Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:26 am

Watching the episode of Gravity Falls where Gideon summons Bill Cypher. I can't entirely say why specifically, but Bill Cypher reminds me of Clavicus Vile from Skyrim. And not just for the "same general concept" thing.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 5:09 pm

I just recently discovered the police series 19-2 (the English remake) and while I think the whole series to be a brilliant piece of entertainment so far, I have to single out S02E01 where the protagonists (and every other cop in the city) have to deal with a school shooting. There is a 13-minute long, uninterrupted take showing police going into the school and kids being shot or running around. Never before did a TV series create so much suspence for me, not even close.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 2:47 am

I've been meaning to do this for a week or more, so dammit, I'm finally going to talk about the movie It Follows.

The premise is that there is a curse that you get from having sex with the latest victim of the curse. This curse causes a creature to track you down relentlessly and, when it catches you, kill you horrifically. After you die, the creature will then go after the previous person in the chain and so on down the line. If you're the latest curse victim, you either run for the rest of your (possibly brief) life or you bang someone and hope they survive a long time and/or pass the curse on even further.

This creature can look like any person at any time and is invisible to anyone not part of the curse chain. It never stops. It can't be reasoned with. It will pursue you relentlessly. It. Follows.

It's a good movie that handles its subject matter with a charming mix of old-school "monster chasing horny teenagers", well-developed themes, and a pleasant lack of suicidal stupidity among its characters. The story is told efficiently (the whole thing is 100 minutes long) and its just spooky enough to take a date to and thrill without leaving everyone grossed out or traumatized at the end. I definitely recommend it, for both theater or home viewing.

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:19 am

Isn't that basically just AIDS?

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:06 am

The sales pitch sounds very different to AIDS. You can't delay AIDS by giving it to someone else, and you can delay AIDS using nonmagical methods.

I am assuming that as this is a horror movie monster, it will recover from e.g. having its arms and legs severed with a machete or an RPG.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:45 pm

vagrant wrote:Isn't that basically just AIDS?

You and I learned about AIDS quite differently.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 1:12 pm

Also, I'm pretty sure if you give aids to one person, other people you have sex with still get aids.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 1:30 pm

Kaelik wrote:Also, I'm pretty sure if you give aids to one person, other people you have sex with still get aids.

Maybe they save that for the sequel.

I assume in the movie the plan to thwart the demon is for the end of the chain to have sex with Chuck Norris.

If the timer gets reset every time they have sex then just pass it around among a circle of afflicted routinely. Then fast-forward a bunch of seniors getting it on until it gets down to a couple of nongenarians who outlived the rest of the chain and nobody left for it to hunt after it puts them under after a full life.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 2:57 pm

The film (wisely) doesn't get into the nitty-gritty corner case rules of the curse; you're here to watch barely legal adults get off and get offed, not optimize your horror RPG build.

What is conveyed as well as what's implied is the following:
1) the curse can't backtrack. If you're holding the hot potato you have to give it to someone who has never held it before. If they die, you're holding the potato again and need to get running/laid.

2) The monster is seemingly unkillable. It gets beaten on with blunt objects, shot in several locations, and the only thing that fazed it was getting shot in the head. Doing that causes it to "die"... for about three seconds.

3) The monster is corporeal but invisible to the non-cursed. If it steps on bubble wrap, you'll hear the pops. It is intelligent and can use tools, though it seems to do that only when the direct approach won't work. If it comes to a door, it'll try to open it, then it'll knock on it, then it'll try to find a window to break open and come through, and then it'll pound the door down. If it is walking into an obvious trap, it'll stop and throw shit at you with its super strength.

4) The monster isn't fast, never moving at more than a brisk walk, but it is tireless. It can swim and climb and seems to always be able to find its victim. It can make vocalizations but doesn't seem able or willing to speak.

5) The monster can appear as anyone, living or dead, real or fictional, and seems to have intimate knowledge of what would confuse or freak out its victim. One scene it's a random old lady and the next it's your next door neighbor.

6) There is no special notification that you are now holding the hot potato. If you hired a hooker for sex, you have no way of knowing that the creature is after you once more unless you somehow keep track of that hooker continuing to have a pulse.

The movie handles the themes of the film more maturely than you'd expect. Yes, there's the "curse as STD" angle. However, there's also the "curse as stigma of being a slut", as well as some parts I won't spoil that are Freudian as fuck.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:14 pm

Shatner wrote:you're here to watch barely legal adults get off and get offed, not optimize your horror RPG build.

Booooooo!

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:15 pm

So the actual optimized build is to find some rich person with a personal jet, and have them fly half way across the world every year or two, which is presumably about how long it takes to brisk walk across the pacific ocean.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:27 pm

If you could tie a cable to it that way you could lay fiber across the oceans maybe.

I wonder what happens if you have sex with an astronaut before they go to the ISS. Maybe attach payloads to it and have it deliver them.

Sci-fi sequel!

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:28 pm

I'm not sure the private jet idea works - the monster can probably cling very tightly to the outside of a passenger aircraft going the same way. Assuming it hasn't implied that it lacks that kind of ingenuity despite being able to freak out its victims.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:22 pm

Are we talking unbounded super-strength or merely substantial? Because if there's a limit to how strong it is, you could park a truck on its face or something.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:45 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:I'm not sure the private jet idea works - the monster can probably cling very tightly to the outside of a passenger aircraft going the same way. Assuming it hasn't implied that it lacks that kind of ingenuity despite being able to freak out its victims.

Given that that is a complete contradiction of what has already been said, I'm going to suggest that is unlikely. At that point, you might as well say "it moves at a brisk walk until it gets in a car to drive."

Or hell, it could just go on the internet, and find a plane that isn't booked too high (since you are already assuming it goes on the internet to find out where planes are even going) and then walk onto one that isn't full and sit in the seat.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:50 pm

name_here wrote:Are we talking unbounded super-strength or merely substantial? Because if there's a limit to how strong it is, you could park a truck on its face or something.

Based on what's shown in the movie, merely substantial. When it needs to kick in a barn door, it takes a few whacks to smash a hole in the side, which it then proceeds to crawl through. That said, it's later throwing very heavy objects across an Olympic-sized pool at high speeds, so I think the monster is "as strong as it needs to be at this moment to be a threat" rather than some fixed amount.

Also, it gets fucked up at one point and dissolves into a great puddle of blood. The characters didn't stick around but it later shows up like normal, so presumably it can reconstitute thus parking a truck on it wouldn't be a permanent solution.

Like the zombies from a Romero movie, this thing is something that (likely) could be worked around with sufficient resources and preparation. However, you have a bunch of frightened, ignorant teens having to deal with a scary situation as a result of sex with only the ideas (mostly bad) and resources (very few) at hand. Hmm, I wonder what that sounds like...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:04 pm

I've been pretty interested in the movie but haven't had a chance to yet. The STCurse angle is a really cool way to look at the "sex=death" trope of horror. So the monster actually has to walk up to you? It can't magically teleport to where you are a la slashers in every single slasher flick?

On a tangential note, Unfriended was pretty cool too. The whole thing is filmed on a laptop screen, and it's good that it's less than an hour and a half long, because that seemed to be a perfect amount of time for that to not become really tired.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:21 pm

Prak wrote:I've been pretty interested in the movie but haven't had a chance to yet. The STCurse angle is a really cool way to look at the "sex=death" trope of horror. So the monster actually has to walk up to you? It can't magically teleport to where you are a la slashers in every single slasher flick?

No teleportation. If you drive across town, it'll take it a while to reach you. And if you're in a house, it has to get in that house to commence murdification. Think of it as an endurance hunter, like ancestral man or Pepe Le Pew.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:03 pm

What if you have sex with the monster?

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:11 pm

ishy wrote:What if you have sex with the monster?

You die.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:06 pm

I dunno... maybe he's just killing horny teens out of frustration and jealousy...

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:15 pm

The standard way of dealing with this sort of mystical curse is to backtrack it to its source. Because obviously someone started it, and the person who started it knew the rules.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:21 pm

My money is still on the monster just killing because it's horny and jealous.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 3:43 am

Leress wrote:
ishy wrote:What if you have sex with the monster?
You die.

Spoiler because it spoils a portion of the film. Be warned.

Part of how you die involves it very aggressively fucking you. We only see the very beginning of someone getting attacked (e.g. pinned down and fucked) and the messy end result (someone who looks like they were beaten to death, with their legs horribly broken and bent the wrong way). The only time we see it happen, the monster is in the form of the guy's (living) mother, and when it very nearly happened later, the monster was in the form of the gal's (dead) father... like I said, Freudian as fuck. To be fair, showing up as the guy's mother was a good disguise because that's what let the creature get close enough to the victim, but the dead father would only work to terrify the victim or because it really does fuck-murder you in the form of one of your parents.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:57 pm

I love Arrow and The Flash, and there's been a huge backlog of episodes in my DVR, and I've recently been watching through them.

I got to the Flash episode about Firestorm and the Evil US General(TM) (Eiling, I do believe his name was) who wants to use him as a weapon. It was amazing. Here's why:

After the Flash saves Firestorm from Eiling, the general gets away unscathed, and you think he's going to escape punishment and return to menace the good guys another day.

But...! Harrison Wells (AKA the Reverse Flash) nabs Eiling out of his HQ and drops him off in some sewers, where - wait for it.... FREAKING GRODD KILLS HIM.

I loved it, because villains like Eiling very rarely get punished like that in superhero shows.