Oh Yes, That's Some Good FEAR (⌐⌐_)

Last night I had a dream. I was standing in a large crowd of people. A stage and podium stood in front of the gathering and everyone looked at it silently, expectantly. I looked left and right, scanning the crowd but I realized no one else moved their heads at all and I became self-conscious about the motion. Stopped. Then I considered going up closer toward the front to get a better view of whoever would be the speaker. I pushed forward slowly but as I slipped between two people I bumped into a short girl on the other side. She turned around just as a man stepped up to the podium. My gaze locked on him as he made the first noise I'd heard in the dream.

Dream - Insect Infestation

More insects in my dreams, guys.

Last night my room was infested with large household cockroaches. I ran around spraying them with bug killer and they exploded into pixels.

This Time I Leave Her

Z-girl, my brother, and I had taken shelter in a half-constructed house. Not all the doors had been installed yet and some of the walls were still just struts. We sat to rest and put down our backpacks. Bro went off to use the bathroom and we sat to wait for him. After some time Z-girl looks up and says, "This is the first time we've let someone go off alone... we shouldn't have done that." We get up and I think, Shit. Bro comes running back down the hall with some '28 Days Later' pseudo-zombies tearing after him. If you'll recall, I loved that movie. And those were the best/fastest p-zombies, too. But I'm sure you'll understand why I wasn't thrilled to see them right that second. We take off up the stairs toward the unfinished attic. One of them grabs Bro's arm just as he clears the stairs and they bite his arm. You all know that's a death sentence, yes?

Now for a sidenote: My brother used to play a lot of CounterStrike. There was one play mode that made one team "zombies". They had movement speed bonuses, everything had a green tinge and they could only use melee attacks, i.e. the knife. It was a one-hit kill on the 'humans' side and that player would then immediately become a zombie, i.e. switch teams. I'd watch some of his matches. The prevailing strategy was for the humans to find a corner room in a map and barricade up the entrance. Eventually the zombies would always break through and turn someone, at which point that guy would immediately turn around and attack his teammates. What struck me was how everyone would take the team-change in stride so easily and turn on their former team-mates with such gusto.

So anyway, that bit of information drifted across my sub-conscience and it rapidly implemented it into the dream fabric.

Bro gets bitten and he turns around and starts running at me immediately. I'm halfway up the attic stairs and I see this transpire. I got angry and yelled indignantly, "HEY, YOU DON'T GET TURNED THAT FAST! HOLD THEM OFF FOR A LITTLE ANYWAY, THEN COME AFTER US, JACKASS." I threw my heavy backpack into the p-zombie that bit him and turn up into the attic. Bro stood still for a more suitably acceptable period of time before following. Z-girl and I run up to the edge and see that the house we chose is inconveniently taller than its neighbors. Jumping is not an option. Guess we have to fly. Z-girl has reservations once again. (⌐ ⌐_) Having learned my lesson last time I take off into the sky. Alone.

Hey, Look Over There!

When I was a kid, we made a trip to Disney World. Or was it Disney Land? World. Pretty sure it was World. (The one in Florida, right?) My sister, my mom, and I got on one of the 'haunted house'-type rail-cart rides. The ones that take people through rooms with holograms. We got to one section where there was banquet hall off to the right with the holographic ghosts flying everywhere, wreaking havoc and such, as they do. From my angle I could see further up the train and noticed a point where a banshee head on a stick would pop up alongside the cart, right in the face of whoever took the "window seat". In our cart? That was my sister. Being the clever mean guy I am was, I timed my action and said, "Hey, 家姐, look out there!" so she turned and leaned out just as the banshee popped up and screamed at her, almost nose to nose.

The aftermath.

NOPE

Shame. Out of the big three East Asian groups, I happen to be least familiar with Korean. Guess which one brought me this fine work?

I can't figure out how to embed or archive anything from this page so the best I have is a link for you.

Check it out. Your horror webtoon of the day.

NOPE

Enjoy. (^__________^)-b*

SCP-173

HOLY CRAP

So that's where this thing is from! Hell, all this time it's been sitting in my Creepypasta folder with the filename 'Creepypasta - Large Doll'. Haha, what a faux pas... (^___^;;;)7

To Secure, Contain, and Protect

A year ago I found some creepypasta (Creepy shit. I love it.) on the internet, as I do. It's called The Holders Series. It's shitty. Well, ok, the first one I read tickled my fancy, what with the esoteric rituals and such. But, well, repetitive and stale succinctly describe all the rest. The parodies perfectly capture the wackiness of it all. I'll say no more.

Then, two days from now (huehuehue time travel is cool), I learned about SCP - Containment Breach and that shit is good. Some of it isn't even really creepy, per se, but it's so fascinating. Playing the alpha version of the game now. Yeah! Alpha. Not even beta stage yet. This thing has promise. A blink gauge? Hell, I never even thought of that.

My Thirst Has Been Sated

Many people can't appreciate subtlety. If you're one of them then move along. This ain't for you.

If you have time and patience, check this out. This is one something that you really have to respect in order to get the most out of it. It's like a mystery novel. Flipping to the end to find out what happens immediately is like spitting in the author's face. It ruins the suspense. Spoils the mystery, hmm?

If you get bored halfway through this and want to fast forward, just close the tab. Don't even finish it, just close the tab and leave.

Otherwise, fullscreen it, close the curtains, turn off the lights and put on some headphones.

Don't eat chips. This is me. Watching you watch this.

I Need Some Horror

You guys ever heard of Metro 2033? The game came out about 2 years ago. Post-apocalyptic setting. What is it about post-apocalyptic that is so interesting? Is it the idea of our massive population and the bloated society it maintains coming down all around? The 'picking up the pieces' among the ruins simpler existence?

I wanna play this game. ~( O___O)

I'm feeling the craving for some good fear.

The background track will probably sound familiar to you. I like to call it the '28 Days Later theme'.

Creepypasta #2

Been a long time since I've had one of these, eh? Here's another one of my favorites. Makes for a nice wallpaper, too.

By Daikichi Amano

The chill of fear! Uniquely exhilarating, I say.

========================================
On an unrelated note, the human body holds so much blood! Even a pint looks like so much when it's outside me.

Turns out March is Red Cross Month and there are blood donations everywhere here. They'll even tell you your blood type free afterward.

On the other hand, they jabbed me with the fattest needle I've ever seen to get that blood out of me.

In/Appropriate Reactions at a Horror Movie

Two of my most memorable experiences whilst watching a horror movie in a theatre:

Inappropriate and not funny.


28 Weeks Later [2007] - Definitely one of my favorite horror films owing to the fact that the fear stuck with me for quite a while after. The inappropriate reaction came during an extended chase scene midway through the movie. The big bad military chases the main characters who flee in an old sedan. They elude the foot and car patrols but then a fully armed attack helicopter rises up from behind a building and begins firing rockets. At which point I burst out laughing. I can explain though. This time (just this once) I was not, in fact, hoping the protagonists got killed. It was just that they just had all this might coming down on them it was ridiculous.

Appropriate but funny.

Quarantine [2008] - Drawing close to the end of this film, the black guy from The Practice pokes his camera up into the attic to do some reconnaissance. After about 340º of rotation a child-like pseudo-zombie screech-and-lunges at the camera. The best part was this: there were 4 black peeps sitting a few rows ahead of me, arranged like so:
{1}{2}{3}{4}
At the screech-and-lunge Person #1 yelped, jumped across 2 seats and landed in Person #4's lap. AHAHAHA WHAT A WANKER.

Halloween Time

So as you may have expected there's been a marathon of the Halloween movie series [1978 and onward] airing on AMC this week. In addition, Cujo [1983] was on a few nights ago.

The weakness of the American horror genre lies in its penchant for also being a thriller film. I've mentioned this before but I feel it needs to be reiterated. Americans do love their action. (And so the rise of Michael Bay came about haha.)

Unfortunately, this can only go on for so long before things get... tired. Audiences know what's coming and you get people saying, "Don't go investigate, bitch!". As for me, well, I'm already inclined to be critical of stupidity so I'll be the first to admit that I for one switch to celebrating the deaths of the dumb ass protagonists very quickly. Some might say alarmingly so.

You really can't expect me to place my hopes on some of these idiots, right?

Watching Halloween [1978], the first one, I just rolled my eyes every time Jamie Lee Curtis turned her back on Myers, assuming he was dead. What a dumb bitch... This happens twice.

In other news, at some point I read this top-rated YouTube comment:

"Jamie Lee Curtis is probably the greatest butter-face in history."

A bit mean but the comment has merit.

Hospitals and Zombies

So today I went and visited my uncle in the hospital. He's ok, btw.

Man. Haven't been in a hospital in a long time (lucky me, eh?).

The whole time I kept thinking of the only good scene from the first episode of The Walking Dead, you know, that one with the chained door.



That was good. The episode itself was lackluster. Since then I've seen a few more episodes. It's still only "ok" in my opinion.

White Noise 2: The Light [2007]

So White Noise [2005] and White Noise 2 [2007] were on last night and I watched them both. I gotta say the sequel was a massive improvement over the first, thanks in no small part to Capt. Reynolds Nathan Fillion.

Take note though! A movie needn't do much to be thought better than White Noise. Actually, just casting Fillion means the movie was better than that piece of crap.

Anyhoo, it was pretty standard jump-scare fare. I freely confess that if the Captain wasn't in it I wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. As things stood, I enjoyed it a little.

I really do not have much to say about this movie one way or the other up until the final sequence. That's when I really burst out laughing at the idiocy of the screenplay writer and the director.


Check it out here. To give you a quick set-up on context: Nathan can see when people are about to die and he saves them. It turns out that on the third day after he has helped a person cheat death in this way the person gets possessed by the devil and goes on a killing spree. This woman is minutes away from the 72 hour mark and Nathan has come to kill her before she perpetrates a mass murder.



(≥ヮ)AHHAHAHAA WHAT A FUCKING IDIOT THEY HAVE WRITING THIS SHIT!

Oh man, what the hell did I just watch.
So let me get this straight. The ambulance shows up and the paramedics see a woman, apparently traumatized from the attempt on her life but otherwise UNHARMED, and make the diagnosis @4:40: "She's going into shock, let's get her out of here."
What, you need to take her on a car ride to calm her nerves, huh? Maybe play some smooth jazz on the radio to settle her down a bit?
Not to mention they toss her in the ambulance and drive off without even looking inside to see the man who has been shot multiple times. But nooooo, that woman is hyperventilating! Get 'er to the hospital, stat!
And then this ambulance driver who practically crawls into the back to see what's shakin' instead of watching where he's driving... I do hope you recall what it really means to go into shock by the way.

A 2011 Remake of The Thing [1982]?

Reactions to the news.

No?
THANK HEAVENS.
That was close. It's a prequel, not a remake. Still looks like it sucks though. If the trailer is any indicator then this movie is going to be filled with jump scares and rehashed scenarios of the original. Probably with some shiny CG effects for good shitty measure.

One thing I don't understand is why they didn't title it at least a little differently, that is, if they really wanted to make sure people knew this wasn't a remake.

By the way, reading the wiki article on this movie and I found this one passage illuminating, but not surprising in the least.

Yeah. They went looking for something to dredge up from the vault of quality. What a couple of clowns.

Idiosyncrasy #5: Bzzzt

Man, I'm probably going to regret revealing this one later on down the line. (/﹏><)\

I don't like static shocks. That is to say, I get apprehensive every time I am about to touch a metal surface in winter.

Cooler weather has started in and with it the air has gotten drier. This, in addition to the increased number of clothing layers I wear when venturing outdoors, means touching any metal surfaces often results in a spark of static electricity.

It doesn't hurt much, I've felt higher degrees of pain before. The real issue is that I sense that the shock is coming but I still have to touch the surface.



I can foresee this new information being used against me in the future. As long as they have decoys. DECOYS!

Creepypasta #1: Enlarge to Read

Creepypasta - creepy stuff that gets copied and pasted on forums and such, hence the name: creepypasta. You can usually find a thread about it any given day on the /x/ board on 4chan but just so's you don't have to go slogging through the crap that's usually up there here's on of my favorites.

Click on it to bring it up to full, legible size. Enjoy. (O_<)-b

The Messengers [2007] Pt.2

Posting for Saturday, 8/13.

Here's that scene that started all this.

Continuing this harrowing tale, the police arrive and the parents return to find...nothing. All the smashed furniture has reverted back to normal, leaving no sign anything unusual happened. This doesn't help the trust issues between Jess and Denise. Lolz, those ghosts done played you, girl!

Even though Ben also saw all the weirdness he can not corroborate her story. It turns out something Jess did before the movie has rendered him mute. Denise mentioned that Jess couldn't drive Roy to the hospital with a suspended license so I assume she drove drunk or something, crashed the car and got Ben hurt.

A creepy whisper awakens Jess in the night. She promptly finds Ben, also awake and standing in his crib. She recruits him to point out where the ghosts are walking. Somehow she cannot see them and they disappear when she turns her gaze upon them. That last part, I don't know why. Their appearances do not frighten the boy so why bother showing yourselves to him? And if they go so far as to make her hallucinate the house being destroyed and physically drag her into the cellar, why hide?

The adults, including John, do not believe her fantastical sounding story so she goes to the one person who will listen to her: Bobby, a boy of similar age from town whom she met earlier. He tells her about rumours that the house is haunted but apparently there is no knowledge that the previous family died. All he knows is that the family up and left a few years back, probably due to bad harvests.

Jess, being white, decides to go investigate the house's past. She finds a clue in the attic but of course the ghosts don't pass up this excellent opportunity to scare her a little bit. Black goop comes out of the floorboards and the ghouls come crawling on the ceiling, from under the staircase and up out of the ground. All of this disappears as quickly as it appeared and Jess dashes outside. The sun shines brightly over the fields of sunflowers. She starts to break down, wondering what is happening to her.

They do look creepy. I'll admit that!

The ghosts begin to step their game up, providing her with visions of the ill-fated mother in her final moments, whispered words and moans, and creeping about on the edges of her sight. The mother's ghost leads her to the barn where she finds a creepy little boy. He does the old lunge-and-screech. Jess ends up in the hospital with some minor cuts and bruises shaped like a tight gripping hand. Once again, the ghosts play her; the wounds look self-inflicted! Hohoho!

Now I have to wonder why the ghosts haven't been tormenting the mom and dad. Plus, they look like they actually get along with Ben! Go figure....
The family gets in a big fight and Jess takes off on her bike. By happy happenstance, Bobby comes by in his truck and gives her a ride. She reveals the story of how her parents came to lose their trust in her and how Ben lost his ability to speak. They go into town to look for clues.
Meanwhile, Denise speaks with Ben and she starts to get inklings that something IS going on here, something paranormal.
Meanwhile, John notices some odd behaviour amongst the crows.

I think they've been feasting on infected flesh....

It turns out John is actually the father of the previous family. The harvest of sunflowers that year was poor and things weren't working out between he and his wife, Mary. At the beginning of the movie she was packing some suitcases in preparation to leave him. He returned to the house in a rage, killing everyone. In the present time, he notices Denise placing a suitcase on the porch. Finally, the ghosts appeared before her and scared her straight. Unfortunately, John awakens as well. It seems he repressed his memories of his murderous rampage but these come bursting out now. He falls under the delusion that Denise is Mary.
Up until this point the acting in this movie hasn't been too bad, no Oscar performances here but no Razzie's either. They all start to decline now though.
John chases the wife and kids into the cellar where he gets taken down by the ghosts of his family. Nice... but why didn't they pick which side they were on earlier?
John tries to drag Jess down with him but both her parents grab her arms and tug her back out. Yay! Family power!! Flash forward some time, Roy and Denise are good again, Ben speaks, Bobby helps out on the farm. All around happy day caloo callay!

Crappy horror film. It had moments though. Just moments. You shouldn't watch this for the horror, but there are other reasons you might. (O_<)

The Messengers [2007] Pt.1

A long time ago, I saw a horror movie trailer. Years later, I could only remember one scene from that trailer: a mother is making a bed, she fluffs up the sheet and for a moment a pair of ashen gray legs appears standing under the sheet. That was a great scene. I have no illusions about the quality of the rest of that movie but that was undoubtedly a good scene. Unfortunately, I could remember nothing else about the movie. No actor names, not the year, not the title, nothing. Only that scene. But guess what? Hahaha, I wasn't the only horror fan out there that scene stuck to. A Google search for the unlikely search terms: [legs under bed sheet horror] brought up a Yahoo Answers query as the first result. BAM! The Messengers [2007]. Try it out! I think it's still the first result right now. Man, the internet is amazing.

I Youtube-d The Messengers trailer and it all came rushing back. This time though I recognized some faces. Guess who is in this movie? A pre-Twilight fame Kristen Stewart! Her acting was as wooden as ever but that's not a big problem here because I have no expectations of this movie. No wait, that's not entirely true. I expect this movie to be bad. There, that's better, hahahaha.

The house will be haunted. That's obvious right away, even if you didn't see the trailer. The beginning of the movie offers us a flashback. A mother rushes into a bedroom with her son and thells him to hide under the bed and everything will be alright, etc. Loud footsteps come up the stairs the boy sees his mother thrown across the room, hitting the wall. Of course, the kid is NOT ok sitting in plain sight "under" his bed and he seems to know it. He scrambles out and runs into his sister, they both dash downstairs and the boy hides under a table while his sister gets pushed over the banister. Wait. That isn't entirely true, either. I'm giving you the wrong idea. He crouches under the hall table like it's an earthquake. What he doesn't do is hide. The line of sight between himself and the top of the stairs is uninterrupted. The sister crawls toward him and urges him to run. Dumbass kid scurries around the corner and hides in a cabinet under the kitchen sink. Apparently, Hiding is this child's weak point cuz he ain't good at it. Going outside and hiding in the fields doesn't occur to him. He closes the door and sniffles quite loudly before the menace, I assume it's a demon-possessed father or something, grabs him and disposes of him. And there was much rejoicing. (If you get that reference, you're cool. If not, you are not cool.)

Years later, a new family, the Solomons, move in. The father, Dick, his daughter Sally, and son Tommy- oh sorry. I mean father Roy, mother Denise, daughter Jess and son Ben. The house is located somewhere out in North Dakota on a sunflower farm. It seems Jess did something to cause her parents to lose trust in her, though it isn't revealed til later.
As the family moves in, unpacks boxes and such, we get a good dose of jump scares from innocuous things. You know nothing is going to happen so early but they have to maintain a certain level of tension you know? And to remind you this is, in fact, a horror movie.
That bedsheet scene shows up around this time and I seriously considered calling it done straight away but I can't watch a fragment of a movie. That would be unseemly.
One of the most contrived jump scares comes from an old man who appears without a sound, offering Roy a job at the bank. I don't know about you but when was the last time someone who was looking for you walked up and stood 5 feet from you without making any sound to get your attention beforehand. You'd think the old man tried to scare Roy intentionally.
Weird noises and bangs abound, some aggressive crows (dare I say....angry birds?) harass Roy and his seeds, etc. A laborer, John, shows up and gets work helping out around the farm. The only thing that actually earns its creepy points is a ghost of the previous family's son who crawls on the ceiling. Only  Ben sees him, and for some reason he isn't frightened. This is ridiculous. I don't want to hear anything about how innocent he is. The ghost is pale, moves in a stop-motion fashion, and looks like it's rotting. If this kid isn't scared it is because he lacks self-preservation instincts.

It's a reflection in a spoon.

One day Roy cuts his hand on the tractor and needs to go to the hospital. This gives us another opportunity for the mother to hint that she doesn't trust Jess to drive nor to watch over Ben while they are gone. Eventually, Roy convinces Denise to drive him to the hospital and leave Ben in Jess's care. Too bad. While the folks are out the house ghosts decide to fuck with her a little bit. They smash lamps and shatter the banister, throw chairs around, knock shelves and china off the walls, make screaming noises, etc. While all this happens Ben calmly follows a wind-up toy around the house. It leads Jess to the basement staircase where pale rotting hands drag her backwards into the darkness, all the while Ben watches her placidly. What a dumbass kid. Not to mention an Oscar-winning actor, for sure.

Alright guys, that's it for now. (___- -)=3

On the Creation of Zombies

My first zombie movie experience came when I was but a wee lad of 10 or so years. A classic, Night of the Living Dead [1968], which I watched on a visit to my aunts and uncle in Philadelphia. It scared me shitless. Me and my sibs didn't want to go into the darkness up the stairs to brush our teeth afterward even.

I saw a Redbox at Walmart yesterday (which was blue, because it was in a Walmart. Go figure.) My eye immediately went to one of the New Releases: [REC] 2 [2009]. It's a sequel to [REC] [2007]. Both of these Spanish horror films have received high praise and (of course) spawned a Hollywood remake, entitled Quarantine [2009] along with an original Hollywood sequel, Quarantine 2: Terminal [2011]. Sadly, I haven't had the chance to watch the originals and I've only seen the first Quarantine, but that one was great. Really!! I will admit that since I hadn't seen the Spanish version I didn't get to fire from the high ground (hehehe) but as a stand-alone film, I liked it.

Anyway, so seeing [REC] 2 made me think about how the things featured in the film aren't classic undead zombies, yet, that movie is undeniably a zombie film. I like to call these pseudo-zombies. A slew of recent films came to mind: I Am Legend [2007], the 28 Days Later [2002] series and the Resident Evil [2002] series (those zombies were actually undead though). In all of these films the 'zombies' came to be due to a virus or some other product of genetic engineering. In contrast, guess what caused the dead to rise from their graves in Night of the Living Dead? A space probe returning to Earth explodes in the upper atmosphere, spreading radioactive contaminant.

Most people today would not so easily believe that radiation could cause the dead to rise. Radiation simply doesn't do that, and everyone knows it. Back in 1968 though, radiation was kinda new. Mainstream understanding hadn't advanced to the point where your average person had heard of things like fusion and fission, and fewer still would have known the difference. People assigned 'radiation' and nuclear-anything with a kind of mystical power and were afraid. These days the cold war is over, 'nuclear deterrent' isn't much of a buzzword anymore. Guess what scientific breakthrough started making headlines? Genetic engineering, weaponized viruses and such. Though even that isn't making headlines so much. What's making headlines? Hmm, *scrounge scrounge* Ah, a white woman may or may not have killed her baby? Truly, news worthy of national attention.

You remember how Spiderman originally got his powers? A radioactive spider bit him. That's ridiculous, and I hope you all know that. But, if you watched the recent movie, Spiderman [2002], did you pay attention to how they tweaked his origin story? That lab had "15 genetically enhanced super-spiders".

OOOOOOH LOOK AT THAT DNA STRAND ooga booga booga! And so you get the modern day version of your undead zombie: a ravenous, feral humanoid. Except for the Resident Evil franchise, most zombies aren't undead no more. The buzzword of choice: INFECTED.

I take it as a very reassuring fact that a good portion of contemporary audiences want intelligent entertainment (or at least some intelligence in their entertainment). We get our doses of medicine, chemistry, and mathematics from some of the most popular TV shows today. Accordingly, zombies, even actually dead ones like in Resident Evil, have needed to spruce up the mechanics behind the transformation. Resident Evil [2002] explained it away thusly: the T-Virus provides an electrical jolt to the brain which restores the barest of mental facilities: motor function and the need to feed. Then you get 28 Days Later: the Rage virus causes people to become enraged and pumps them full of adrenaline. I Am Legend: a man-made virus kills off 90% of the population and changes a large portion of the rest into hungry, aggressive gray-skinned humanoids with extremely high metabolism.

Things have come a long way from mysterious radioactive contaminant, eh?