Companion
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
Think of this movie as having found a line into that instinctual feeling we all get when we turn to make sure the door behind us is truly closed to the night beyond… this movie plays that feeling like a slide-guitar soloist, a swan-lake that resembles first love; fast and messy and intensely jumbled. Everything here means something, including stuff I’m too obliterated to understand- I can still appreciate the fireworks even if I’m too dizzy to stand up. This movie has a big gold standard hanging from it. This takes zombies, ghosts, scary, horror, whatever you wanna call it… this takes whatever you’re thinking and comes at it with a fresh perspective. This is innovative. This is imaginative. This is people getting excited and then staying the course and sticking through and proving that if you don’t compromise (Or maybe that if you compromise a lot? I actually have no idea how much of anything went into this movie)… ok. That sentence fizzled out. But that’s on me. This movie stars a couple with great individual skills and screen chemistry. Look, anything positive I can say about this movie amounts to the whoops of joy produced by any asshole spinning any Camaro around any parking lot, blowing donuts until the cows come home or the police show up… I can contribute that level of enthusiasm to my review and praise of this movie, but it itself falls short and shallow of being worthy of application to this effort. They brought in Neruda, for Christ’s sake. And pulled it off. This is something to watch, this is something to save for a rainy day, this will be perfection awaiting in the wings the next night your choice doesn’t meet your expectations and you need something good and proper to set the world straight again. Here you is. Press play and await the choir.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Ella is really a boat anchor on Gus, who seems ready to do whatever is needed.
- Ella… something goes wrong and she’s raped in a shed while Gus is stabbed in the belly
- Hugh (Chuck Norris) (Abner) shows up and promptly establishes that he with the truck maketh the rulth.
- Ella and Hugh take off, while Gus befriends the Preacher
- Hugh teaches Ella how to survive in the zombie apocalypse, and Ella goes for extra credit. And gets it.
- Gus has turned into a mighty douche and kills Hugh, somehow wrapping himself in barbed wire in the process
- Gus ends up dead in the Jag and Ella pondering her own zombie whilst chained up in the shed. I told you this movie fucking rules.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
These are the newest zombies I’ve seen in a long while. These are newer than ghosts on other planets and shit. These are sorta… ghostly apparitions that I think only limited people can see? And they’re mostly just scary, unless they really get their hands on you, and then they can make you sort of explode red all over and be very dead quite quickly. They can’t really roam around, but the whole mythos of why they’re there isn’t ever really gone into- in fact, some of the characters are quite interested in the Whys, others simply are not.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Look- I hurt myself jumping around doing kung-fu this movie made me so excited. I’m literally typing this with a sore knee incurred during the reviewing of. This is one of the best written, best acted, best special effects, and best common sense of knowing where to steer your production into your own wheelhouse, where you could take risks without the possibility of unmitigated disaster. This movie is a risk- I’d be hesitant to call it a zombie movie, but I’m not sure ghosts can de-red a child’s body that quickly. The thunder is roiling and booming all around my house as I type. This is the perfect storm. Sort of like the movie. Everything came together to create an experience far greater than it should have been.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
A Pickup Truck. Seriously. This movie is one long commercial for pickup trucks. I think this one is a GMC. But they use it to run over people and run from ghost people and to sleep in and get in fights over and lock each other into and out of… The truck is almost like a character itself. The truck is like the insane Butler in Clue, where you know it’s where the action is and yet you have no idea what to expect from anything. The Axe came in a good second, as well as the honorable mention of dishonorable fighting- reaching into another person’s abdominal cavity, grabbing and handful of guts, and then squeeze-twisting them around… I would NOT fuck with Ella. She will fucking Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom you.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
Yes. You can get two of them. Raised up to raise the roof in praise that something this new and good finally came around, but the movie starts with a great bloody hand slap and then… just over an hour in… we have a new hand-creeping… shot with this new ghost/zombie effect… yeah. Oh yeah. Loving this!
That was new!
That was new!
I have never seen such a savage fight scene as the introduction to Chuck Norris (Hugh). He jumped up on the guy in a fucking weird straddle, went for the double thumbs-into-eyes, and then bit off a finger that the guy tried to stick in his mouth in an attempt to get him to stop? Damn, that was savage. Wowie. One HELL of a fight scene. I’ve never seen zombies portrayed this way. Completely adds a new wrapper to the whole onion. This is a movie filed deeply under the “The Evils that Men Do” flag, but at the same time doesn’t leave me with that crappy feeling of sexploitation in my mouth. This… tasted like a farm smells. But… man, it was good. I’m gonna go looking for a mint or something. Oh! And Ella’s… learning to kill scene? Best fucking thing ever. Just saying.
Review Notes
Review Notes
It was war followed by ashes. I like it.
This sounds like… Fuck. What’s his name. Slumerican. But, a female version. I like.
This Jaguar is trashed. Someone whoopdie’d it.
Some guy with a machete is slowly approaching it…
And something is knocking around in the truck. Most definitely would like to get out.
And that’s the end of the singing.
Something moved REALLY fast past the guy?
Car looks empty…
Oh, shit! A great bloody hand! And… fade out?
What’s this guy’s name?
A tricycle? The entities?
Ghosts that feed on our fear?
Companions… are the undead, I think? This is like, a ghost story?
Ah, little domestic squabble about the dog. Cute.
“It’s like they vanished.”
So much food.
And a stove. Everything is ready…
“I don’t know how you’ve kept us alive for this long.” See, the problem there is that he’s responsible for both of them. You, woman, gotta step up your game. I need you to do better.
He feels the same way.
“Oh, I would SO haunt you!” Domestic squabbles are weird these days. I… want jellybeans. Or crackers.
“We’re like, 20 miles from the main road.”
“We’re four miles from the main road.” Life abides. Life abides.
They keep talking about needing to go out to the barn. Why don’t they… wait until morning?
And yeah. She needs to learn to STFU. You can go get excited about water in pantomime, just like Hellen did.
Did… he just chop his own hand?
And there’s… some ghost thing materializing?
And another ghost thing… shot it from behind?
Now we’re challenging it?
“Is that the best you got?”
What does that ring mean?
And we’re off running in THIS direction now! Just like the plot!
She’s in the tub with the dog?
Are they both drinking?
They’re fighting a lot. They do not make a good couple.
“They’re on the list of the top 100 things to disappear first!”
“We have a fortune in lantern mantles!”
The war was three years ago.
“Get in the tub.” I mean, it’s a pretty good suggestion. But you need to kick the dog out first.
The island of Bodega? 400 miles South of Houston?
What the fuck??
A preacher and a woman covered with scars?
They just stabbed Gus.
What the fuck is going on?
What the fuck? Abner?
“Son. Nothing happens in this world that is not absolutely necessary.”
There’s something in the hallway?
Whoah!
What the…
“Now don’t that just sound like palm trees and coconuts?”
“Hell of a place to start a ministry.” That is one… hell… of a sentence.
Meanwhile, Gus is in and out of the car and seeing shit?
The ghost is in the back seat?
“You’re looking for a savior. Let me show you mine.”
This is really big on the evils men can do. And it seems like it’s just getting started. Yay. I chose poorly.
“Broken men make the best soldiers.” I think I understand this.
“When given the option, man reverts to his most bestial character.” I mean, you think you’re the first person to make a movie about the evils men do?
“Hope is the only thing a savage man suffers.” Interesting.
I’m getting tired of this preacher character though.
Oh. A… Pickup?
We just met Chuck Norris. Who drives a truck and shoots women and does jujitsu and doesn’t have an issue with casual cannibalism. You know. As long as you spit, not swallow.
I’m both in love with this guy and really want to eat crackers.
As he keeps beating on the corpse. Sexy Hugh Jackman vibes.
“You failed. Timely preparation for future eventualities. That’s the definition of providence.”
“Fuck you!” I’m really confused… This is the wrong movie to be watching on mushrooms, let alone high as fuck.
He failed too?
“There’s a time for fighting, this is a time for mercy. It’ll be easier, coming from you.”
Gus…
“I got enough regret.”
This is really fucked. I really want crackers.
“I’m sorry but I ain’t got time to watch your man die. Come with me or be stuck here with his ghost.”
“Vengeance keeps you warm just fine.”
Gus… takes her wedding ring back? And then dies?
“Bright lights above take me to the gallows below.” I like.
So… I have no idea where this is going.
“What kind of answer is that?”
“An honest one.” (hands her a handgun)
(She starts puking)
He’s not big on empathy.
Her dad was a cop.
“Strip.”
“What?”
“TAKE OFF YOUR FUCKING CLOTHES!”
I’m not sure I know what’s going on.
This dude cuffs himself to his bumper so the fear can’t be used against him??
“Teach me how to do that.”
Man, I HATE seeing all those cars rusting out in fields. And no, the gas wouldn’t still be any good.
I totally get how he feels.
Lady, he gave you a fucking gun.
What? A random child?
Nice van!
Some awesome old Suburbans…
Did we forget how to focus the camera?
There’s some ghost thing standing on that bus…
The kid runs by…
And then gets grabbed by a corpse and explodes? What the fuck?
Now there’s a ghost thing in the bus? Sitting there?
WHAT THE FUCK??
That was so cool.
Uh…
A radio?
“What is death? Does it understand? Time. Is there a beginning and an end?” I like this.
Who the fuck is Ephraim Banu? Like, Buju? Or Badu?
Gus is still hanging on!
Literally…
You know, if I’m dealing with a stabbed stomach, I’m not gonna give a fuck about ghosts.
Do you think dogs recognize tattoos? Like, they would the markings on other dogs?
Gus, why the fuck you throw away your wife’s engagement ring?
And who are you screaming at?
And really, what the fuck happened to your eye?
“Everyone left is survivors. There’s no room left for victims.”
“Deaths a joke. The lord’s just waiting until he finds something that matters so he can tell it.”
Fuck, this is a good movie.
Gus, why the fuck are you…
Working with this bastard?
“Do you know how long it took us to come out of the dark ages? Thousands of years.”
Plugging a wound with sugar? That’s new to me.
I covet the truck.
“So I need to know. What are you willing to do?” That’s one hell of a question.
“Salty air… makes me want to fight.”
“Sting-rays were my specialty.”
“You know stingrays can see auras? They have these organs that can detect the electricity in nerves and muscles.”
“I was a welder.”
“I knew it. You don’t have an aura.” What the fuck kinda hippie shit is that?
“You got a gun, you got a truck, you got a straight path outta here. It don’t get no better than that.”
Oh. What the fuck??
Is that gasoline?
What just cut her? Was that Hugh?
Where is all the liquid go?
What the fuck?
Who is this guy?
Damn, Hugh can fight.
I don’t want to watch this final arrow-extraction scene. Lots of red to it.
Oh. Well. A truck does… the work…
So does that… Holy shit. This movie is fucking amazing. So fucking brutal. So fucking brutal.
Now we’re off to bury corpses?
“We’ll go back, and we don’t got to talk about it no more.” I could be friends with this guy. He speaks pragmatism.
Gus, you should kill this preacher guy. Even if he does look like Roadhouse in profile.
“I’ll go with misunderstanding. It’s a hell of a lot better than not listening.”
Holy shit. A screen pop for a PDF upgrade just pinged my writing computer and I jumped.
Uh… who were those two rednecks that just jumped you? They’re just… not worth discussing? WTF?
This is beautifully shot.
“God don’t make saviors. He makes survivors.”
Dude, look around the corner already. There might be crackers.
What the fuck?
Oh, shit. She slapped the fuck outta him.
These things…
“Honey let me be your salty dog…” Wow. This is a different vibe, that’s for sure.
2 Months later they’ve made it to Bodega and we’re meeting two new characters?
My god, that’s beautiful.
“No thanks. I already got me a good woman.”
Oh.
“That forest is full of bones.”
This poem? Couldn’t be… Cemetery of kisses. Fire burning in your tombs.
Pablo Neruda. I was flailing away for that answer and would never have gotten it. Thank you!
Wait. I do have crackers. I have, like, a waterlogged pallet of Triscuits. How could I have forgotten?
“God’s left the building. And there’s no-one left to keep score anymore.”
Does she not see her?
“Angels must break their wings to learn how to fly again.”
Is she a zombie?
I just took a time out and spent 10 minutes eating pistachios and 20 minutes shelling pistachios and feeding them to my dog. Ok. I need to focus. I gotta get high.
Umm… So, like, Hugh handcuffed Ella, and then ran off after his kids’ ghost?
And it’s fucking weird, ‘cause the close-captioning is showing some lines that aren’t in the audio.
She got free…
Hugh is at some barn thing. Where he really doesn’t want to be.
That was one intense pig chute. Hugh got slapped around plenty.
Now he got himself locked in a shed?
A toy ball? Oh, we have a child ghost thing.
Hugh is a man of few and useless words.
Gus, meet car door.
Who is the preacher talking to?
“We’re in the dark here!”
Gus, why the fuck did you attack Hugh?
What does it mean, Gus?
Gus is a huge proponent of Calvinism.
Gus, you’re so fucking useless.
Ella, say something to the child.
I can’t remember what happened to Hugh.
“Give me my gun.”
“You don’t need it anymore.” Mama, put my guns in the ground…
Shit. Hugh died.
Car go vroooom.
“We are the companions.”
Nothing brings a couple back together like the garroting and stabbing death of a Pastor.
Wow. I guess she gets the mic drop on the coup de grace.
“It’s going to take me some time to get back to normal.”
Oh. Shit. You threw away her ring. You stupid fuck.
“Don’t be sorry. Now we have something to do.”
Gus likes his bottle for dindin.
Gus, you’re a fucking moron.
I think you should talk about it, too.
And you should quit drinking, Gus.
Gus, you’re a jealous piece of shit.
She wants a garden.
Gus, why are you suddenly such a controlling piece of shit?
Gus, you’re in the car!
Ella, you’re in the barn.
Oh. Shit. Gus came through with a shovel. And then… chained her up?
“Time doesn’t mean anything to the dead. I’m sorry, but you die in here. We both do.”
What did you just do to him?
Oh. Shit. You’re fucking with his innards.
I kinda like his boots.
Gus, I think the only thing left is for you to die.
She… left her ring in his stomach?
Gus makes is back into the Jag… which, we’re pretty sure, is, like, already haunted by him?
And, well, he’s bleeding all over the place. He might be dead. Got red all over him.
Ella… well, she’s looking pretty dejected.
And screaming really loud.
End movie, holy shit that was good.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
I should be doing my website design homework, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to be writing this introduction, either. I want to be lying in bed in the warm dark, listening to MST3K until I sleep again. This isn’t anything special to depression or anything, it’s just a really cold, rainy day and I don’t want to go out into it.
I keep thinking forward to when we have the new building- days like this don’t have to be wasted. I know- I don’t have to waste them now, either, but I do. I don’t know how to make myself do the things that I need to do to be functional. I *think* that I want to do something, but then it’s easier to just stand there looking around at stuff than it is to take the hands out of the pockets and start touching cold shit.
It’s like I get stuck at the point where you’ve opened up everything you need to start the project, and you’ve got the music playing, and your cup of coffee, and you’re just going to smoke a joint while puttering around putting the finished touches on getting ready, but then you can’t find your rolling papers and the rest of the day spirals around should you look for them or go get more, and if you do go get more, should you run other shoppering errands concurrently, and if you’re going to be going shopping, best poke around in the panty and the fridge to make sure I get everything we need.
So I go from standing in the muddy gravel of my shop to peering around the wreckage of our pantry with a flashlight in one hand and 3 flathead screwdrivers and a sparkplug in the other. If I were a frog I would spontaneously combust the first attempt I made at leaping, since all four limbs are destined to go rocketing off in their preferred direction instead of anything resembling grace and synchronicity. I’m a clock that comes with bits of gravel already loose inside the housing, so you know it’s going to shit out on you, but there’s no saying when. I’m UV damage. I’m the subtle breaking down of tendons and cartilage.
What is a Sharkskin Suit? I’ve read about them in detective novels and whatnot, I never cared enough about clothing to look it up before. I just accepted that whatever character they called out as wearing a sharkskin suit was an upper-crust kinda flashy dresser. Turns out it’s just a way to say the cloth is both rough and a bit shimmery. So they create something associated with the scariest fucking alpha-predators in the ocean to describe the subjectivity of the shininess of a man’s suit’s cloth.
Could have called it anything else, really; anything else would have made as much, if not more sense than “Sharkskin”. I’m going to start a trend where all grey suits are called Silverbacks. See how stupid that sounds? I get this way whenever I get on the matter of fashion.
I have a vision of fashion. In it, our clothing is no longer static cloth, but instead a shaped and worn swarm of nano-bots that all hook together like cosmic barrel-of-monkey’s Velcro, and each night when you get “undressed” you’d set them all back to their charging “state of rest” which could resemble a pile of sand, and then the next morning you’d select your outfit off of an app and your nano-bots would assemble themselves into whatever clothing you’d chosen.
Clothing companies will sell licenses to their programs, bootleggers will try to sell copied code, kids are going to hack the programming language to make whatever they feel for fashion, and in the event of an EMP everybody is going to be standing around stark raving naked. I’ll look at what I’m wearing at the moment. I have on a 10 year old Champion hoodie that my mom bought me for Christmas one year, as well as a pair of fleecy blue plaid pajama pants. And a dirty pair of ankle socks.
Thankfully, I don’t have a taste for fashion, or my clothing would be worth more, and I wouldn’t feel as comfortable grabbing a pair of scissors to make impulsive alterations. But with this nano-clothing, even if you did tear it, the nano-bots would simply re-zipper themselves back into structured fabric weave as if the tear was never there.
Magnets… magnets will probably pose some sort of problem. I’m picturing the warning labels that they have near microwaves at the airports, where crude stick-figures show how using one while wearing a pace-maker is a good way to get hit with the defibrillator paddles, something that I think you actually really want to avoid if you actually do have a pace-maker.
I’m no scientist, and it’s been a while since I took algebra, but I’m 98.2% positive that if someone with a defibrillator.. no, a pace-maker… gets hit with a defibrillator- and I mean shocked, not just smacked in the side of the head accidentally, then their chest will explode like Bennett’s in Commando. Although, I don’t think he actually exploded. He just…fizzed. I think.
Could we make diapers pre-seeded with some sort of fungal growth that once provided food- IE: baby shit the diaper, it produces a sweet smell as a result? I have no idea, you should see my right leg twitching as if I’m on speed. I’m not. I’m on caffeine. And valium. And weed. And mushrooms. And aside from my leg acting is if it wants to run the Indianapolis 500, I’m feeling fine.
Hungry, I think, but I’m not sure how I feel about eating. I’ve been a human humming bird for the past couple days. All I’ve eaten were bags of cheap popstickels and grapes. I feel good though. I think it’s because I can hear the rain. I should probably check the kitchen ceiling before the end of the night. We live with section of translucent sheeting- tarp type stuff- from Harbor Freight in the kitchen since there’s a water leak.
I tried to find the leak and fix it, but the roof is in such bad condition that even being up on it was causing new stressors. I ended up painting the chimney- where it looked like most of the water was coming in through the areas where concrete had broken away… I painted the entire thing in two cans of this brown all-weather-sealant crap that looked like smooth peanut butter and smelled like roofing tar… and that lasted for a couple of years.
I think last year my wife pointed out water dripping into the tarp in the kitchen once or twice last year, but no-where as bad as the first year, when I had a steady stream forming through the celling’s lathe and plaster. I really do want to do something special for this house, this structure that has sat here for over a century- almost a century and a half.
I wish I could go back to when this house was first being built, and smelled the air, and ate the fruit, and watched the work. I wish I could have lived in a time where the handgun ruled and the radio had not yet been invented. If you could get away, you could get away. Would I have been born with this social defect then, as well?
Was I destined from the start to not play well with others and have a problem with authority, or is this some “It’s not a bug, it’s a FEATURE!” result of my parental communication style… My parents would have been different people in different times, this really seems a silly pursuit to go ‘round with, yet I have a grip on his coat-tails and I’m not quite done yet of spinning.
I’ve had a dozen ideas that later someone else brought to fruition… it leaves me poor of resources but flush with time, and content in the knowledge that if some other, functional version of me existed, it’d be a high-powered “don’t fuck with” kinda model. Like a Right Hand Drive Japanese sportscar. I could have been a Nissan Skyline and instead I’m… I’m a shopping cart.
If someone wants to take the effort to load me and then move me, I can support their shit until they get to where they’re going. And then I can go away. I was just doing the dishes, thinking about the Ukraine, thinking about how the name Donbas sounded… And once again, I was seized with the urge to go there, to join in, to look for myself.
Then, walking back into the living room as the thought “What’s there to stop me?” popped into mind, and “The Wife” concept was easily pushed aside since we have no children and she is a functional human belabored by my companionship… I’d come home to her, if I came home. But then I saw my dog. My oldest companion, figuratively or literally speaking, and I had the flash of how she would feel in such a scenario, and sometimes an old dog doesn’t need to learn how to do anything at all, since they’ve been themselves for us all their life.
In the midst of my breakdown, when my wife asked if she needed to be worried about me, I replied “Not until my dog and my parents have died.” If I were a building, I’d be a Church, and there to shelter my congregation- knowing that they must flee my burning wreckage in order for our religion to have a future… I can know all that, yet not know the denomination of the Church that I would be.
I have a theory that you can’t experience something in a dream if you haven’t experienced it in life, but then, how does that explain the dreams we have in which we die? I can’t think of a better argument for the multi-verse, even if I am on enough drugs that I just saw a bug that isn’t there crawling across the top of my screen. My shoulders hurt. The ergonomics of this setup are medieval at best.
The revolution will not be televised, but I’m willing to bet that the rights to live-stream the event have already been sold. And once again I can’t find my phone. I want to text my wife that I love her. Companion “In 2030, society fell as malicious entities appeared around the world. The survivors must fight each other and the dead. Across this brutal landscape, Ella Grace’s burden of guilt is exposed. The past, and the horrors of what she will become, force Ella to kill what she loves in order to discover the terrifying meaning of the ghosts that feed on her fear.” Wow. There’s really a lot to unpack in that final sentence.
It’s so precisely vague that I want to sex up the person who wrote it and see what kind of literary off-spring we’d produce. But… why do the survivors need to fight each other? Is this just humanity and it doesn’t take a prophet to understand how we’ll react when things go south? Misery loves company, and futility loves a lynch mob. What is it that she’s going to have to kill?
I was writing to protest that I don’t know that I could kill that which I love, and at that moment my old dog wandered over for head-scratches, and I realized how easily I could kill that which I love. If it needs death, I can be that thing, no matter my relation to the recipient. I have conviction in my backbone, even while I entertain doubts in the vacuums where my soul could be.
I just spent eight minutes exploring the freezer. When your wife is Asian, you can’t identify half the shit that’s in there, let alone know when it might have gone bad. I threw away some celery. And want to eat the blueberries I found, but I don’t know if she squirreled them away in there for some special reason. So I’m not going to eat. I love her. She makes living worth it. I welcome the slings and arrows, in a night like this, they provide knowledge that I’m not alone out here.