Whatcha Watching?

Stuff I'm Thinking About

Hey all— I hope you’re doing okay. I understand if you’re not. I’m sure than many of you, like me, are outraged at the atrocities targeting Palestine and Palestinian people. It’s important that we listen and use our voices when appropriate. But I hope that you are also allowing yourself time for rest when you can, and finding opportunities to decompress.

My method of decompression over these last few weeks has been finding some time to watch a couple movies and finish up a show, and as usual, I’ve been thinking about them—interesting narrative moves, how refreshing indie horror can be, and the exciting finale to my favorite show of the year (to be fair, it’s the only show I watched this year). My last few posts have been stories so I figured I’d write out all those thoughts again this week. I hope you’ll stick around, but if not, I’ll have another story next time.

I’ve generally enjoyed the David Lynch work that I’ve already seen—I loved Mulholland Drive when I discovered it at 20, I used to fall asleep to Eraserhead (until my now-wife made me stop, and I was blown away by the strangeness of Rabbits. I’ve bounced off of Twin Peaks the many times I’ve tried to watch it, but it never fails that every few years I watch the first two episodes again. Maybe one of these days it’ll stick.

I ended up really loving Lost Highway, and I was especially interested in a narrative move that Lynch uses. About halfway through the film, the protagonist is literally replaced (though he does later return) by a completely different character who goes through a completely different narrative. It all happens on the same timeline, in the same universe, but it feels like we get two movies in one. In the end, the narratives all sort of converge and loop back around to the beginning, but it was super cool seeing all of the overlapping characters and themes between the two narratives, and it’s inspired me to try something similar with a short story.

The first narrative follows Fred, a saxophonist that navigates a series of strange circumstances—a threatening voice over his home’s intercom buzzer; mysterious VHS tapes showing up at his door that suggest an intruder has been filming him and his wife, Renee; ominous, violent dreams; and a recurring freaky little guy—The Mystery Man. David Lynch sure does love freaky little guys.

Fred’s half of the film comes to a head when yet another mystery tape arrives, showing him brutally murdering his wife. Fred is sentenced to death, and while awaiting his fate, he suffers a series of headaches and nightmares before being swapped out with the film’s second protagonist—Pete.

Like Fred, Pete goes through a series of strange situations, though his seem more grounded in reality. Pete gets involved with a mafioso / porn director, Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent, and begins having an affair with one of Mr. Eddy’s mistresses, Alice (notably played by the same actress that plays Renee). The movie hits its climactic point in a nightmarish, surreal series of scenes in which Pete transforms back into Fred, who then kills Mr. Eddy with the help of The Mystery Man. The narrative also completes its loop when Fred drives back to his house and speaks into his intercom, repeating the same line that the movie begins with: “Dick Laurent is dead.”

If this reads as confusing, it’s because it is. I’m always impressed with Lynch’s ability to make a movie feel like a fever dream and Lost Highway is no different. The narrative is purposefully twisty and obtuse, there’s oodles of cryptic symbolism, and the whole universe feels like it exists outside of the laws of nature. Which is all to say—this movie fucking slaps.

I also watched YellowBrickRoad after seeing it recommended on Twitter (along with 3 more Andy Milton directed/written films). This one is written and directed by Milton along with Jesse Holland and came out in 2010. It’s a low-budget indie movie, and some of the CG reflects that but I found it refreshingly fun.

YellowBrickRoad opens pretty similarly to The Blair Witch Project, a movie that’s an obvious influence for the writers. A filmmaker and group venture out into the wilderness to solve a supernatural mystery but end up lost and descending into madness. Sound familiar? But instead of chasing the legend of a witch, the crew in YellowBrickRoad are investigating a mass exodus of a small town after watching The Wizard of Oz.

What I really loved about YellowBrickRoad was the use of sound to build dread, because Milton and Holland employ it in interesting, unique ways. For example, as the filmmaking crew ventures deeper down the YellowBrickRoad, vintage music evoking Harold Arlen & Herbert Stothart’s composition work in The Wizard of Oz. The music plays ambiently, seemingly from the sky. It’s loud, discordant and is one of the primary factors driving the crew crazy. There’s never any real explanation as to where the music is coming from or who is playing it, though at one point the magic sky record scratches and comes to a stop. The music itself works as a sort of antagonist, driving the crew past the point of sanity and into violent chaos.

Another use of sound that I was interested in—though maybe didn’t land as well as I would have liked—is a short series of scenes in which the sky music becomes an incredibly jarring feedback sound. The sound plays throughout the scenes, and it’s the only sound the viewer hears for several moments. It’s as uncomfortable for the viewer as it is for the camera crew, and does some great work establishing a sense of unease.

I found both of these uses of sound pretty novel. I can’t help but wonder what YellowBrickRoad might have looked like with a bigger budget, but therein lies the double-edged nature of indie-horror (or indie anything). With big budget funding often comes artistic restriction. Would the movie lose its charm? Would the movie conform more tightly with pop-horror expectations and style?

I always try to meet a work of art at the level its presented—whether it’s serious or silly or low budget or not. It feels (to me) to be the best good-faith approach to art. I try not to fault a movie like YellowBrickRoad for silly acting or jank CGI, and the result is that I can focus on the positive aspects, like YellowBrickRoad’s interesting employment of sound.

I also had a chance to finish up the last few episodes of Scavengers Reign, which I continue to rave about.

The premise of Scavengers Reign isn’t really treading any new waters for science-fiction—after their ship is damaged, various crewmembers have to adapt and survive on an alien planet—but the show is elevated by bottomless creativity, compelling characters, and great writing. Vesta, the planet that the crew is stranded on, feels wholly developed. Some of the wildlife on Vesta follows the logic of wildlife on Earth, but much of it feels truly alien and special. It’s a world that feels lived-in, that has its own established set of rules, and that constantly poses a threat to the crew.

I’m especially interested in how little handholding there is in Scavengers… There’s no extraneous exposition to help with world-building or to explain every single thing. Instead, the viewer is left to piece together their understanding of Vesta alone. From a narrative standpoint, this makes a lot of sense—it’s an alien world that the crew and viewer are unfamiliar with, so too much exposition would work against immersion. In a media landscape that often feels like it tailors art to be as easy to consume as possible, it’s super refreshing to watch a show in which the viewer and the writers trust each other to make the connections necessary to making sense of the world.

It also helps that the main cast of characters are diverse, complex, and interesting. It’s nice to watch a sci-fi show that isn’t dominated by hetero white guys, but more importantly, these characters feel multidimensional. These are characters that (usually) have agency, that make mistakes, that act like people and not like archetypical space marines or something.

I was a little saddened to see that the last handful of episodes didn’t have as much overt horror, but I think that’s just a matter of the season’s plot coming to a close, and hope that season two doesn’t leave that sense of horror behind. I haven’t yet heard that HBO has ordered a second season, and it would be unwise to let go of such a promising show, but… you know how it goes with HBO. I’m staying hopeful regardless. Scavengers Reign is a brilliant breath of fresh air that deserves investment and time to grow, and I hope that the crew gets that.

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Anywho, I appreciate you sticking around to hear my ramblings about movies and cartoons. Writing my thoughts out like this has been a fun exercise allowing me to think about the work a bit more deeply. Have you watched anything good lately? Let me know in the comments!

With travel and the holidays coming up, I’m allowing myself an extra week for the next post, but you can expect a new story on Dec. 15th. I hope to see you then.

-Dan