Invading all those Snatching Bodies

Not just one, but two!

In 1956, a doctor returns to a small town, where some people have been reporting strangeness, but now everything is fine. Except some people are claiming that other people are not themselves. The doctor finds a friend with a strange growing duplicate, and starts to uncover strangeness. He gets his female friend out, but the pods are being distributed. The doctor has to run away, and is only believed at the end. Perhaps the world will react in time.

In 1978, a health inspector has some friends that randomly encounter strange people saying that people are not themselves. They take time to wander around, not doing much, but taking their damn time to go through the same set of motions that the previous movie did economically, but the big difference this time is that we are in a large city! The inspector destroys a greenhouse of pods, and hides away... and then comes back in a rather stilted fashion, encounters a friend, and .... screech!

The 80 minute movie is good. The 115 minute movie is padded out, just extends the scenes for no reason, just must take longer. And the ending is not a surprise that Donald Sutherland is a pod person at that point, it's plainly obvious, not even trying to be a twist.

At best, you can say the first movie is about small town life, and becoming unsettled as people become alienated. The second movie is about alienation in a big city, where there are lots of people, and connections dirft away. But the first movie has hope that this problem might be corrected, the second movie is just everyone gives into it.

See the first, don't bother with the second.

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Moore Boogeym'n

Yes, okay, I watched the two sequels.

Revenge of the Boogeyman is the second one. We return to Lacey, from the first movie, and she goes somewhere else, and accidentally has a piece of the mirror with her. After recapping events from the first movie (ie. replaying all the kills) we get more kills of the new people, in just as silly and stupid ways as the first. And even a really stupid moment at the end where the buried killer suddenly raises a fist from the ground, blows up a car, and then fist is back down... wut?

However, that is far more work than they did for number three.

Return of the Boogeyman features Annie, who is receiving psychic visions. Those visions? Repeat of footage from the first movie. Yes, again! So basically Annie is a device through which they replay the kills of the first movie, with added lore dumping from the psychiatrist, until the eventual boring sting at the end as they pretend it was more than just repeating the movie, and the killer is actually around.

I of course know why they bothered: someone though there was money in this. Not the directors, but even they want a paycheck at the end of the day.

I would say to rightfully ignore these, but you wouldn't be able to find them if you wanted to.

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Spooky observation

I played two games with the same concept, The Cabin Factory and Shift 87. You are tasked with going through repititions of environments and evaluating if they are weird or normal. You have to get a certain number in a row correct, and if you fail, you reset back to zero. The Cabin Factory also has the chance to kill you, also resetting you, but it also has more of a plot than Shift 87 has.

What can be considered weird is very different. In Shift 87, a lot of them are very obvious, but some of them are really hard to pick up. In Cabin Factory, weird is only if something is moving, and they mean that. Something strange, but not moving... not weird!

After playing them a little, I got really frustrated. My personal perception is low, so I was missing everything. For both, I looked up a list of what I was supposed to find... and while in a way that made it easier, it also made it more fun! I knew what I had to do, and then it was just me being stupid as opposed to completely ignorant.

Since then, yep, completed the games, and now appreciate them better. Cabin Factory has a little too much "uncanny asset" issue, and prefer Shift 87, but each loop of Shift 87 is a lot longer.

Not terrible, but definitely know if it is the kind of game you want to play.

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Immmersiom

More Japanese horror? Don't mind if I do!

On an island, a VR company is building a copy of the world, a copy so accurate it has ghosts from the real world in it! A new hire comes in, and immediately recognises that something odd is going on, and slowly the nature of the spirit is unveiled, and even more slowly we get the real story of what happened, although we don't get how the two worlds smear over outside of "it's Japanese horror, this happens".

It gets rather weird in the end part of the movie. We have the VR stuff, but it morphs into "distressed spirit", but then it morphs into "one person's guilt infests the world" but then it's real (as ghosts get), which doesn't track, so there's a whole mash of different things that don't quite gel.

I was wondering if this would be like Pulse, with the disconnect of people in VR, but it isn't that introspective. And then, because I'd seen the Death Stranding 2 trailer, I was expecting more on the beach, but it wasn't that either.

Could have been better.

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THE Boogeym'n

Someone really liked Halloween, but this time using mirrors!

With an opening bells that makes you think Michael Myers, we start with a mother getting it on with a guy, and her two young kids are watching. The kids go on to kill the guy, but the evil of the moment is trapped in a mirror... it takes time, but that mirror eventually comes back into the movie, now the kids have grown up, and then the deaths start happening. Not entirely believable deaths, but some of them are really funny. Will the evil be defeated... or even survived, or will there be obvious sequel baiting?

It's amazing how much Halloween this is, although I don't know where the whole mirror aspect came from. It's used to excuse deaths in a way that gets around needing to have an actual killer, although we get plenty of deep breathing as if there is an actual spirit, so that's something.

Aside from a cameo from John Carradine, I can't say I recognised anyone. But considering the quality of this movie, the acting is fine.

Note this is THE Boogey Man, with its trilogy, not Boogeyman, with that trilogy. However, I can't find the actual sequels, just that other series.

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Mir rorriM ror

I find mirrors fascinating from a horror perspective, so I've been checking about a few, and want to talk about this one.

Mandy is 100% channelling Lydia from Beetlejuice, and moves into an old house with her mother after her father recently died. However, in her room is a neat mirror. Did I say neat? I meant evil, portal to demons, that grants Mandy's dark desires. Which leads the goth girl into causing lots of death and harm to people, in order to help out her friend, whether her friends wants it or not. Surely, nothing can go wrong there?

This movie is shot really weirdly. We have standard angles and such, but for some reason whenever the character Emelin is on screen, suddenly we get extreme close up of her face. And then other shots are in slowmo for... I think the movie is trying to emphasis it's creepy or something, but it's at the oddest moments and doesn't work. And then the movie goes pervert by showing a naked woman getting killed in the gym showers (the actress was around 21/22 fortunately, although I'm not sure the character was), while the movie intercuts with the other girls in the pool while it stares longingly at their asses underwater...

While this is a heavily female crew and cast, it says a lot that I recognise two male cameos (Stephen Tobolowsky and William Sanderson) over the others. Fine performances, but I do wonder if the directer wanted Winona Ryder.

Oh hey, there are three more of these? I don't know... but I'm going to, aren't I?

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Demos Time

We had the Steam Next Fest, which means demos. I tried some that were tagged with "Puzzles".

Dr Priori's Time Escape - more like the escape rooms you see elsewhere. There are some mechanics whereby you need to do "time" to get to parts of the room. Not a bad idea, pretty clear (even if I can't spot the thing for a long time). But it NEEDS a run button. But yeah, on the wishlist it goes.

3D Escape Room: Detective Story - standard point and click puzzles. This isn't doing anything too amazing, although I suspect it wants to be with a name like "3D Escape Room". Might pick up when it's cheap enough.

Post Trauma - action shooter with "puzzles". This was created by one person, so I shan't complain about the graphic gliches I saw. However, I can say that this was someone who really wants to create the next Silent Hill, and that's not for me.

Strand - sci-fi puzzle game. Looks very nice, some nice feeling things to click on... and then very annoying thing to drag. This is a game with loops, whereby you need to find the path through the loop to do everything you need to do, and will spend many loops trying things... and it was very annoying. Have to do so many things to get even the smallest of progress. Nope.

Arkham Mysteries: Chapter One - point and click puzzle game. This was made by two brothers and.. this really felt like this. This is the sort of game I would expect to play two years ago. It needs some basic understanding of how to handle UI (give me a back button tied to my mouse, not something I have to click on screen). Not for me.

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