Another week has come and gone, and once again, I have a loose pile of assorted media experiences to share with you. While my anime season continues to largely consist of Eizouken and Chihayafuru, I also churned through several movies this week, and have been replaying one of my favorite games of the past several years. I’m hoping to get back to the theaters as the winter doldrums eventually lets up, but for now, we continue our charge through the Netflix collection, supplemented by a unique horror anthology. Let’s get to it!
My house screened a couple of solid horror films this week, starting off with 2017’s The Endless. The Endless is centered on two brothers who, after escaping from some kind of commune or cult as adolescents, return roughly ten years later to check in on their old home. The Endless taps gracefully into two strong veins of fear: a disorienting, almost Stepford Wives-esque sense of inhumanity and lurking secrets within the camp, leading in to a well-executed cosmic horror turn as truths are revealed.
Lovecraftian monsters aren’t scary because they’re huge and have many tentacles; they’re scary because they exist entirely beyond our understandings of value, morality, or existence, and The Endless regularly succeeds in capturing precisely that kind of alien presence, or general indifference to our petty lives. The intriguing particulars of how The Endless’ particular “creature” works help the film overcome the natural third-act pitfalls of a mystery-focused horror film like this, and though I felt its final scenes got a little too loud both in terms of action and symbolism, it’s a very strong horror film on the whole, with great cinematography and solid performances by its two creators-slash-leads. There simply isn’t that much great cosmic horror in film – I’m not sure what I’d point to beyond this one and Annihilation, and I’m definitely going to be keeping my eye out for any other entries in the subgenre.
Moving to a very different horror subgenre, I also watched V/H/S, an anthology of short found footage horror films. The found footage genre is often maligned, and frankly for some pretty good reasons – a great number of productions take the conceit to imply they don’t need strong cinematography or a punchy, effective script, letting the theoretical “naturalism” and intimacy of the concept paper over their clear foundational weaknesses. There are exceptions, though (like the classic Blair Witch Project, or excellent REC), and V/H/S fortunately counts among them.
Though I felt the film leaned uncomfortably heavily on the threat of sexual violence throughout, and didn’t really need to populate itself with such immediately dislikable victims, the anthology format really works to V/H/S’s benefit. Not only do its stories range between an impressive degree of horror subgenres and styles of “monsters,” the found footage conceit itself is also used in a variety of compelling ways. One story is conveyed through increasingly disorienting video chats, while another essentially constructs a monster out of video distortion itself, and another keeps the horror uncomfortably close by framing itself from a set of camera-equipped glasses. And more fundamentally, the anthology format just naturally lends itself to horror very well; across twenty minute segments, it’s much easier to maintain the sense of disorientation and mystery that horror thrives on, as well as the savage punch of each individual reveal. While a couple of the film’s substories are genuinely weak (including, unfortunately, the film’s framing device), there’s enough good here for me to recommend V/H/S to any horror fan who’s run through the genre’s obvious highlights.
Moving on, my house’s journey into kung fu continued this week, as we finally watched the original The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Starring the always-entrancing Gordon Liu, The 36th Chamber might best be described as a movie-length training arc, and goddamn is it glorious. While it’s bookended by a framing device that gives Liu a reason to learn kung fu, the bulk of the film is taken up by his brutal journey through the thirty-five chambers of the Shaolin temple, as he learns to dance lightly across floating logs, carry heavy buckets with swords tied to his arms, follow a moving flame without moving his head, and many other essential skills for becoming a kung fu master. The film is delightfully game-like in its structure, and embodies the sturdy tactical appeal of great kung fu films, whereby you can directly see how some hero’s rigorous training directly inspires their eventual victory. I talk often of how shows like My Hero Academia or Hunter x Hunter are exciting in large part because you can so clearly appreciate the mechanical constraints and tactical back-and-forth of their fight scenes; that style of action-as-storytelling was heavily inspired by excellent films like The 36th Chamber, and I’d urge any martial arts fan to check it out.
Finally, over in the videogame corner, I’ve spent much of this week replaying the heck out of the phenomenal Hollow Knight. A recent star of the “Metroidvania” genre, Hollow Knight combines the satisfying combat of something like Rogue Legacy or Dead Cells, the rewarding platforming of Celeste, and the rich yet subtly painted storytelling of Dark Souls, topped off with a gorgeous art style all of its own. From a nearly deserted old town at the surface, you drop down a well into an threatening yet awe-inspiring subterranean kingdom, adding new chambers to your maps and new tools to your belt as you slowly unlock the secrets of a dying empire.
Hollow Knight is not an easy game – like Dark Souls, it demands you pay attention in order to learn from every defeat, precise feats of reaction time are required throughout, and there are few signposts to lead you on your journey. But in terms of both the joy of exploration and the satisfaction of mastery, there are few games that match Hollow Knight’s sprawling, beautifully constructed setting, and few games which give you such precise, rewarding control over your character’s every movement. If you’re at all a fan of 2D action games or platformers, I consider Hollow Knight one of the very best games of the past few years.
