My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Well, yesterday was the last day of the After Dark Horrorfest, and I ended up seeing two movies, The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations and Dying Breed. The two totaled 3 hours of fairly unfortunate cinema…

The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations tells the story of a fellow who is somehow able to “jump” back in time. He lays in a bathtub of ice-water, goes into a little trance, and he’s a time traveler. As long as he doesn’t try to change anything, as long as he simply observes the past, he wakes up safe and sound in his present. However, when he goes back in time to solve his girlfriend’s murder at about the time of its occurrence in her bedroom, he accidentally runs into her sister. Rather than let sister discover the body like she’s supposed to, he tells her to wait in the car while he investigates the house. It’s a very small change, but it’s apparently enough to start a chain of seven murders over ten years.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really see The Butterfly Effect, let alone The Butterfly Effect 2, but I seriously doubt that seeing them could have saved The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations. I could jump back in time to find out, to watch the previous two first, but then my entire family would probably end up murdered.

Dying Breed tells the story of four Aussies who venture out into the Tasmanian wilderness in the hopes of photographing the said to be extinct Tasmanian tiger. Now, I don’t care to write any more.

Dying Breed is just stupid gore porn. The four are terrorized and murdered by in-bred sadistic cannibals that time forgot. Oh, wait, they keep one woman alive to rape every so often, whenever they need a baby to boost their population. Really, I don’t mind a bunch of killing, but rape totally bothers me.

So, that’s it, six of eight horror movies in three days. My bizarre adventure is over.

So, in my bizarre pursuit to see as much of this year’s After Dark Horrorfest as I possibly can, I ended up going to the 10:35 PM showing of Perkins’ 14. The title gave me absolutely no clue as to what I’d be seeing.

Perkins’ 14 tells the story of Ronald Perkins and his life’s work in the quiet little town of Lake Cove. Ronald had a rough childhood. At the age of 6, Ronald’s parents are killed while he’s in the house. Mom stabbed 14 times, dad shot in the face. Police rule it a murder/suicide, the case is closed. Ronald never buys this theory, he feels let-down and abandoned by the town. So, when he grows up, Ronald decides to kidnap 14 children and lock them in his basement. He tortures them, de-humanizes them, pumps them full of PCP and various other drugs. Ronald creates his own little army of mindless, heartless, really angry zombies. On the night of the ten year anniversary of the fourteenth kidnapping, Ronald’s kids get to go home again. It’s not a happy homecoming.

I admit it, I’m a sucker for zombie movies, so I really did love Perkins’ 14. It’s actually very well-shot, with just enough shaky-camera to give everything a very frenetic feeling. Visually, the film is quite reminiscent of 28 Days Later. I even found myself a little scared at times, as the killing doesn’t always happen when it’s expected. Perkins’ 14 definitely made my evening.

Next, Dying Breed.

Continuing my foray into the After Dark Horrorfest, today I saw Voices. Again, I had no idea what to expect from my trip to the theater. I didn’t know Voices was Japanese, nor did I know it was subtitled…

Voices tells the story of a girl, and a curse, and a bunch of people getting stabbed, and revenge, and different people trying to kill the previously mentioned girl just about every-day for no reasonably apparent reason, and some kind of demon or something, and, and, and…

Voices is such a convoluted disaster, the thought of trying to explain it makes me want to quit writing entirely. So, I won’t.

Tomorrow, Dying Breed.

So, I spent a grey and rainy Tuesday in a movie theater watching two horror movies, Autopsy and Slaughter. They’re part of a series of short films in this year’s After Dark Horrorfest. I went in not knowing anything about either film, I wanted to go in fresh…

Autopsy is the touching love story of a doctor desperately trying to save his wife from terminal cancer. So, the doctor sets up shop in an abandoned Louisiana hospital, hires a pair of ex-cons for orderlies and nurse Ratched’s mom, and takes to kidnapping people to harvest their fluids and vital organs. Perhaps, this isn’t the best possible idea, but the doctor so wants his beloved to see Italy again.

Autopsy is the sort of movie that’s so astonishingly bad it ends up being great. It’s just non-stop over-the-top violence and creepy atmosphere. It’s the kind of movie where a writer says to himself, “Oh my Christ, you know what would be awesome? It’d be awesome if a chick hacked of another chick’s arm and said, bleed out, bitch!” It doesn’t try to be anything but ridiculous.

Slaughter is the story of a young woman who moves to Atlanta to escape her abusive and obsessed ex-boyfriend. She befriends a local young lady and ends up rooming with said young lady at her family’s farm, a farm with a slaughterhouse. Local gal is rather promiscuous, a fact her creepy dad doesn’t like one bit. Her suitors always seem to vanish the next day.

Supposedly, Slaughter is “inspired by actual events,” and it really tries to tell a story. Unfortunately, the story it tries to tell is really boring and very predictable. By the time anything remotely interesting started to happen, I just wanted it to be over. I wanted it to fade to black with the simple closing text, “And they all died in a fire. The end.” Sadly, it didn’t, it just kept going.

Today, I’m going back to see Voices.

So, I get these ideas, just weird, maybe a little eccentric, ideas. Like, a few years ago I decided to try to see every After Dark Horrorfest horror movie, in the theater. I made it to seven of the eight. Then, a few weeks ago, the gun range thing. I don’t know, I guess I like creating a to-do, then doing it. I do things especially when the rest of my life feels out of my control, I grab at something I can control, I get a thing or do a thing, just to show myself that part of me still alive. It’s, I don’t know. I suddenly don’t feel like writing more.

Anyways, we baked a cake today. Lauren (my assistant) and my friend, Dani, did the baking, while I took a more supervisory role. It was fun, and created something.

Now, pictures…

Lauren prepares a mellow vanilla icing

Introducing... batter!

Law & Order: Special Cakes Unit

It looks like Dani’s interrogating Lauren for some kind of cake-related felony…

Dani and Daisy and Lauren and Flour

Dani, Lauren, and the finished cake... rendered in water colors

Sure, I dabble in water color painting… or I just bought Sketcher on the Mac App Store. One or the other.

We did a yellow cake with vanilla icing, topped with fresh strawberries. It came out really pretty, which is everything one wants. We all just want something pretty.