Comprehension of Coherence (2013)

A group of friends gathers for a dinner party one night while a comet passes overhead and reality around them muddles. Outside a nexus point between innumerable variations of the occasion opens up, all in various stages of the evening events, situations in life, and wondering if it's all just a ketamine induced trip. It's Schrödinger's cat on a cosmic scale beyond space-time, an exploration of how while the animal that is human kind can coerce much control over nature, even breaking out of the atmosphere into the vast void; acting, in a way, as the universe looking back on itself, but ultimately still subject to celestial forces beyond its dictation. One of the characters does best it, in the form of finding a reality similar enough to her original, killing herself in order to attain it. 

Cloistered: Come Play (2020)

Come Play is a horror movie released in 2020 about an inter-dimensional entity named Larry, who can only be seen through a screen, and looks to take a friend in the form of a nonverbal autistic boy named Oliver. As means of communication, Oliver uses apps that produce speech with a phone or tablet device, and which serve as a window and door for entry for Larry to visibly come into the outside world; with this it encourages Oliver to take its hand and go with it, so as to alleviate its desolate existence. 

Larry is essentially loneliness embodied in a hiding, decrepit, pale, clawing monster feeding on energy. This depiction is reminiscent of that in Ovid's Metamorphoses of Envy personified, an accumulated manifestation of isolation in this instance. A child broadly cut off from fully communicating, isolated by outer influence; a mother trying to do her best, jealous of the father's ability to enthral their son, while also feeling under-appreciated and that he doesn't want to be there for the child; and a father in the process of separating with his wife, while working night shifts in a vacant parking lot to support everything. It manifests by appearing as a story on a device, a short explanatory lamentation which when read aloud acts as a rite for summoning the entity into the home.

Both of Oliver's parents, who are in a somewhat volatile point in their relationship and in the process of splitting up, do try to keep it lite and going for the kid; and each have their own experiences meeting Larry and becoming privy to the existence of the lonesome creature. Sarah, his mother, learns of it while changing out the burst lightbulbs in their living room after a failed (on the behalf of Larry) sleepover with kids Oliver knew from school when she comes upon Oliver's tablet, a replacement for the phone lost in a field after a more negative interaction with the other kids, and reads the illustrated digital incantation; his father discovers the reality shortly after in an altercation at his job, where Oliver is staying there for some time so his mother can sort things out on her end with knowledge of the apparition and its mission, and Larry comes to try taking him. His father has a second encounter soon thereafter where he gets into a subsequent car accident, Larry riding passenger.

Essentially, Larry can interact with the visible world, but is within his own realm that he can only permanently exit with the screen door, and requires a degree of electricity present to continue manifesting there. This happens in the climax of the movie as Sarah frantically throws out all the screen technology from the house, and amidst all the commotion Oliver screams in overstimulation and adds to her distress to the point she sharply pleads, "Why can't you be normal?" to her autistic child. Then, the power completely cuts out across the entire neighbourhood block, lighting up as Larry audibly and invisibly approaches, and through the cast out devices on the lawn climb through the door between realms of reality. All offence taken by his mother's outburst forgotten as they quickly go to hide from the thing searching for him, winding up under a bed. As they lay in silence while pasty white and haggard feet scoured the room around them, when, Oliver exclaims, "Fear!" and begins repeating it, alerting Larry to their location where they make another quick escape, knocking out the nearby lights as they go and causing Larry to dematerialise; though still in pursuit. 

From there they wind up in a field, with no electrical device in their immediate vicinity that would allow Larry to appear on any wavelength, or so they thought. This field turning out to be the same field that Oliver lost his original phone in during a rough encounter with some kids from his class, though as time in the movie moves they all reconcile differences, making a pact against loneliness. With that device then Larry bursts back and after a final chase, Oliver in the motion to take the things hand, his mother quickly steps in and grabs it instead. She disappears as it runs back to the phone; agreeing on not being alone while watching over her son.  The movie then ends after Oliver's father picks him up from speech therapy, waking up later that night to see (through a phone camera-screen) his son playing with his now so close and simultaneously distant mother. 

Indifference to Obsession

Obsession, the movie which seemed to grab attention over this past summer. I didn't watch it at first, it seemed like a less interesting version of Supernatural season four episode eight. That said however, I couldn't truly knock it without giving it a watch; I gave it a spin, so now I can knock it. It's not this grand deep narrative about consent or anything beyond a longwinded gorefest— where visually, it's well done but in terms of plot only surface level. In a way, it reminded me of the X trilogy movies with how those pull on the pathos and make you both love and hate the main characters, drawing you in and longing for more; except with Obsession, the character(s) by and large are not so easily liked and the most 'uncomfortable' part about the movie is sitting through it in one go without being bored. 

Okay, that does seem a bit unbalanced, I will admit.

What the movie does mixes The Monkey's Paw with the tale of Jesse and Jane from Breaking Bad, that has many viewers who can't see beyond surface level assumption think it's a black and white narrative with Bear being this conniving rapist. Such is a wrong assertion based on actually watching the movie. Even before the wish for Nikki to fall in love with him is made, she already displayed a pattern of behavior that centered all of Bear's attention on her in a way that seemingly knew on some vague level but also oblivious to the whole of it. Like Jesse Pinkman bringing substance back into Jane's life then, Bear's wish acts akin to the MDMA which it's noted that Nikki struggles with using; the heroin for her serving as an extenuating factor as well as Bear's wish on what was an assumed gag gift. It is here where the online political commentator and content creator President Sunday makes the succinct point that Bear is as much a victim of the wish made with what was by anyone's mind at first nothing more than a gag gift, but like heroin they all fall under its spell by proxy. Similar to the Monkey's Paw, they fulfil the wish, and not to ruin the story, but it doesn't turn out well.

Both heroin and the wish exacerbate the tendencies of Jane and Nikki, who escalate the circumstances; while Jesse and Bear try to make sense of, as well as mediate the circumstances. The issue is its own escape. None of those involved in the story wanted any of the results to happen, though arguably with Jesse and Jane the overdose was logically conclusive.

Ultimately, Supernatural did it better and in only a bit over 40 minutes. Obsession builds suspense to fill time.

Viewing Through The Looking-Glass (2016)

1. The Movie

Alice Through The Looking-Glass is the 2016 Tim Burton sequel to his 2010 adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Aside from namesake, this film creates an entirely different and new story— a literal reimagining of the Lewis Carroll book that as well continues the story of the young girl; and such would make sense as most of the two books had been combined in the first movie in the duology. This however, is not a dissection of that departure, more rather a retrospective of the artistic liberty venerated in the creation.

Taking place three years after the events of the first film shows Alice arriving back to London after sailing to China and back, having followed in her late father's footseps. Upon this return she comes to learn Hamish— the man whom she had rejected the quite public marriage proposal of in the prior movie— has taken over the company which her father had been apart of, as well as being the owner of what had been 10% of the company given to Alice's mother by Hamish's father, as well as their house. He uses this as a form of leverage in bitterness over the rejection, to try taking Alice's vessel and forcing her into a compensatory position on land, but only in the stripes of typical womanly work in 1875; and even tries to have her institutionalised with a case of 'female hysteria', to which she escapes from and goes back into Wonderland via a(nother) mirror.  

From the onset the line between reality and fantastical dreams are blurred; as Absolem the blue hookah smoking caterpillar turned butterfly is seen fluttering in close proximity to Alice and then making himself known to her when she left the room after learning how Hamish had deviously concocted the current situation of an uncertain future based on a seeming loss of the past. With that she re-enters the magical world of Wonderland (or, Underland) through a mirror (or looking-glass) to find her friends there in a panic as the Mad Hatter has fallen into a depressive state; which she comes to find out is due to his finding of the first hat he had crafted, and through that reminded of the family who (were believed to have) died when the Jabberwocky attacked on behalf of the Red Queen; and due to this state the Hatter has fallen into, he is on the verge of his own death. Alice at firsts tries to reason with Hatter that dead is dead, and having lost her own father she would seemingly know that it is impossible to bring people back just like that; however, part of her touted line and intrinsic to Wonderland itself is the impossible being possible, in some unconventional form. To that point the White Queen makes known that there is in fact a way for this reunion to happen, by having Alice go meet with Time himself from whom she learns that travelling through time to the past is indeed possible with the aid of a powerful device called the Chronosphere; that also serves as a sort of binding source which the reality for all of Underland past and present hinges on.

The meeting with Time is rather brief, and turned into chase with the Red Queen reappearing searching fot the device herself in order to go back in time so as to change it so that she would, as the eldest, remain the heir to Wonderland's throne instead of her younger sister the White Queen. This being born from a childhood incident coinciding with the Hatters, where the younger White Queen stole a tart from the kitchen and ate it near the young Red Queen's bed and so the latter got the blame; then leading to a scene where the Red Queen hit her head, causing it to swell to large proportion; and later at a coronation-style ceremony where she is being given a crown, the headpiece breaks on her head resulting in the Mad Hatter bursting with laughter and followed by the whole audience present, to which she then threatens all them and rages while being sent away by their monarch parents and her younger sister being chosen as next in line instead.

Alice travels through time with the Chronosphere, bearing witness to much of these past happenings. In doing so, she learns that the Hatter's family is in fact still alive and held hostage by the Red Queen. Launching a rescue mission, they do find them shrunken down and captive in an ant habitat, but in the event the Red Queen takes hold of the Chronosphere and with her sister grabbed goes back to prove the younger White Queen as the thief of the tart; however in doing so the older Red Queen and her child self see themself which creates a time paradox that quickly begins engulfing the entire world of Underland, past and present in a freezing rust. Alice however manages to get the Chronosphere back to its holding spot and all is restored.

With all settled between the once rival sisters in hindsight, and the Hatter family reunited Alice returns to the real world in just the nick of Time to prevent her mother from signing over the family vessel, allowing Hamish to keep the 10% stake and house. With that Alice and her mother sail off on the ship to future adventures.

2. Analysis

While the movie obviously and as aforementioned goes into an entirely separate story than the source book, it does not terribly disparage that core motif from Carroll at all. Alice is consistently shown as a defiantly curious force in facing and enacting impossibilities, arguing with the fantastical elements of the dreamworld while simultaneously utilizing them in an unconscious within the unconscious way to come to the end product of the sublimating experience. She doesn't take a simple answer as fulfilling. With that and the recurring symbolism of entering into the dreamscape via a mirror and concocted story: it is one of a fight against the future while trying to hold onto the past in the present, going against Time himself in defiance against the inevitability of loss and potential death of the dream. "Everyone parts with everything eventually, my dear," Time tells Alice early on.

Having the theme of the death of a dream and the cutting of a tether to old memories, this movie can then be compared to another with the same concept mirrored in its own way: the 1980s dark fantasy film The NeverEnding Story, wherein it is depicted that the death of this childlike imagination and belief, or suspension of disbelief, in the impossible results in the crumbling of ones entire world into nothing. Memory, a glorified and polished image is rusted over into a frozen stagnant void, empty of life. Holding on when there's no longer a tether connecting the boat to the ship prevents one from rowing onward into continued living.

Notes on Stranger In A Strange Land

Jill looked puzzled. "Ben, have you ever seen an angel?"

"You, cherub. Otherwise not."

"Well, neither have I— but that is how he looked. He had old, wise eyes in a completely placid face, a face of unearthly innocence." She shivered.

This exchange over the matter of Jill's personal encounter with Valentine Michael Smith, the Martian who came to Earth and under what is essentially a dual gag order as scientists acclimate him to the temperature and gravity of the planet, as well as delegate over certain legal matters associated with him; brings to mind the illustrations accompanying the album covers and track listings for the One Assassination Under God duology from Marilyn Manson.

As well it's reminding of Lucifer's Teardrop and the Paradise Lost concept of a "fallen angel finding my way home" as it's sung. In that then it also leads to the character of Omega from Mechanical Animals in this new Great Big White World, that only goes onto exploit this extraterrestrial freak show. It is noteworthy then that the character of Omega is an incarnation of the alchemical androgyne, and the Martians are, as described, more impervious to the human sexes much like the six figured representation on that album cover...  And of course then with that it harkens back further to David Bowie's seminal Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars; as well as the namesake Charles Manson, as Stranger In A Strange Land was his favorite book.

"Forgive and Forget"

Forgiveness:
A fluke, frontal facade,
Farcical fellatio—

Forgetting has no equity

in that equation

as,

"The hurt doesn't SHOW, but the pain STILL GROWS"
To empty self-repeat;

As if

a headless chicken

running around a daisy chain

Then dropping as dead meat

Contrasted Crazy

This is the poem I wrote closing out the notebook I finished today that had been started on twenty days ago. It extends from something I was writing the other day exploring the lines between insanity and whimsical eccentric tendencies. Whether I put that out anywhere, is to be determined later. At the end of the poem, the two second to last lines is a reference/paraphrase of the song She's A Rebel by Green Day.

Whimsy and insanity:

The line between giddy and glee

Intertwined with destructive tendencies

Full of color and lifeless

Nothing in eclectic everything

Swelling, curtailing in restless 

Maniacal sedation fused to elation

Horseshoe equilibrium

Trouble made double with a—

twist of fate and a melody

Chaos in cordiality

Inspection of Late Night With The Devil (2023)

Late Night With The Devil is a 2023 film made in the lineage of campy b-horror movies, found footage, and 1980s Satanic Panic era talk shows such as Geraldo or Oprah; who at the time made hundreds of hours of specials on stories of supposed Satanic cults in a loose but interconnected network roaming about the United States committing horrific crimes against children, creating Manchurian candidates, and many other dastardly deeds; such never really existed however. As portrayed in this flick, Jack Delroy, a man with a vaguely suspicious past, is the host of a lower rated syndicated talk show in 1977 on Halloween, trying to get a boost in viewership with the special holiday set planned. With this setup the groundwork for the rest of the show is laid down for what is essentially, a perfect theme which, by being pre-1980 would be a proto-Satanic Panic piece.

The guest list for the night consists of a psychically inclined man who has the purported ability to communicate with spirits, in a way he likens to a ham radio, and gives the audience a due display, much to the dismay and dismissal of the featured skeptic sitting on the stage. This skeptic serves as a counterbalance to Jack and the rest of the evening's stars, to the point of having an actual financially compensating prize for anyone who could prove the supernatural real, similar to the real life One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge from the James Randi Educational Foundation that was in place from 1964 up until 2015; and was denying the paranormal activity going on around them, even after learning the psychic who had been taken off stage after having a seeming migraine from a malicious presence and vomiting up black blood had died. Quickly then going to a commercial intermission and moving the psychic out of the way, recuperating themselves running the show and reinvigorate live audience who had bore witness so as to be able to proceed with the main part of the show that night.

Coming to the climactic segment with the prior scare serving as a warning, or catalyst, for the horror about to occur. Here we see a variation of the classic Satanic Panic tale: a parapsychologist with (and whom she also serves as legal guardian of) her young patient Lilly, the sole survivor of a diabolical cult who worshipped the demon Abraxas (in reality the Gnostic 'god above gods') and died in a Waco-imitation shootout with federal agents and burned themselves alive inside their suburban abbey, which was all detailed in a book by the mental health professional. This leads to the conjuration of a spirit who can possess Lilly's body, and done so in a manner which to the skeptic seems akin to ideas of hypnotism to which he then gives his own performance of for the room; all subtly touching upon the matter of what was at the time known as Multiple Personality Disorder (now rebranded as Dissociative Identity Disorder for posterity purposes after the moral hysteria subsided) and repressed memory syndrome. 

Nonetheless, in spite of the skeptic's denial and to the growing unease of the room and Jack after the death of the psychic and witnessed summoning; no amount of pedantic dismissal would save the night when the demonic entity came back to raise Hell in the studio.

Select Bibliography:

Mulhern, S. (1994). Satanism, ritual abuse, and multiple personality disorder: A sociohistorical perspective. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 42(4), 265–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207149408409359

Waterhouse, R. T. “Satanic Abuse, False Memories, Weird Beliefs and Moral Panics.” Doctoral, City University London, 2015. https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/11871/.

Vanity in a Void

Solid black surrounded the cockpit. The inhabitants of the spacecraft had long since grown wary of one another on their now sixteen year voyage into the final frontier. It had been at least a decade since they last saw the sun's waning rays. They were on course to anywhere and nowhere at this point; but they nonetheless continued their routines ad infinum: maintenance inside and out, water and oxygen reclamation, exercise, sleep, gaze into the dark abyss they drifted within... rinse and repeat on the daily.

One day (night? who knows anymore when there's no sun) one of the four crew members was going from the cockpit into the main hull of their ship when he heard a few taps. Being onboard with three others, he thought nothing of this and continued to his quarters for some rest. Another set of taps. He slept a dreamless sleep.

The other three sat in the engine room. Given they were drifting, the combustion machine was shut off to conserve power; it was were they could have a smoke without catching the ship on fire. They had heard the first tap, and like their crew mate thought nothing of it. Someone may have made a passing grunt. They then heard the second time when it sputtered out. Then again. Again, again and again. It would start, stop, tap in increasing and harsh speeds, stop. 

tap tap

taptap

taptaptaptaptapTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP

TAPTAP

tap tap taptap

TAPTAP TAP TAP TAP

tap

They all went on alert and began a detailed inspection of the entire vessel as the orgasms of tapping burst out continuously. It sounded as if rain in a hurricane mixed with a turret on rapid fire. The man who had just fallen asleep for a moment was now up and pumping with adrenalin, he rushed back to the cockpit to check the ships diagnistics; another suited up and grabbed his tether to go out the airlock and check the exterior, bringing a specialised umbrella in case it was a microscopic meteor shower, or some sort of cosmic dust doing the battering. One stayed back in the engine room to make sure the issue wasn't originating there while another checked the hull for any sign of an air leak.

The three inside met within the hull when nothing showed to be wrong that was causing the tapping. There was one rotating gear that had needed replacing in the engine, but that was swiftly taken care to and yet, the tapping persisted. After a few moments they realised they were one member short as the fourth hadn't come back from outside the ship yet, though he should have been. Two quickly went off to see what was going on. When they got to the airlock they saw a missing suit and tether, but when looking through a small window they saw no tether anywhere. They could see nothing. One suited himself up while the other stayed behind to watch his tether and make sure nothing like that happened. The tapping continued.

Still in the cockpit the now wide awake member continued to check diagnostics triply when suddenly a knife slammed into the glass before him, then again. The alarm on the spacecraft went off as the sealing door between the hull and cockpit slammed shut while the rest of the glass shattered as the depressurisation shot it out into the abyss. The man inside imploded almost instantaneously. The one with the knife had been the formerly missing crew mate, a shard had pierced his suit and he died there and then. 

The tapping stopped to the shock of the one crew member still inside near the airlock as the alarm blared.

As one of the now two survivors of the party was approaching the middle of the hull from the outside he heard a pulsing sound buzzing over his radio. He quickly turned back and went back to the airlock. Back in the ship the two rushed to the hull and looked out another small window to where now only a sealed door shielded them from the harsh outer space; through that they could somewhat makeout a suit floating through wreckage. The tapping resumed.

It wouldn't stop.

Two days, or however long it really was, there was no more ship adrift. Nothing. No evidence of anything being in the void at all. 

Review of Alice In Wonderland (1903)

Cecil Hepworth's 1903 silent movie adaptation was the first of such ever made based on Lewis Carroll's childrens book Alice's Adventure In Wonderland. It is a nearly ten minute variation that sticks to the script of the source material practically to a T. Like many early films, in viewing it seems more like watching a stage play, but in that is an enjoyable displayed appropriation of the text to the screen. An interesting note is that being made when it was, the actual Alice Liddel whom Carroll based his story's character on was still alive at the time.