “I have no idea, probably same way you got in here.” and then he waved a key in my face yelling about how he owned the property. I told him that was good, but he wasn’t getting up the road ahead, ‘cause there was a broken-down pickup blocking it, and when he started yelling at me about that, whoever he had as a driver- some younger, much cooler head of a guy- rolled up the driver’s side window and just drove away, mid-old-guy-rant-sentence. I never found out what happened to that kid, but I figured he had someone coming to help him one way or another. Point is, I know about pushing cars. And this decision of hers? Stupid.
Her phone is dead… ad we have more graphic novel shit… and more car pushing.
I get the point, having a rolling shelter is good practice, but not one that weighs close to two tons.
Now… we’re watching her play a movie line trivia game. Which is bullshit from the perspective that she’s just imagining all this.
Kinda a bitch about being a ballerina.
A story about a bomb shelter.
Yeah. The battery. I’ve been thinking about that for a while. Hoping for it.
More graphic novel cuts.
More car pushing.
How the fuck is she running the AC if the car won’t run?
Off to see what’s that there up ahead of us.
It’s a corpse.
With a broken police car.
Very broken.
Looting. I like her style.
“Hello? 911!” into a police car’s microphone.
Leave that Apple crap behind. (my bad, I have a Thing)
She gonna search the corpse?
I think this means she can charge her phone?
I would NOT push a Toyota SUV cross-crountry.
And… her boyfriend…really really fucks up.
But, well, think if it this way. Instant karma, and she’s free and with no guilt.
A Mark Hamill kinda guy. Got him some zombies. Which he’s set up as packmules.
Using the zombies to pull the car. Kinda fucked up. Creative, but fucked up.
Well, that was unfortunate that in the middle of the scene, you can see an RV driving along. Not every convincing of an Armageddon.
Home Sweetest Home? I like the Butt.
Ok. She gets a first in that she is the FIRST shower scene where in the beginning, the person is dirty. Every other shower scene ever filmed, the person is clean the minute they… climb in. Even before the water hits. Good point here. Good point.
Lots of bloody red for the Zombies.
“Why do you feed them?”
“Because they’re hungry.”
Zombie wearing a cone of shame.
Zombie… no longer able to wear any type of cone.
Wow. The axe wins again.
“How about this? A little disembowelment for ya? Ya feel that?” Point made. Overkill, but point made.
“I gotta be alone now.” “It’s time I spent some time alone.”
Her screen is dead?
Is the guy nibbling fingers?
No… that was proany; issing a cricufic.
And he’s gone. Blew his head off. Very red. Very graphically. Very wetly. Very well done.
Some sort of musical montage? Strippers and cigarettes and some bald guy with a huge forehead.
So much music video crap. I think that stripper’s tits have track marks.
“He was never any good for you anyway.”
What kind of bloody union is that? Super cool flashback hallucination or whatever.
And she’s walking, and the first zombie she encounters is someone she knows?
But she can’t pull the trigger?
Has to brain it with a rock? Ok.
An RV… drinking the shit from the bottom of the cooler?
Oh, shit!! She just got bit.
And… well, shot a little girl in the head.
“You know things are bad when a girl can’t even get attention from the vultures.”
Oh, she’s doing the cauterization thing?
And the blacking out thing?
A mall entrance…
Pretty meh CGI, but good zombies.
A blind zombie. That’s just gross.
The CGI is pretty bad.
She’s in a fucking airsoft gun store! They all have orange tips!
But, she’s getting kitted up.
Oh! And there’s gunfire going on out there.
So she waits to see what happens?
“Fucking Dick-Shooter!” I’m not sure what that means.
But I think she just saved that guy.
What is it about all the guys drinking whiskey?
Dude, why the fuck you shoot him in the leg?
Why… not kill him? I’m so confused,
“A child’s guide to shooting?”
Graphic novels of shooting and training and POW. BOOM.
Later, at a gas station, inside an ambulance… she shoots a zombie.
And looks at pills. Takes a red bag.
The more they do the CGI the less I approve.
Pumping gas footage?
More graphic novel shit… mainly about loading weapons. Like, her version of Commando’s “kitting up” scene. Or Hot Fuzz’s. But… not as good as either.
Mervin? I like it too!
I think she’s at the call center.
Now we have arguing.
A greeting…
And here come the zombies!
So we hand out guns.
And spend a lot of rock music time shooting zombies from the roof.
They’re flirting over a tow-truck. Jesus.
“I got a head-shot!”
“That’s great but we gotta move!”
Lotta jumping into garbage. Definitely worth filming.
Oh. Max got bit.
Graphic novel shit again.
Well, Max is gone.
More music video type shit. like, so she killed a dozen zombies in a parking lot. So what.
Now it’s daylight and she’s not wearing the same shit.
And there’s a dog!
And all sorts of normal traffic visible in the background. Oops. Like, a dude on a motorcycle. I think I counted seven vehicles just meandering by in the middle of this apocalypse.
Holy shit! Is that the end? YES!! Thank GOD!!
Seamus Moore and the Underachievers, you could have done better.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
March. We heard back from our contractors who are going to be doing out new house and they hope to break ground in March. Which is, like, 5 months away and 18 months behind schedule. But that’s ok, if it happens.
I feel foolish, like I’m pinning all of these hopeful optimistic changes to our life- the primary one being that we can *have* a social life. Our current house has a 5’2” doorway, which is great if you want to crack Hobbit jokes but not so great when you don’t want periodic concussions, as well an overall floor and wall slope of around 15 degrees, so… look, our house is so fucking old that I don’t even think it’s ADA compliant.
If a room of your house is guaranteed to send anyone in a wheelchair careening into the far wall unless they’re good with the E-brake, it’s just not putting time or money or effort into it. I bought this house as one of the very few intelligent things I’ve ever done in my life, and I bought it more for the 1124 square foot shop building than I did the 1880 farmhouse- which leans significantly.
I quickly filled the shop up with all my cool shit, where-upon I learned that a whole host of rodents lived in the rafters above, continually shitting and pissing all over everything. I now have what may be the largest tarp that Harbor Freight sells set up like a circus building lean-to inside of the shop building, so I have a section that doesn’t get rained on or mouse-defiled, but even then there’s the joy and wonder that the floor is an equal mix of dirt, gravel, trash, and cat-shit from the neighbors and ferals and whatnot.
So… I’m a gearhead grease monkey who cannot abide his own shop. It’s like being a shade-tree mechanic where the tree has a hornets nest. Or a family of diuretic squirrels. It just… sucks. I’m willing to trade it all in for anything with a concrete floor.
It has been a blessing to have a place to store all our kayaks and off-road gear, but the entire six years that I have owned this house I have felt a nauseous reluctance to go wrench on my vehicles out there. I guess I grew up spoiled.
I may not have grown up with anyone accepting or understanding me: or even making the attempt to understand or empathize, but I always had more pairs of shoes than I could wear, and I never went hungry, and I never was cold. So yeah, I grew up spoiled. The analogy of a gilded cage comes to mind.
What do you call an Alpha predator, once raised in such confinements, when the door is opened and the inquisitive ex-prisoner set free? How does a shark learn to hug? When does a shark ever get the practice to learn how to hug, and be hugged? Should a shark feel incomplete if it doesn’t get many hugs? I’d think an enlightened shark would realize why the other animals weren’t crowded around for huggings.
Animal football teams would be weird; can you imagine an otter smacking a black bear on the ass after a good play? Once we really lose control of eugenic science, the Olympics are done for. I speak that in the future only because the rest of the world hasn’t seen as far over the horizon; they haven’t been willing to risk their long-term vision for the potential of understanding the whys when the storms come.
My eyes are pitted and worn. An optometrist told me that years of riding a sport-bike wearing sunglasses and an open helmet (if any helmet) left my eyes looking like the moon, overlapping craters of dusty highway impacts left in my twenties and proudly fucking up my night-vision ever sense.
How will we keep pure (non-modified) people’s sports even when modified people become the norm? No sport is going to remain the same once parents are able to pay a geneticist to ensure that they have a 6’8” athlete with upgraded ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers?
If we take this same question down to what isn’t the lowest common denominator, but the lowest level of influence, which is where our sciences are today- Let’s look at Connor MacGregor and his fancy titanium shinbone. Assuming that he does come back to fighting, and assuming that he does actually become dangerously competitive again, how is that affected by the fact that one quarter of his legs is foundationally metal?
Imagine when the same thing occurs for someone’s radius and ulna- the two bones that make up our forearm. You cannot go into a fight against someone with a metal forearm- or a metal shin- if you don’t have the same thing- and consider it a fair fight. It’s a spoon to a knife-fight, a chair to a gun-fight, a pointy-stick to a fruit-fight. Run this ball with me.
Connor comes back, dominates, the legend of the unbreakable chin turns to the legend of the all-destroying shin, and then we have idiots getting their shin-bones replaced/modified like he did, but voluntarily, in order to make them a better fighter. We currently have people getting their legs broken so that they can be lengthened as they heal. That’s for ego, insecurity, sex, for vanity- imagine what people will do for real fame and influence? To be the world’s best? To beat Lance Armstrong?
Yes, we are going to be building children bespoke to become fighting champions, just like we’re going to give longer fingers to the children whose parents want musical ability, or firm breasts and luxurious hips to woman destined to be heart-breaking fashion models.
Androgyny is as much as an option as hyper masculinity or femininity- parents going in for pre-child preparation will be asked what sex they prefer, and how long to make it’s penis, or how large should we program her breasts to get? Me- my kind… ASPD… They will find something in what makes us, and they’ll break it, and send that broken gene out into the world with the true replacement theory in full effect, but for the greater good, brothers and sisters.
Would my parents have changed any of the checked boxes if given an opportunity to look over my genetic makeup? If they’d made changes to my brother, would he still be the talented, homosexual, understanding being who just can’t put down cigarettes?
I know my parents would have done everything they could to set the two of us far from the paths of addiction, but now I wonder- my mom has always talked about how she wishes she’d had a daughter. It’s been a great bonding joke for her and my significant others, and it’s a wonderful thing to see, but it does point to a question. Would my mom have chosen to have a daughter first? Or second?
When I thought that I was going to have children- something I thought I would do once I figured out how to live normally- get married, picket fence, 2.5 dogs and a kid… I wanted to have a daughter first, to raise her like a son- and then have a son who grew up with the world’s coolest older sister, who could then grow up respectful and correctly… so much of how I envisioned my children growing up was simply the backside of the mirror of my own youth, so whatever echo I felt, I wanted them to feel the opposite.
I wanted a daughter who I would have to bail out of jail for assault now and then, but a son who would never be a bully. This all made sense to me, and still does, even though I’ve now moved past the idea of having any children of my own. I’m not made up right for it.
YEE! I just remembered that I had a recruiter’s email for an IT position that I wanted to reply to. So I just replied, and I’m high as fuck and can feel the mushrooms starting to kick in, and as I wrote my introductory resume including email, all I could think about was how quickly and how badly the need to crap has hit.
I think it’s part of my body’s “anxious” reflexes, but it hits like a cigarette and coffee does after a night of partying. Wow. I… I think I got *that* anxiousness out of my system. Oh, I can feel this trip easing on, like the air around me is slowly warming and congealing slightly, and I keep touching it with my nose and the back of my head.
I need to swim in lakes again. I wonder if all lakes in my life have always had leaches, and I just never took the time to look? All the mountain lakes around here have them. Not horrible, I’ve never had one on me or seen one latch onto anyone, but it does sort of… take the fun out of swimming, when you’re considering that at any moment, a parasite could latch onto you and start draining your blood.
And here’s where I have to check whatever privilege it is- white, or northern, or whatever, because I’m sure that if I’d grown up with the people around me calmly removing the occasional leach while doing water stuff, I wouldn’t have this phobia of them that I have today.
Kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and a couple of foreign exchange students came from South America, and their perception of snow was a danger; that it came down already bundled up like huge pumpkin-sized snow-balls, and they didn’t understand why we, laughing, ran out into the oncoming blizzard.
That is the sort of moment that modern technology has eradicated. So much of what I write about is simply me railing against change, but I’m beginning to understand that not all change is for the better, and sometimes the thing that yes, we all admit- it needs some change- cannot be changed at this very moment.
Destruction of said things is always an option, and were it to become necessary, it’s easier to destroy than it is to build, but I’m learning to look out beyond the horizon and open myself up to receptivity of potentials that the path we’re on doesn’t appear to include. Being ready for anything is being ready for anything, not just the things that we’ve crossed off a list that we no-longer have to prepare for.
It is so easy to fade back into the monstrosity of machinations that we’ve surrounded ourselves with, a forest of plastics and movement, fluid dynamics where peace would bring stillness; it’s so easy to lean back into the cacophony and begin selecting from the menu presented to you, in front of you, obscuring your vision and thoughts from anything other than the choices they’ve prepared for you…
I smile and say “We’re so lucky for being born at our moments.” and she understands me in the simplest of “Thank god I was allowed to grow up without having to wear a helmet all the time and stay within the lines and we had trick or treating where you actually were scared to be out that late at night without your parents… but she can’t see the future I see, the mandatory math of people to food and guns to people, how the ratios of any ending erode into histrionic spasms of the ceasing of a species… she doesn’t anticipate the fields of dead with no living left to bury them. She doesn’t see the cities burning for years, the streets themselves red coals. She does see me smile with wonder, but the words I use to share my imaginations hold different meanings and weight with her, as they do subjectively with everyone.
I am not a prophet, since I think they always are associated with a religion, but I am willing to tell the future. We do not have one. We have a shit-ton of excitement and social Darwinism coming down the pike, but our deaths- for all reason and speculation, will not be as dramatic as those to come.
Breakdown Lane “When Kirby Lane’s SUV stalls in the desert, she must overcome the elements and the lurking undead to get home. Her only companion is Max, the Emergency Car Service Rep trapped in his office by the zombies, and a lone voice guiding her home.”
This already sounds a bit like Stains the Sands Red, as well as this other movie that I can’t think of the name. I’m having memory problems. I missed a dental appointment because I drove to the wrong town. I drove to a neighborhood that had a lot of similar buildings as the one my dentist uses, but I was in the wrong town by about 40 miles.
I had to call and cancel when I realized; there was no way I was going to make it. Thankfully they were gracious and rescheduled me, my wife thought it was funny. I think it’s funny too, but I can smell the foreshadowing in the wind.
So- she’s hearing voices, and she wants to go home. How different is that from any of our dailies? (raises my own hand) See? 1 out of 1 people here report the same thing. No one pointing a camera at me, though. But, you already knew that. ‘cause then it’d be 1 out of 2 people. Unless the cameraman… you get it.
Before 20 minutes ago, I had no idea this movie existed. I’m mildly excited to see what it’s about. I think it’s sort of special to me because I’m so used to “The Elements”, being a backpacking nut… so, yeah, I’d trade “Having to deal with Weather” for “Having to deal with People”. What they present as bad/bad- Elements/Zombies, I see as good/neutral. Unless they’re fast zombies, and then it’s good/bad.
Did I mention yet that my therapist has referred to my ASPD “gorilla swagger & don’t fuck with me vibes” as my Darth Vader costume? It really takes the sting out of a mental illness when you assign it Lunch-Box popularity level cultural iconography. Just saying. Might help others to think of the voices as a chorus of Muppets or something. Maybe.