Friday, 9 October 2015
“Of the Month” October 2015
Movie of the Month:
It Follows
Hey, this is a scary movie! It is exquisitely directed and has an absolute mastery of its visuals. There are long, lingering shots looking across landscapes into darkness where something might be coming. There are some extremely well-timed 360-degree rotations that invite you to see coming threats that the characters are oblivious to. And the art direction is absolutely fascinating; the movie’s fashions and prop design are a crazy mishmash of 1970s-through-today aesthetics that gives the movie a weird, dreamlike-but-timeless feel. Setting it in a Detroit suburb is also brilliant, with the bombed-out metropolis looming menacingly in the background. The movie preys on the primal nightmare of being unable to escape a relentless pursuer. In fact, I’m kinda mad at this movie because I wrote a screenplay in college called “Relentless” that had a similar premise!
Video Game of the Month:
The Fall
A moody, extremely atmospheric game. You play a semi-sentient spacesuit that has fallen from an unknown height (your memory is all janked up). Your internal sensors aren’t working so you can’t tell how damaged your occupying human is, but you just know you must get him/her to medical help as soon as possible. The suit A.I. goes through some fascinating conflicts about putting its occupant in short-term dangerous situations in order to procure long-term help. It’s short, but it’s very enjoyable and the it has an old-school point-and-click adventure video game feel to its puzzles.
HeadShot Aiming
Artist of the Month:
Emily Carroll
A very cartoony-looking illustration style belies the extremely creepy stories told by Emily Carroll. She specializes in a kind of rustic, Gothic, fairy-tale-esque style of horror, with normal people confronted with the fantastic(ally awful) among the mundane.
Creepy, Carroll. Creepy.
Categories: Of the Month.
io9
The Fall
Ghosts/Aliens by Trey Hamburger 
