Interesting snack! Big chunky pretzel pieces that have a nice and toasty crunch. Comes in loads of tasty flavours too so it never gets dull. The jalapeno variety has a nice spicy kick to them.
Terry's Chocolate Orange Mini Eggs Bar
Little chocolate beans embedded in chocolate is a wonderful thing. You got Smarties bar, Cadbury Mini Eggs bar, M&Ms bar etc. and it can help with biting into the shell when it can be a bit hard. The experience feels like it's been perfected with this bar. It's a very pleasant munch.
KP Krunch Mix Sour Cream & Chive Flavour
Coated peanuts are great. The Walkers Sensations ones I find are the nicest and I miss when there was a Hunky Dory Buffalo variety. Here's one that's sour cream & chive flavour. It's a very strong flavour to begin with but you get used to it quickly and it's quite nice. It also includes little Hula Hoop and other shaped corn snacks so there's a nice bit of variety to snack on. Also comes in barbecue flavour I haven't tried yet.
Playing the Unofficial Cocaine Bear Game for the ZX Spectrum
Inspired by true events! This movie has been getting people excited online and now an author named Azimov made an unofficial fangame.
Lately one of my friends bought The Last of Us game to get ready for the TV adaptation that was coming out, so I thought I'd do the same with Cocaine Bear, which is coming out in the cinema.
This game doesn't seem to have any particular goal. You can just roam around, trying not to get killed while humans run around all freaked out. It has a top down view and 15 screens to explore. You can enter fury mode for a few seconds to mangle any humans that run into you. You use up white um... power packs as the readme calls it, so you only have so many of these. You can try and get the maximum possible score when you get bored exploring and use up all your power packs. That's about it.
It's pretty hard not to get killed. Even if your ear brushes off a cactus or the water you get killed. When you press a direction the bear just keeps moving and won't stop, even when going on to the next screen and right into danger. He's kind of like Pac-Man that way. It is fun owning the humans, but you can't get the ones that shoot because they stand still, and fury mode only works for humans that run into you.
I mapped the 15 screens out very roughly and it looks like the maximum points you can get is 6,300. I could be wrong though. It's assuming you can only get one pickup per game and the most humans you can mangle at once is 3. I managed to get 1,800 points as my personal best but with patience you can get much more.
It is quite satisfying mangling two humans at once and it's the best way to get a high score. You can mangle 3 humans at once at the very beginning, but it's tough enough to line them up!
The screens make up a maze at a nice seaside setting with lots of sand. The music is a happy little tune as well. Looking forward to the movie!
If you're using a ZX Spectrum Vega, here's a configuration I made for the game. Just paste the following into a text editor and save it as CocaBear.zxk:
T:Cocaine BearF:CocaBear.tap
M:128
K:;Q;A;O;P;SP;;1
D:;Up;Down;Left;Right;Fury Mode;;Start Game
Cast a Deadly Spell With Bootleg Friday
I found a snack I hadn't seen in a while, Fox's Rocky Caramel. Fox's make really nice chocolate biscuits I normally only see as Christmas presents but here is that same high quality biscuit only presented as an ordinary teatime biscuit for busy people in a multipack. the shortcake and chocolate are so good I feel like I'm getting away with something luxurious and the caramel is just the right amount. Not too much or too little, just right.
There is a chocolate variation but it has dissected coconut for some strange reason. It's awful and I'm surprised it isn't highlighted as an allergen.
With my caramel Rocky's, I was ready for the film. It's styled like a film noir detective story but it's main twist is that it involves magic powers as weapons. It sounds very strange and novel, a bit too strange to be mainstream. It was made by HBO, which is known for making its own stuff without the same restriction policies that others follow. My guess is that they wanted to make something with a taboo theme like the occult, but that's just a guess.
The font of the opening credits I recognised immediately as the exact same font from the credits of Fish Police, a fish themed detective noir cartoon made for older audiences in the early 90s. I was ready to spend the whole watch party making comparisons between that cartoon and this movie. In the opening scenes, there was a guy calling a lady "Angel", but that was about it. In any case, lovely font.
Despite having the magic theme, the detective story stuff is played super straight and doesn't feel like a parody or spoof at all. All the actors did a really good job of it.
One death happens from a paper tornado, but it looks sinister and fantastic rather than something too ridiculous and stupid like a shark tornado.
The weird monstrous gremlins and gargoyles make me imagine cartoon haters would decide the movie is for kids and then turn it off. They were cool though.
Then there's the femme fatale club singer and I'm thinking about Jessica Rabbit and Angel from Fish Police again. I love indulging in memories of those two, but the scene in this movie is well made and played straight, again not feeling like a parody.
The breakfast time in the diner looks absolutely lovely with its sun drenched lighting and booth seating. We Bootleggers and Beyonders find ourselves looking at the lighting in these old movies we watch with a lot of envy. We just don't get good lighting in movies these days. The monster in the kitchen was really cool too.
The blonde girl is delightful and has lovely lines like "lurking behind my mulberry bush".
One of my favourite things I said was when the gargoyle got kicked in the crotch and I said it got a "kick in the gargoyles". It was an amusing creature and at one point it was dancing around like a baseball mascot.
The ending was a satisfying conclusion when the bad guy got eaten up by the very thing he was summoning. Turns out his daughter saved the day by not being a virgin anymore. Woo! Serves him right.
So yeah this was a very interesting movie to check out and it's a lot less goofy than its premise suggests. Hardened detective noir fans get a bit of a treat with the fantastical aspects and special effects too.
Ant-Man 3 and Shamrock Shakes
I waited a long time for both of these things and I was glad they finally arrived. I started the day by rolling into the café by the bus station for scrambled egg, bacon and toast. I wasn't planning on that, but the signs and menu were pretty inviting.
The food wasn't bad at all and it came with little serving dishes of butter and ketchup without even having to ask them for it.
After this I went to visit Argos. I'm not sure if this'll be my last visit to the place, but I'm gonna miss it. I won't miss being asked for my e-mail address, but I'll miss being asked if I'm over 12 or 16 when buying games, which is funny.
McDonald's wasn't busy when I passed on the way to Argos, but it was hopping when I got back to it. I ordered a large Shamrock Shake with fries and a Grand Big Mac with bacon, minus the burger sauce, which is a nice thing about those kiosks. You can specify with the press of a button if you don't want something.
The Shamrock Shake is one of the nicest things about spring, along with spotting frogspawn and Pancake Tuesday. It's got a mild spearmint flavour and it only comes out for the run up to St. Patrick's Day, so it's worth going out for one now if you'd like one.
After that I went to the cinema. I got a ticket for the recliner screening and made sure it wasn't the 3D one because I don't like the glasses. The recliner seats are lovely where you can just press a button and it raises the foot rest and tilts the seat back. You can adjust it to your liking and there's a ton of leg room. I made sure not to sit in the front row this time. People walk in front of you when they're bringing their kids to the toilet and I get a bit self-conscious my legs in the air might be in their way. In the second row no one crossed in front of me.
I like to call this movie Ant-Man 3, because I don't like its whole title, "Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania". When you see it on a poster they have the Ant-Man part shrunk and the Quantumania part blown up.
Ant-Man is my favourite character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe(besides Spider-Man) because a lot of the time it's Paul Rudd walking around looking confused, which is how I feel most of the time when watching these films. I decided to get into them when I saw the first Ant-Man, which was great. Ant-Man 2 was pretty good too, much better than anyone said it was. For Ant-Man 3, I was gonna watch it even if people dumped on it because I just love Paul Rudd's characterisation as Scott Lang/Ant-Man so much.
I love the big/small gags, though there aren't many here. The pizza enlargement bit was pretty awesome and makes great food for thought as well. Scott's got a new book out called "Look Out For The Little Guy" which is a great title.
Scott's daughter now has a backstory of getting into trouble with the law like her dad and into science like his predecessor. The family get sucked into the quantum realm because of one of the things she was studying.
This quantum realm is where the vast majority of the movie takes place. There are some cool weird things about it, but most of it feels like something out of Star Wars. There's more alien stuff than there is microscopic cellular stuff, it's presented more like a different planet than it is about something really tiny. I kind of wish it was much weirder than it actually was.
The bad guy from the first film is here and I was really weirded out by the sight of him. He got turned into some kind of Humpty Dumpty figure with tiny arms and legs. His head is gigantic and his face looks like an image stretched sideways. After that initial shock I just kind of accepted it as one of the weird things about this setting.
Ant-Man is here with his family, but I always find myself wanting to see more of him. Everyone else has their role and they're all very important but most of them are narrative devices rather than thinking feeling beings.
I just took a look at the Ant-Man Twitter and it's only now I see the word "quANTuMANia" has "Ant" and "Man" in it. That flew right over my head. Wow.
Anyway, the bad guy is Kang and he's a pretty decent character! In fact all of the bad guys in recent MCU movies have been good. Kang is a powerful but soft spoken and menacing character. He's been destroying other incarnations of himself like Jet Li in The One and he's been banished to the quantum realm, looking for a way out through Ant-Man's abilities and access to technology.
Bill Murray plays one of the characters they meet. Normally I'm thrilled to see him in anything but he's just okay here. He drinks a weird drink with a creature in it.
Michael Douglas' character is as charming as ever and that army of ants that show up at his command was pretty cool.
Another cool thing is where Ant-Man gets to go all kaiju-big again, stomping around Kang's drab empirical city yelling for him. That was awesome.
There's also that bit where Ant-Man turns into an Ant-Man colony which is fun to watch.
The movie rolls along and has a happy ending, or does it? Scott pauses to think about possible consequences during his happy walk. He gets all serious before going back into happy mode. Charming fellow!
At the end of the movie, most of the people in the cinema left and the lights even came on before the credits ended. I always wonder if people know there's going to be post credit scenes for a Marvel movie. They really should know at this stage.
There are two post credit scenes and I was happy to see them, even though the lights came on. One of the scenes I later learned was a direct adaptation of a comic panel, which was cool.
After the movie I headed home. The movie met my expectations. Setting wasn't my favourite but I got to see more of Paul Rudd's Ant-Man, and the odd big/small joke kept me happy.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish at the Cinema with a Friend
I finally got a chance to see Puss in Boots: The Last Wish! I've been looking forward to this for ages. I love the character and I'm so happy to see him back. His debut in the Shrek movies was fantastic and his first spin-off was superb. When the new Avatar movie took up all the cinema screens I stayed at home and read about Puss in Boots. It's been doing very well in its own right and everyone's been praising its action scenes and in particular one showing a panic attack.
It was a lovely spring day and I met up with a friend. We went to McDonald's for breakfast but it was closed for some reason, so we went to another branch that wasn't too far away. After that we did some shopping. I picked up a lot of snacks I'll talk about soon and also got some curry Samyang noodles, a flavour I haven't seen in months. Glad I got some.
We went to CEX and found they were shrinking their DVD section by a lot. I hear they're phasing them out sadly.
When we went in to see the new Puss in Boots, there were quite a few people in there already, but still plenty of room for us to get good seats. Among the trailers was one for the new Mario movie and I can't wait for it!
This movie is presented in a couple of styles, the regular CGI style we normally associate with DreamWorks movies and the Spider-Verse style where frame rate is lower and the frames themselves are like paintings. I have a desperate lack of better terminology. Stop motion? The latter style is used for the movie's spectacular and satisfying action scenes. I love the way Puss cartwheels through the air and that fight with that earth giant thing in the opening reminds me of fight scenes from the anime FLCL.
Puss has lost eight of his nine lives and this brush with permanent death drives him to retire to a cat lady's home. He now wants to live a life of solitude from enemies and he grows a beard. He gets wind of a "falling star" treasure that grants wishes, so he sets off on a journey involving other characters who are after the same thing.
The panic attack scene really got people talking online and it got high praise for being one of the most authentic in movie history. Puss's heart races and his therapy dog friend Perrito places his chin on him, which helps him calm down. It's a wonderful moment in the cinema, but seeing the clip on social media with headphones, it was jaw-dropping. The sound of Puss' heart racing, his friend's muffled voice calling out to him, his heart then calming, then Antonio Banderas' deep voice thanking his friend gratefully. What a moment. Have a look for it.
The Shrek tradition of witty takes on traditional characters continues. My favourite here is Goldilocks and the Three Bears, who are portrayed as a family gang pulling off criminal capers. They're voiced by Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo and they have tough English gangster accents. I laughed in delight when they were introduced. There's Little Jack Horner, portrayed as Big Jack Horner, who has world domination plans. He's voiced by John Mulaney.
The Wolf character is like the Grim Reaper and he is designed extremely well. He's got these big red eyes and carries these threatening sickles around with him. He makes Puss' hairs go grey and stand on end. He whistles like Charles Bronson's harmonica tooting character in Once Upon a Time in the West. He's really cool.
We see returning characters like love interest Kitty Softpaws. One of my big questions was if we were going to see the Ohhh Cat again and we do! He's there for one brief scene doing his thing but it was nice to see him!
Puss and Kitty both do the cute eyes thing. No one in the cinema went "AWWW!" like they used to in previous movies. Maybe it's because we're used to these characters now? Or maybe it's because everyone has access to cute kitty compilation content now. Who knows.
The movie's plot plays out breezily and in such an agreeable way it can feel like a lovely afternoon pastime rather than something unforgettable, though there are some wonderful and spectacular things that are too cool to just forget. For example I can't remember the lyrics to the "favourite hero" song but I won't forget the fight scenes or the wolf character. I suspect this movie will be used by parents as a babysitter to kids but there are cool things they should hang on for a moment to enjoy too.
I hung around until after the credits and there was no scene, but there was a brief repeat audio of Puss saying the line "You're still here?" like he was Ferris Bueller and that was it. I take it for granted now, but Antonio Banderas as dashing Zorro-like Puss in Boots is a wonderful thing.
Afterwards we went looking at books, grabbed a burger, grabbed a bit of pizza and headed for home, humming the tune I still can't remember the lyrics to. I still had a bit of popcorn left but I eventually finished it that evening. The weather stayed nice.
My impressions of Nintendo Direct including Pikmin 4 and Metroid Prime Remastered
I'll talk about some stuff I'm interested in from the Nintendo Direct from two nights ago.
Pikmin 4 is one of the main games I'm looking forward to. I find the games really stressful but I do enjoy them. There's a sheepdog-like thing in it now which is a nice new surprise. Pikmin does feel like herding sheep so it suits the game.
Samba de Amigo: Party Central would've gotten me very excited, but you just know they're going to DLC it to death. Amigo looks like he's been decapitated and his head placed on some random Just Dance figure.
Decapolice and Bayonetta Origins aren't really hooking me in that much but there may be something for me there. I'd have to see more of what they're like so I'll keep an eye on them.
Disney Illusion Island seems decent enough for a 2D platformer. Hope the single player is good. This is made by the same crowd who made the new Battletoads game so they have some experience at least.
Octopath Traveler II has a demo! I'm gonna get the game anyway.
We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie is nice to see coming along. That extra bit with the king might be something worth checking out.
Sea of Stars has a demo as well and it looks really good! Looks like it has a Chrono Trigger feel in its basic gameplay and it features one of its composers too! Font looks decently legible as well. This I really should try.
Omega Strikers has an air hockey theme, which I really like. Could be fun.
Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection compiles a series I never played but fans I know really want the physical version to be released in English. Feeling sorry for them right now.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-boot Camp is finally coming out! Delighted to see this game getting unbanned!
Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe I was gonna skip because I have the original, but I'm really tempted by the Magolor epilogue now.
I'm pretty shocked they just announced and released Metroid Prime Remastered straight away with the physical version soon to follow. No hype or anything and it looks better than any Zelda HD remake ever did. How long was this in development? It just came out of nowhere.
Baten Kaitos I & II HD I didn't ask for, but I knew a few people who did. I better catch up with them to ask how happy they are.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has a really bad title, but, like the original game that came out during the aftermath of the Great Recession, you can live out the fantasy of having a job.
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom has voiceover from the bad guy, whoever it is and some footage of cars and flying machines. Nice little update.
Vanilla BN Biscuits by McVitie's
I never tried BN biscuits before. I decided to give them a go, expecting them to be ordinary enough. They're crackers with some vanilla stuff sandwiched inside and they're nice enough. I was expecting to be much more like a biscuit, like a Bourbon Cream or a Custard Cream.
However, I heard they're originally from France, that they disappeared for a while and then came back with the McVitie's label. Some fans from before their disappearance are dissatisfied, noting the cracker is very oat-y and not as sweet as they used to be.
I never tried them before so I don't have that comparison to make, but if you liked them from years back, be aware of that. I still they're nice and moreish. They have a nice face pattern on them too. I guess BN sounds like the positive French affirmation "bien" and wonder if that was part of the naming decision. I also like the vanilla flavour. Haven't tried any other flavour yet.
Remember when Cadbury had these biscuit combination things a few years back? One was with a biscuit brand called "LU" and they were really sweet and tasty. I wonder if this was the kind of sweetness that fans miss from the new BN biscuits?
Barb Wire with Beyond Friday
Pamela Anderson is back with a new documentary on Netflix called "Pamela, A Love Story". I haven't watched it yet but I have watched Barb Wire, which has also been added to the Netflix catalogue for one month only, likely as a companion piece. It was a good chance for us to make a watch party out of it.
I haven't seen the movie since the 90s, when she was a major heartthrob for me and everyone I knew growing up. Back then we watched it on a VHS tape rented from the petrol station or the video van all together in one sitting room, like we did with the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Bros movies. The Power Rangers movie was another big one for us, but I digress.
Looking at Pamela Anderson's character in the movie now, she is a work of art. Everything about how she looks, her eyes, hair, lips, teeth, breasts, she looks extremely beautiful, glamorous and well-lit, like she was made for the camera. She has this fearsome, lion-like aesthetic that makes her look powerful and made us weak at the knees back in the day. We obsessed over her breasts and she was a sensation in mainstream media. She was everywhere. Today we have wider access to media and we don't see her as often. Her beauty in this movie hits different. It's very nostalgic, but she still looks like a goddess.
The movie looks amazing as well and everyone agreed on the lighting. Movies back then had much better lighting than they do now. The part where the lighting brings out Barb's eyes I was comparing to the lighting of Bela Lugosi's eyes in the classic adaptation of Dracula. I was also drawing a comparison between her and Barbara Windsor, who had similar aesthetics and also had a character in EastEnders who owned a pub, often reminding everyone whose pub it was.
For snacks I had chocolate biscuit cake, also known as tiffin on the label. I also had Jaffa Cakes that were discounted. It was the Jacob's brand as well, so it was the good stuff.
We enjoyed this movie in the 90s, but since then it's been dumped on critically and I never really thought about rewatching it, but I feel now when I watched it with the Beyonders we really enjoyed it for what it was and especially for things it got right, particularly with the lighting, cinematography and general aesthetics.
We loved Pamela and her character. Seriously she was really cool and worth rooting for. There was this part where she had this MacGyver-like ingenuity to use a mattress to aid with some kind of plastic explosive detonation. I imagined the schoolyard back in the day where some lucky kid who got to rent the VHS before anyone else would boast about her "making the bed explode!"
Let's see... there are cool bits and sequences and I don't remember the whole thing but there are cool bits on their own. The junkyard crane fight, the bubble bath, the splashy pole dance in the opening credits... some narrative elements like the shot of the very red landscape, opening prologue and Barb revealing the year to be 2017. I commented this was what happened in an alternate timeline where the Nintendo Switch wasn't released.
So let's see... she's also a bounty hunter, she's the hero, her brother gets fridged by the bad guys in a gender reversal on that trope... Imagine if there was a Metroid movie in the 90s and she was in it... food for thought. I think she's a deserving action movie protagonist and it would be cool if there were more movies like this with her in the lead. She could rescue nerdy scientists or boys our age or something and we would all swoon and fawn over her.
Udo Kier is in this. I remember him from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Imagine a crossover, some big crazy weird 90s crossover.
We just had all had a good time with this movie! I felt we were righting a wrong with this revisit and appreciating what it is, making some good memories.
I'll end this with more daydreaming of Pamela Anderson's beauty and glamour. I'll have to check out her documentary too.
The Whale & Knock at the Cabin Double Bill with Friends
With the release of The Whale and Knock at the Cabin in the cinema, it was a great time to meet up with friends and go see it together. The three of us hadn't seen each other in person for a while, so it was lovely to catch up and go to the cinema, one of our favourite pastimes together.
We started the day with a bite to eat. We went for Chinese food at one of our old haunts. It was a little more expensive than the last time we were there but we were just happy to do this again. It's one of the many things that went up in price due to the cost of living and inflation crises, which affect how often we meet. We're all going through changes in our life and don't quite know what the next step will bring.
I had my usual from here, prawn crackers, spare ribs and chips. They were lovely. I missed this place. We didn't have an awful lot of time before the start of the first film, The Whale, so we wolfed it down before setting off for the movies.
We stopped for snacks but I didn't get anything yet. Also, I got a free medium popcorn and drink when I bought my ticket for The Whale. I love our cinema's loyalty scheme.
We got good seats for The Whale. I didn't feel much like eating the popcorn, but it had nothing to do with the main character's bad health and comically grotesque eating habits. There's always too much popcorn compared to the Coca-Cola I got, which I finished fairly quickly. I was still just after the meal and my sinuses were putting me off too. I had to use my decongestant spray and I was okay after.
The Whale takes place in the main character's apartment for almost the entire film. It's really dark in there and I have no idea how he was able to read or do his other tasks as an English teacher when he was offline. It made the cinema pitch black as well and people had a bit of trouble finding their way round when they had to take toilet breaks. There was a couple behind us and off to the side all wrapped up and having fun, but they weren't disruptive. I'm actually having trouble remembering where they there during this film or the next one we saw?
Brendan Fraser was everything. He may replace Gwenyth Paltrow's character in Shallow Hal's picture on that clickbait image about offensive movie characters in the near future but we wanted to see his acting comeback. I was nearly humming the George of the Jungle theme on the way in to the cinema. It really was great to see his acting. I think we all see him as a delicate yet optimistic figure who's been through a lot, so we really wanted to see his performance after not seeing him for such a long time.
There are some not so great things about this film and the most significant one for me is the music. When the main character whimpers and clutches at his chest it plays this dramatic, doom-filled music, like he's a ship that's about to sink. It's pretty over the top. He's not a video game boss. He's not from Shadow of the Colossus like.
The plot devices and characters come and go just like in a stage play. He has supportive visitors like his faithful helper and the missionary, even the pizza guy to some extent, but also characters he has to confront like his estranged daughter and wife. They all have their own plotlines and they play out well enough to keep the movie interesting.
His job is teaching some kind of online English literature essay writing. In an interesting contrast to most Zoom classes I've taken, the students are all on cam whereas he keeps his switched off.
Darren Aronofsky directed this. I've seen Noah, which was over the top dramatic and kind of fun to watch for this reason. There is stuff that's really over the top and dramatic in this film as well, which may inspire bad reality TV shows about obesity in the future.
There's a part where he's standing on his feet and gets lifted up into a bright white light and it has that same dramatic comical humour that Noah has. It was pretty darn funny. When the film ended, someone a few seats ahead of us turned around and said that was going to stay with them for a while. Brendan Fraser's acting and the overall tone of the film makes an impact.
When the film was over I had barely a quarter of my popcorn eaten. We talked about it at length on the couches in the cinema lobby and we loved Brendan Fraser's acting. It really was good to see him again after such a long time.
There was a small bit of time before the next film started. We bought our tickets for it. I popped outside to the nearest discount shop to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola. I still had the big box of popcorn in my hand and I had a growing appetite for its salty moreish-ness. I'm glad I held on to it.
We went in to see Knock at the Cabin when the time came. It was exciting and spectacular. We had memories of seeing director M. Night Shyamalan's Old together and I had fresh memories of this movie's trailer, which was amazing.
The movie wastes no time in being as suspenseful and exciting as the trailer. Little girl in the forest at play where she gets approached by a huge dude with tattoos and a soft-spoken voice. They have a civilised but very unsettling chat that keeps you on the edge. Then his cohorts appear and it all seems very frightening to her and her two dads.
Dave Bautista's sheer size and tattoos, complemented by his soft-spoken voice, glasses and gentle interpersonal manner; his very presence tells us there is a lot going on with this character; there's some explaining to do, there's a deep saga in there somewhere; he's the one who "knocks at the cabin" door. The first words he says tease and unease and it's perfect for a trailer. Compared to The Whale, these movies feature a big dude each and if there was an award category titled "Best Use of a Big Dude" I would give it to Dave Bautista.
The little girl has two dads and they're staying in the cabin. The big dude and his cohorts are carrying these weird looking tools as they stand outside their door. The immediate fear you get is that this may be a cult who is out to destroy their family, but given the reputation of the guy who gave us The Sixth Sense, there's a part of you that expects a bait-and-switch, another thing that keeps you in anticipation to see the movie and find out.
This fear is used as a narrative tool for a very long time and keeps us engaged until we learn the specifics of what this invading group is about. They're trying to stop the end of the world and this can only happen if someone in the family sacrifices the life of another member. If they don't, the members of the cult sacrifices one of their own and all this apocalyptic stuff happens when they turn on the news. The big dude explains they can only follow these rules and they didn't even know the parents were a same sex couple. We still get flashbacks of the dads' life experiences, but ultimately it becomes about the family trying to escape the group.
Things are kept suspenseful with characters trying to break out of their ropes tying them to chairs and trying to escape with injuries like a limp. The deaths come rolling along.
The M. Night Shyamalan cameo on the first TV show is fun and amusing. Talking about a chicken recipe or whatever. I was happy enough with my popcorn, which I finished this time. This movie was spectacular and suspenseful. I was rooting for characters' escape and the mystery reveal.
Later on, the characters who remain walk into a comfy roadside diner where the people are silent and transfixed by the news on TV. I love how big and spacious these diners are and the booth seating looks roomy and comfy. These remaining characters are silent too while they wordlessly decide whether or not to listen to the song in the car. I found myself encouraging them to. I love that scene.
The credits that rolled were accompanied by apocalyptic weather effects. One of my friends was hoping there would be an after credits scene with some kind of twist, so I waited with them. The only thing that was at the end was the display of the title along with the sound of knocks and that was it.
It was dusky when we got out. We discussed the movies as we walked along the street, popping in to the discount shop again where I bought more Coca-Cola. We were just in time as the place was closing.
On the way home we we went to Abrakebabra. I got a Taco Fries with hot chilli sauce instead of the pink stuff it normally comes with. I bought some waffle fries for sharing too. Coca-Cola is more expensive here so I was ready. We talked about the movies we saw, the movies we want to see, and more stuff about what's going on in our lives. Not sure what's going on next, but I'm hoping to write more at least.
After grabbing a bite, we walked and chatted all the way to the bus station before saying goodbye until next time.
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