Pan’s Labyrinth

The cover of the DVD for Pan’s Labyrinth says “From the Director of Blade II and Hellboy”.  Statements like these for any film are usually pretty polarizing.  Sometimes it ends up being “from the producer and 2 of the writers that brought you Ernest Goes to Camp”.  That’s an example of when it goes wrong and probably makes people actively avoid the movie.  Other times it’s an instant sell, as in the first time I saw a preview for Inception, knew nothing about it, but saw “from the director of the Dark Knight”.  I was in, I didn’t need to see anything else.  Speaking of being in, if it’s a Guillermo del Toro movie, it deserves to be watched.  I enjoyed Blade 2 and Hellboy just as the packaging hoped I would, but really the marketing dollars should have gone back and tagged THOSE movies as “from the director of Pan’s Labyrinth”.  Combining fascist Spain in 1944 with a traditional fairy tale would seem to be an odd combination, and it is.  Del Toro embraces it anyway; the result is a moving story of a girl who gets caught in a war she wants nothing to do with and a world she would do anything to call home.

Dead Space: I am scared

I’m not really a scary movie type person.  It’s not that I dislike being scared but I feel like finding a good horror movie amidst the giant sea of absolute crap that comes out is very difficult.  I want the scares to be EARNED.  I want a plot that at least makes sense.  Most movies fail miserably.  One game that surprised (and scared!) the hell out of me though was Dead Space.  An original property from EA (weird, I know) that supposedly was less about action and more about making you curl up in the fetal position had me intrigued.  If the now Gears of War style Resident Evil games make you angry, Dead Space is what should be in your console.

Alan Wake: Bring plenty of batteries

I need to start this review by being honest about something: I am the target audience for Alan Wake. I’ve watched the X-Files like it was my job (except those episodes with Robert Patrick, that show ended 3 seasons too late). I’ve read Stephen King, James Joyce, Bret Easton Ellis (the game draws most heavily from Lunar Park, which is a shame, because that is the bottom of the Ellis lot. Although a whole game about disenfranchised youth would be pretty boring. An American Psycho game? BRING IT ON), Edgar Allen Poe, and I’m a devoted H.P. Lovecraft follower (it even drops an August Derleth reference on you!). Alan Wake name drops and borrows elements from all of the above, pretty shamelessly in some cases. Thus, I will say, without any shame, Alan Wake is an absolutely fantastic game.

The game starts as Wake and his wife, Alice, arrive at a town in the pacific northwest called Brightwood Falls. As an absurdly famous writer (after playing the entire sci-fi/horror filled game, the most unbelievable part of the game is that Wake is recognizable to the general public…he’s a writer! Could you pick any writer other than Stephen King out of a lineup? And you only know what he looks like because they constantly cut to him during Boston Red Sox games) struggling with writers block, the hope is that a vacation to such a picturesque location will solve the problem. What happens instead is that Alice quickly goes missing and men possessed by shadows start trying to kill you.