HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

THE NIGHT

In France, a young ambient musician by the name of Charles undertook an interesting new project. He was going to record the sound of himself sleeping, and release it under the name “La Nuit” (The Night). Charles lived alone in a rural area, which would remove things like car alarms, traffic, and such from being recorded. He planned his project for many months, acquiring the sensitive equipment to capture all outside noises as well as his own during sleep.

Finally, on the 27th of September, he decided to execute his plan. He set up all his equipment, and fell at sleep at midnight.

The next day Charles reviewed the recording. For the first hour, the recording played his own tossings and turnings as well as some distant dog barks and a few car alarms (So much for his plan to distance himself from cars.) These continued throughout the 2nd hour as well, until Charles heard something that horrified him.

At exactly 3 hours and 24 minutes in, the recording played the sound of his bedroom door opening.

CREEP

So a few years back I was visiting some friends in a nearby city. The night went well; it was good to catch up with them again, as I hadn't seen them for a while. As the hours wore by, we began to walk towards one of their houses.

Which would be when we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from a side-street. Now, normally in a strange city, I wouldn't investigate this - but we were in a vaguely suburban area, it was relatively well lit, and there were a few of us. So, the girls in the group stayed on the main road, and the guys went to take a closer look.

The screaming did not stop. It sounded like it was coming from a nearby house, and it sounded like the screams of a woman. Maybe a child, perhaps. The lights in this house were on, and as we approached it I vaguely considered calling the police.

But the scream was not coming from the house; it was coming from the garden in front of it. In the gloom I could not see anything distinct, but I could now tell that the scream was coming from the branches of a tree. Something inside that tree was rustling violently, although thanks to the darkness I could not tell what. I exchanged glances with my friends, we paused, and suddenly the shaking - and screaming - stopped.

Silence for a moment. My friends and I exhaled.

And then something moved through the trees, rapidly, and before we could react it was gone. Glances exchanged again, but we were quickly satisfied that whatever it was had left. We walked back to the girls, and continued the evening as planned.

The next morning, I walked back past that same street.

On the road, there was a fresh chalk outline of a body.

Creep source.

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REVIEW: DEAD GENESIS

An alcoholic cop with emotional baggage. Hooker with a heart of gold. 

Low budget zombie movie.

After a while, a concept eventually becomes cliche, regardless of quality. If any one trope gets beaten into the ground enough times, it's very hard to care about a "fresh take." Filmmakers will try, claiming they have brought something new to the table, but at the end of the day, it's all same-old, same-old. 

This is both Dead Gensesis' failure and success (and unfortunately more of the former than the latter). 

Dead Genesis opens mighty fine and goes immediately for the throat. There is no calm before the storm as there usually are in zombie film first acts. We hit the ground running as a man is forced to dispatch his zombified wife...as well as the son she had just gotten done eating and turning. Following this is a somber voice-over catching up the audience on the zombie pandemic and what it's done to the world.

It's sad in that it's all down hill from here - for both our characters and the audience.

A very young journalist named Jillian Hurst is assigned to assemble a documentary on the pandemic and ordered to give it a pro-war tone. She hooks up with a militia group called the Deadheads who, through various means, have joined up with each other in an effort to contain the growing threat. They hail from different races and religions, so, you know, conflict. There's also a mix of both men and women, none of them unattractive, so, you know, more conflict. 

Large portions of the film have our characters musing on their current predicaments and to what has led them to join the Deadheads. Zombie action feels constant, but is actually only used sparingly. What Dead Genesis really is about is the effect on society, psyches, and moralities. 

Twenty years ago, Dead Genesis would not have felt generic. And I really hate to beat a dead horse, but George Romero has done all this already - a look at a post-zombie society, parables to real-life international conflicts, the roles of women in such conflicts. We've seen this all time and time and again. And what Romero hasn't done, other filmmakers have - even the outright outlandish. For instance, 2008's Deadgirl has two teen boys discovering a naked zombie girl shackled to a table in an abandoned building. She then becomes a sex slave to one of the boys and some of his friends. It is grimy and wrong and forces us to question at what point a person completely loses their humanity. Dead Genesis tries this, too, only it weaves into the concept a mini-twist so out of left-field that it feels cheap and sensational. 

Dead Genesis is an obvious response to the war in Iraq. This is never more obvious than when all the characters argue back and forth if the "war on dead" (what they call it) is right, wrong, or beyond either label and is strictly necessary. It's one cliche wrapped in another, and it causes the viewer to respond not with "how true!" but "who cares about all this?" We didn't need a low-budget zombie film to make us wonder if the war in Iraq was wrong. It's not a matter of opinion, here - just fact: yes, it was fucking wrong. Not to mention that when Dead Genesis goes out of its way to show soldiers acting obnoxiously and having a grand old time delivering non-lethal gunshots to zombies to make them "dance," the filmmakers aren't trying to be coy and subtle about their own opinions on the matter.

Most of the character interaction feels awkward - not because it's supposed to be, but because none of the actors feel comfortable with their roles. Lead Emily Alatalo as Jillian is adorable, but not up to the task. She's also way too young to be believable. The film attempts to head this off at the pass by having a character tell her, "You're a a journalist? You look like a teenager," to which she responds, "I get that a lot." Sorry, that's just not enough.

As for her performance, she occasionally manages to show signs of life, especially after her discovery of the fuck zombie chained up in the basement, but the rest of the time there is no real conviction on her part. And I won't single out just her - none of the cast seems up to the task. At times it seems more effort was spent on camera work than shaping the actors' performances, and that's a real shame, as there is a concerted effort on the part of the script to make this a post-zombie character study. 

While the tone is mostly consistently bleak and straight, moments of intended levity, in the form of an eccentric bartender, or a fake television interview with the frumpy head of a zombie rights activist group, are jarring and completely uncalled for. They feel foreign in a film that otherwise takes itself seriously, and a bit involving a Youtube video response to the zombie rights movement called "Fuck Pro-Zomb," in which a man pisses on a zombie girl only to have his dick bitten off, feels very cheap and something more appropriate for a Troma production. It feels as if this were something shot independently for another purpose and utilized here for nothing other than to pad out the running time. 

On the pro side, while the handheld shooting style can sometimes go overboard, the film looks great. From a production standpoint, Dead Genesis looks to have five times the budget it likely did. My own personal prejudice against low budget film-making forces me to focus first on the actual look. Once something looks cheap - shot on cheap cameras and utilizing cheap sound - part of me can't help but tune out. But Dead Genesis never looks like that. In all honesty, though it has far less scope, it looks quite similar to 28 Days Later. 

The make-up effects are especially good and grisly where necessary. It doesn't push the boundaries as far as gore gags or good taste are concerned, but it's more than competent and at times even especially well done.

Low budget zombie films don't have to be terrible. Last year's Exit Humanity (a film I would make love to should it ever become human) and The Dead - both which explore the same themes of humanity - prove you can still do it well with good intentions and without pretension. I'm not sure Dead Genesis can say the same. 

Although it's still better than all the Resident Evil sequels.

TILL DEATH

"GHOST MARRIAGES" PROMPT GRAVE ROBBING AS MEN DIG UP BRIDES

BEIJING - Four men in northwest China have been sentenced to prison for the grisly crime of digging up the corpses of 10 women and selling them for "ghost marriages."

The grotesque "brides" were sold for a total of 240,000 RMB, or $38,000, according to court reports. The grave robbers were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two years and four months to two years and eight months in prison.

The bodies were sought by families of men who died as bachelors. The buyers were arranging "ghost marriages," a traditional custom in which parents find "spouses" for their unmarried, deceased children so that they can have a family in the afterlife.

The cadavers were stolen from their graves in Ya'an province beginning in the winter of 2011, according to reports. They were dug up in the middle of the night and hid in the thieves' homes where the corpses were cleaned up. Forged medical records were created in hopes of making it appear the corpses were only recently deceased and coming from reliable sources, allowing them to charge premium prices.

Ghost marriages are a 3,000 year-old custom that is especially common in rural parts of north China where young men often die in coal mining accidents. When a young man dies a bachelor, family members may consider it unnatural, and fear that the deceased's spirit may be restless.

Story source. 

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THE DEVIL'S TREE

This is one sinister looking tree, and according to the locals, who told us of its legends, everyone in the vicinity of Bernards Township seems to have a story about it. They say that at one time a farmer killed his entire family, then went to the tree to hang himself. According to some, numerous suicides and murders occurred around the evil arbor. Supposedly anyone who tries to cut down the tree comes to an untimely end, as it is now cursed. It is said that the souls of those killed at the spot give the tree an unnatural warmth, and even in the dead of winter no snow will fall around it.

When Weird NJ visited the Devil’s Tree we noticed evidence that many attempts had been made over the years to fell the unholy oak, but all have failed. The tree stands all alone in the middle of a large field off Mountain Road. Its trunk has been severely scarred by axes and chain saws, some wounds appearing to be quite old. Why no one has yet been successful in toppling the timber we cannot say for sure. Nor do we know what has become of those who have tried.

One Weird NJ reader described the Devil’s Tree to us this way: 

There’s a big field and right near the road is the tree. It’s the only thing in the field. Supposedly it’s a portal to hell and a sentinel guards it. He drives an old black Ford or pick-up truck and will chase you down the road until a certain point. You will see headlights one second, and the next nothing – the car is just gone.

Another local told us that the inherent unholiness of the Devil’s Tree is the result of the evil that men do, and should not to be blamed on the Devil.

Story source.

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ELEVEN SATANIC RULES OF THE EARTH

1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

- Anton Szandor LaVey

Image source.

(For the record, I'm not a Satanist, but I'm amused by these "rules" simply because some of them are not what you'd expect to hear come out of the Church of Satan. Plus # 11 has a certain rhythm to it that I quite like.)