Joe Mikolay's Blog, page 2

Reacher And The Catharsis Of Comeuppance

I’ll open by admitting that I’m not overly familiar with the character of Jack Reacher. I never read Lee Childs’ novels and, while I saw the first Tom Cruise movie when it was released, I can’t say I’ve ever given a second thought or was ever really motivated to watch the sequel.

Going by the marketing material, my big question regarding Amazon Prime’s new show was whether it would be a Western or a “Corruption Runs Deep” style thriller? The two genres (or sub-genres, I suppose) are very different styles generally meant to elicit very different emotional and intellectual responses. The corrupt system thrillers tend to end on a less-satisfying note, where the protagonists may win some battles but never the war as power is the ultimate shield. Think of something like the first season of True Detective or the Red Riding Trilogy. Whereas Westerns are more likely to end with a big shootout that leaves all the bad guys dead regardless of rank or station. Since I get my fill of crooked power brokers getting away with everything in the daily news feed, I tend to prefer the Westerns.

Spoiler Warning for season 1 of Reacher on Amazon Prime

Reacher’s set-up could have leaned either way. We had a small town with a big conspiracy running through its rotten core that was spearheaded by the mayor, the wealthiest citizen, and basically the entire (admittedly small) police force. On top of that, there was a seemingly endless supply of nameless gunmen popping up once or twice every episode. There was horrific torture and execution-style murders intended to tie up any possible threats or loose ends. And there were two good cops with massive odds stacked against them, as they tried to bring justice to their town.

Enter the mysterious stranger riding in. At that point, which occurred in the first few minutes of the first episode, I got the feeling that this show was skewing Western. Jack Reacher is presented as a man who can physically handle any opponent, and was mentally up to the task of pulling case leads out of the smallest of details. I’ve heard him referred to as “Swole-ock Holmes” a few times, and that seems about right.

Reacher arrives without any strings or attachments. Though it is soon revealed that the first (of many) murder victims was his brother. He also forms a bond with the aforementioned good cops Detective Finley and Officer Conklin. Outside of that, though, he’s a hyper-capable murder machine with nothing to lose and a strong moral code. This is what makes him a great avatar for the audience. He’s just a flat-out bad ass who will not stop until he kills every person responsible for his brother’s murder and – by extension – the conspiracy.

Consider this one extra Spoiler Warning

By the end of the first season Reacher, along with Finley and Conklin, accomplish their goal. They do, in fact, kill every person involved in the conspiracy and the murders. Even the mayor and the millionaire end up in body bags. This is the sort of catharsis that I was looking for during my weeklong binge. Oftentimes, in shows of this nature, the people at the top of the conspiracy food chain either escape without consequence, or suffer the sort of consequence that the rich and powerful tend to suffer in the real world. To put it shortly – The closest we get to justice is little more than causing them an inconvenience.

Here is the best review that I can give Reacher: The writing is fine, the acting is pretty good, the directing is standard action TV stuff. The fight choreography is exceptional, and really makes you believe that Jack Reacher could beat the living daylights out of a roomful of bad dudes. In the end, though, seeing that hulking brainiac call his shot, and then hit his shot (many, many shots, if we’re being honest) was about the most satisfying piece of entertainment for me in 2022 so far. If you have eight hours to spare, and you want to watch justice being served with flying fists and hot lead, then go check out Reacher.

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Star Wars X And The Promised Future Of A Galaxy Far, Far Away

It’s been almost exactly one year since I posted about my grievances with Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker. Not much has happened in our favorite far, far away galaxy since then besides than The Book Of Boba Fett being a bit of a disappointment until it just turned into The Mandalorian Season 2.5 for the final three episodes. I had meant to do a follow-up post with my own pitch for the eventual Star Wars Episode X, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. So, here I am finally getting around to it.

For my starting point, I’m looking at the fact that the new Star Wars brain trust of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are spending a lot of time and resources in the unexplored period of time between Return Of The Jedi and The Force Awakens. My thinking is that they are trying to lay a sturdier groundwork for the future than the nostalgic quicksand that the sequel trilogy was built on. This may be optimistic, or I may just be way off the mark, but I’m choosing to believe there is a master plan in-place (again, unlike for the sequel trilogy).

My Star Wars X pitch starts – unsurprisingly – with Grogu. The most adorable little green dude in the galaxy would be in his 80’s when we come to the time after Rise Of Skywalker. My alien aging estimates are an imperfect science, but if 50 year-old Grogu acts a bit like a 5 year-old, then 80 year-old would make him about 8 years-old. I’m going to skew up a bit here, since Grogu would be a more functional lead character if he was behaving more like a 12-or-13-year-old. For the record – he is fully verbally communicating by this time, and not in a backward, Yoda manner either. In my mind he’s voiced by a Daniel Radcliffe or Tom Holland type.

In my mind, by the end of The Mandalorian’s run, Din Djarin is ruler of the planet Mandalore. He claimed the throne by wielding the Darksaber and by winning the trust and respect of his allies. Bo-Katan Kryze will still be involved, as she was a big part in helping Djarin’s rebuilding efforts. Both Djarin and Bo-Katan would be in their 60’s, and so vital enough to play the parts they are needed for. Grogu, as Djarin’s adopted son, was by his father’s side through the entire endeavor. This is why neither played a factor in the events of the sequel trilogy, and the war against the First Order.

Grogu has embraced his Mandalorian heritage, but he has also been training himself in the ways of the Jedi. Ahsoka Tano has helped him a bit along the way, but Grogu’s training has mostly been a personal journey. As he becomes more attuned to The Force, Grogu senses something dark and extremely dangerous growing in power. I’m not sure what this thing is, exactly, but it is absolutely not another Galactic Empire Wannabe, and it’s also not Sith-related. It’s something new and very old at the same time. Grogu feels the need to confront this emerging evil but, since he is still not what could be considered an adult, Djarin will not let his son fly out to face it alone.

Not really being able to hold his own in combat any longer – and having a planet to run – Djarin reaches out to their old friend Ahsoka Tano to accompany Grogu. Ahsoka, by this point, has been traveling for a while with fellow Jedi Ezra Bridger (rescued during the run of Ahsoka’s own show) and Mandalorian Sabine Wren (who helped with the aforementioned rescuing). I’m again speculating on the aging process of aliens, but Ahsoka will be fairly unchanged from the version we’ve seen in The Mandalorian and The Book Of Boba Fett. Ezra and Sabine may both middle-aged at this point but, for the most part, still in their primes. Grogu joins this crew, and they fly off to find one more powerful ally that they need.

Along their way, they pick up a couple of additional allies in the form of best buddies Poe Dameron and Finn. They’ve been living their best lives since defeating the First Order, but are still game to help out when it seems like trouble is on the rise. They are also more than happy to help the crew find the person they were seeking: Rey Skywalker.

Rey has started her own Jedi Academy on Tatooine where she teaches her students the value of finding balance in The Force, and not simply viewing things in terms of Light Side and Dark Side. When the crew arrives, Rey doesn’t hesitate to leave her star pupil in-charge (you may remember his as Broom Boy from The Last Jedi) as she goes where she is needed to help save the galaxy again. Maybe the whole gang swing into Mos Espa for a round of drinks, and chat with whomever takes over as Daimyo from the recently deceased Boba Feet before jetting off on their journey?

What happens after that? I’m not really sure. Space battles? Bitchin’ lightsaber action? Humorous bickering? Heart-warming discussions about found family? Some important lessons for Grogu as he continues growing into his own? Cool, Star Wars-y stuff like that.

Is evil defeated in Star Wars X? Or does it simply launch a new trilogy? I’m not sure about this either, and it doesn’t really matter to me. The most important thing to me is that the Star Wars Universe begins thriving in the present, rather than dwelling in the past. And that it rushes full-speed ahead to the future that it deserves.

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Read The First Three Chapters In The Final Book Of The Venator Series: The Sacrifice

30 Years Ago

Hellfire was notoriously hard to control.

It was a living entity that was only ever meant to obey a single master. But as that master – the King of Hell – used hellfire to create other living beings, his level of control over the substance loosened. Hands other than his own were now able to take the reins.

That was when the mages gained access to it. But only the most skilled could ever hope to wield it without incinerating themselves. With such a risk attached, it was no wonder that only witches and warlocks who worshipped at the altar of Satan ever dared try.

Of course, there were always exceptions. And the exception in this case was a remarkably talented Venator named Allison Luminisa-Halliday.

Allison had been trained by her family – especially noteworthy for its vast, and storied Venator lineage – to master skills that were otherwise utilized by only the most powerful of mages.

The Luminisa bloodline reached back a great many generations and, as far back as anyone could trace, they had always bred Venatores. This was the reason why she had been imparted with wisdom that would be considered terrifyingly dangerous in lesser hands.

Hers may have been the most capable of hands, but even she was never comfortable with spells that involved hellfire, or any other demonic attributes. She only broke those out when there were no other options.

For the case at-hand, their source was a high-level Demonologist who’d reported the sort of harbingers associated with the pending birth of one of Lucifer’s scions. The lead came late, and the reports of a cult in the area followed shortly thereafter. Being short on-time, Allison decided that it was worth the risk involved.

In the spell she’d cast, the ball of hellfire was no bigger than you’d see at the head of a struck match. The light floated out three feet ahead of Allison. It guided her, and her companions, to an old mansion sheltered on all sides by dense woodlands.

Each window had a single candle burning in it, with only darkness surrounding it. But it was the flame hovering directly before her that raised Allison’s concerns.

The small fireball began glowing hotter, and brighter. It was becoming visibly excited as they walked closer to the mansion. It soon began to grow, first to the size of a marble, and then to the size of a tennis ball.

“Extinctus,” said Allison, causing the ball of hellfire to immediately extinguish.

“At least we know this is the right house,” Malcolm Woods said from Allison’s left side.

“Good thing too,” Jack Halliday added from the right side. “It sure would be embarrassing to kick down the door on a bunch of bored rich folks having a Key Party, instead of a Satanic cult birthing the Antichrist.”

“It’d be real freakin’ funny, though,” Malcolm replied, eliciting a laugh from Jack.

“Boys, boys,” Allison said, her eyes never leaving the mansion. “How about we save the laughs for after we deal with whatever we find in there.”

“What are we expecting to find, again?” Malcolm asked.

“Intel says there might be as many as twenty Satanists in there,” Jack answered.

“And one pregnant woman who’s probably hoping this is all a nightmare that she’ll wake up from at any second,” Allison added.

They each pulled out a pistol, unclicked the safety, and chambered a round as they crept closer to the mansion. Once they got close enough, they heard a woman screaming. They then heard a large group of voices chanting.

“Ave Satanus  sublimis patre nostro,” they sang, followed by “Salvator noster veniet!”

The woman’s cries, and the choir’s song, repeated themselves over, and over again.

“I’m sure I’d be super creeped-out right now, if I bothered learning Latin,” Malcolm said, taking his position next to the door leading inside from the backyard.

“Hail Satan, our majestic father, our savior is come,” Allison casually translated, moving in behind Jack.

“Yup,” Malcolm said, “super creeped-out.”

Jack picked the lock, slowly pushed the door open, and led the others inside. They stayed low, and close to the walls, as they had on numerous other such raids. The only lights in the long corridor were candles hanging six feet up on the walls.

The screams and chants grew louder as they moved closer to the main dining hall. There was more candlelight coming from within that room, glowing and swaying with the breeze.

By the time Jack got a head count of twenty-one people dressed in red robes, he heard the cries of a newborn. Four cultists held the mother down by her arms and legs, as a fifth wrapped the baby in a red blanket, and held it high for the others to see.

“Hail, our dark savior!” the man holding the child shouted.

“Hail! Hail!” the rest of the congregation shouted in-kind.

“Now, the flesh of the mother of damnation shall be devoured,” the man said. “It will imbue each of us with the divine essence of Lucifer himself!”

Two cultists with meat cleavers rose up from behind the pair holding down the woman’s arms. They lifted the blades, as the new mother stared ahead blankly with exhaustion, too weak to even plead for her life.

Two shots rang out from the doorway, and blood sprayed out from the heads of the robed figures wielding the cleavers as they fell dead.

Allison, her gun still smoking, emerged from the doorway, and fired four more shots into the heads of the cultists holding down the mother. Jack ran out from behind her, and unloaded rounds into the next nearest figures to the captive woman.

“You got her?” Jack asked Allison.

“I got her,” Allison replied, swinging out from behind her husband.

Several people tried to impede her, but Allison easily dispatched them with swift blows to their heads or knees. The ones that reached for her from the ground caught bullets fired at close range. She leapt onto the table, and knelt down close the mother’s ear.

“You’re going to be okay,” she told the woman in a comforting tone, even as she gunned down anyone who approached their position.

But most of the cultists rushed away towards the exit at the other end of the room. They were met by Malcolm, firing rounds, and swinging a pearl-handled hatchet that he’d made for himself recently.  Those who didn’t catch a bullet had their throats slashed by the hatchet blade.

The man holding the baby called for three more people to lead him out through the doorway that Jack was guarding. The three bodyguards rammed themselves into Jack with no concern for their own welfare, driving him into the floor.

They were zealous, but untrained. Jack managed to slip out from underneath them, while holding one  in a headlock. He kicked out the knee of the first cultist who rose from the ground, and shot her through the back of the head before she even hit the ground a second time.

The second cultist managed to get to his feet, and reached for Jack’s neck. But Jack swung the man in his grasp around, sweeping the legs out from the other man who was reaching for him. He fired one round into the falling man’s head, and the other into the top of the headlocked man’s head.

He spotted the red-robed figure with the baby running out the front door, and gave chase. The man was halfway across the yard when Jack took aim, and shouted: “Stop!”

The man did as he was commanded, and slowly turned back toward Jack, who likewise stopped running. He was holding the baby in both arms, but one of his hands was now up around the child’s neck.

“I’ll snap its neck,” the man said, as Jack walked closer to him with his weapon still leveled.

“I don’t think you will,” Jack replied calmly. “How long have you been searching for this? For a bonafide child of Satan born into this world? Half your life? Your entire life?”

“The child has a destiny,” the man said. “This world will kneel before its new Messiah! The armies of Hell will be at the Antichrist’s beck and call!”

“Sure,” Jack said, still moving closer. “Which means that child’s life will not end tonight.”

Jack lowered his gun, and moved within arm’s reach of the man.

“You need to understand something,” Jack began. “You are not leaving this place tonight with that baby. I simply will not allow that to happen. You say it has a destiny, then I’m sure that will come to pass no matter what happens here. And, what’s going to  happen here is very simple: You’re going to hand me that child. Right. Now.”

“Then what will become of me?” the man asked.

“You’re going to jail for kidnapping this child’s mother,” Jack stated. “Consider yourself lucky.”

The man contemplated Jack’s words, and then his eyes took on a hardened gleam. His grip around the child’s neck tightened again, and this time Jack didn’t hesitate to put a bullet in the man’s head.

The man’s hands went limp, and Jack wrapped his free arm around the baby as the dead man fell backward.

The baby was still crying, but became silent as Jack rocked it lightly, cradled in his arm.

“Sorry about all the noise, kiddo,” Jack said to the baby, who looked up at him with curiosity. “Helluva way to come into the world. So to speak.”

Allison emerged from the house, with Malcolm behind her helping the mother to stand.

“Jack!” she called out, drawing Jack’s attention away from the child.

“What’s it look like in there?” Jack asked, as the trio approached him.

“About as expected,” Malcolm said.

“My baby,” the woman moaned. “Please. Please, let me hold my baby.”

Jack handed her the child, and the mother fell to her knees on the grass. She clutched her baby to her chest, and pressed her cheek against the top of its head.

“Oh, my baby. My little one,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry this happened. I love you so, so much.”

Malcolm and Allison moved in on either side of Jack. They spoke softly enough so that the woman wouldn’t hear them.

“We’re pretty sure that baby is the real deal, right?” Malcolm asked.

“All the signs were there,” Allison said. “We’ve got our source’s reports. And I don’t think the hellfire compass spell would have worked if that wasn’t the case.”

“You ever run into this before?” Malcolm inquired.

“Every other time we’ve done this, it was just a bunch of delusional nuts,” Jack replied.

“Then what do we do about…” Malcolm stopped talking, and nodded toward the mother and child.

“There’s not exactly a hard and fast rule about newborn devil-babies,” Jack said.

“Then we give them a chance,” Allison stated with conviction. “God knows they deserve it after all this.”

“I’m good with that,” Malcolm said.

He looked at the woman starting to shiver under the blanket he’d draped over her. Malcolm took off his coat, and placed it over the mother’s shoulders.

Allison took Jack by the arm, and led him a little further away from the others as Malcolm knelt beside the mother and child.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Allison said.

“I know,” Jack agreed. “I just hope we don’t end up…” he stopped himself, and shook his head. “The right thing is the right thing.”

“That woman was kidnapped, and terrorized by a living nightmare these past few days, because of that baby,” Allison said. “And still, all she wants to do is love it.”

“I guess that’s what being a parent means,” Jack said. “Loving that child with all your heart, all your soul, all your everything.”

Allison smiled tenderly at her husband, and said: “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”

“Ah, it’s just some cheesy…” he stopped when he noticed that his wife’s smile seemed brighter than ever before. “Wait a second. Is there something I ought to know?”

ONE

Everything happened much faster than they’d anticipated. The beast was on the car before they even turned off the engine. The screech of scraping claws on metal set their already-frayed nerves alight. They both froze in panic.

It wasn’t until the hairy fist smashed through the driver’s side window that they finally got out of the car, and ran. They didn’t look behind them, but the rapid crunching of loose gravel told them that the beast was not far behind.

They knew they had to find shelter quickly, but there weren’t many places to hide in the park. Their hearts pounded in their chests, and their lungs burned with oxygen, as they came upon the high brick archway of the public pool.

It was after midnight, so the pool had long-since closed for the day. They managed to squeeze through the wrought iron gates that were chained together.

No sooner did they get inside than they heard the chains rattling heavily against the gate.

This time, Patrick chanced a look over his shoulder to see the wolf-man dropping nimbly from the top of the gates to the ground below. Patrick grabbed Alexis by the shoulder, and pulled her toward him, just before he rammed his shoulder into the locked door of the ladies’ locker room.

Patrick braced the door with his back, only to have it slammed into him over, and over again. It was made of heavy wood, so he wasn’t worried about the beast breaking through it. But, having broken the lock himself, he also knew that he was the only thing holding the door closed.

“The bench!” he called to Alexis. “Is it bolted down?”

“No,” she replied, “Will it hold?”

“We’ve got to try,” Patrick said.

Alexis dumped the bench onto its side, and pushed it to the door. Patrick hopped over it so they could both slam it into place against the door. They both sat on the ground with their backs against the bench, and pushed until the muscles in their legs ached.

The door banged against the bench ceaselessly for another full minute before there was a sudden silence. Patrick looked at Alexis, and they both exhaled with cautious relief.

When they inhaled again, the lingering smell of chlorine calmed them with memories of more peaceful days. Of summers spent as children, running in the sun, and diving into the pool when the sign very clearly advised against doing so. It was these thoughts that finally gave Patrick the strength to speak again.

“You got the box out of the car, right?” Patrick asked.

Alexis took a small lockbox out of her handbag, entered the four-digit combination into the latch, and opened it the reveal a revolver with six silver bullets resting alongside it.

“Thank god,” Patrick said, as he took the gun and loaded the rounds.

“I think we made a mistake,” Alexis said.

“Starting to look that way, huh?” he said, with a nervous laugh. “But we’re ready now.”

He held up the pistol, which glinted from the moonlight coming in from the two windows above the door. The barrel had been polished to a mirror-like sheen and, when moved to a certain angle, showed a direct reflection of the full moon.

His insides coiled tightly when he thought about the windows again.

“Oh, shit,” he exclaimed, just as one of the windows exploded inward.

Glass showered down on them, causing them both to cover their faces with their arms. Patrick fired blindly, when he heard a heavy thud directly next to him. But his grip on the gun was loosened by the sudden shielding of his face and, with the recoil, the gun jumped out of his hand, skidding across the cement floor.

He instinctively reached for it, but a clawed hand swiped at his arm. Patrick got lucky again, and yanked his hand back just as the claws sent sparks up from the cement floor.

He fell back into Alexis, who tried to catch him. But his velocity knocked them both onto the ground.

Alexis looked up into her boyfriend’s terrified eyes and said: “I’m so sorry.”

Patrick covered as much of her body with his own that he was able to. He buried his face into Alexis’ neck, and hoped the beast would be satisfied with only taking him. He heard an abbreviated howl, and knew that this was how his life was going to end.

It must have been quick, since he did not feel any pain at all.

He wondered if he’d see a light, and hear the voices of his departed loved ones welcoming him to the afterlife.

He wondered if he’d be seeing Alexis again shortly, having failed her in the realm of the living.

“Patrick,” Alexis’ voice said, and he knew that the beast must have gotten her too. “Baby, look at me.”

He opened his eyes, expecting to see pearly gates. Instead he saw only bricks, and metal lockers.

Patrick turned his eyes down, and saw Alexis still lying beneath him. There was shattered glass all around them, and the coating of chlorine in his nostrils was now making him want to sneeze. If this was Heaven, it was a more-than-a-little disappointing.

 “I think you might need to tell your man that he’s not dead,” a voice calmly spoke from behind him.

He rolled over onto his back, and saw the silhouettes of two women. One wore a hooded cloak, and stood straight as an arrow in the doorway. The other leaned against the side of the doorway with her arms crossed.

He then allowed his eyes to drift to the prone figure of a man lying dead on the floor, not two feet from him. There was some sort of spear sticking out from his chest.

Patrick had never seen a dead body outside of a funeral parlor before, and he’d certainly never seen one impaled. He swung his face back at Alexis, who let out a short scream before rolling out from under him. She’d managed to just barely escape the deluge of vomit.

“Oh yeah,” the leaning woman said, as the other woman walked toward the dead body, “that’s the kinda guy you want to go hunting werewolves with.”

The other woman bent over the human body that was, prior to Patrick’s out-of-body experience, a ferocious wolf-man.

She placed one foot against the corpse, and pulled her staff out from it with both her hands. As the blade slid out, more blood spurted from the gaping hole in his chest cavity. Similarly, another spurt of vomit escaped from Patrick’s mouth.

“Seriously, though,” the leaning woman said, as the other one walked past her out the door. “If this is your idea of a fun date night, you should both seek therapy immediately.”

The leaning woman followed the other woman out of view.

Alexis got to her knees, and knelt beside Patrick. “Are you okay, baby” she asked.

“Holy crap,” Patrick replied, scrambling to his feet. “I think that was actually them!”

“Who?” asked Alexis.

“Them!” repeated Patrick, as he rushed out the door after them.

The pair of Venatores were just through the main gate when Patrick shouted at them:

“The She-Wolf and the Cloaked Woman!”

“Goddammit,” Natalie Brubaker muttered, as she stopped, and sighed.

This situation had presented itself many times since Leia Ellis’ video exposed the world at-large to the truth that lurks in the shadows five years prior. By this point, the conversation exhausted Natalie before she even said the first word of her usual spiel.

Gitanna Luminisa stopped walking a few feet ahead of her. She pulled her hood back from her head, revealing a buzzed scalp that left little more than stubble. She turned back just as Natalie slowly walked back toward Patrick and Alexis.

Natalie pointed to the gun that Patrick now held in his hand.

“Is that all you brought?” she asked.

“We thought it’d be enough,” Patrick replied with some embarrassment.

“You thought one pistol, with six silver bullets would be enough to hunt a werewolf with?” Natalie said, incredulously. “I’m not even gonna bother asking if you’ve done this before. It’s very clear that you have not.”

“We just wanted to help,” Alexis said, joining Patrick.

“Getting turned into wolf chow isn’t gonna help anyone but the wolf,” Natalie replied. “Do either of you have any sort of training at all? Taekwondo? Ju-jitsu? Ballet?”

Patrick and Alexis just looked at each other, and slowly shook their heads.

“We’ve gone over everything on Leia Ellis’ website at least ten times,” Alexis offered. “And then, we heard stories about a wild creature attacking people here. Everything led us to believe it was a werewolf. So, we thought we could put our knowledge into practice, and maybe save some lives.”

Natalie had heard this before as well. She’d supplied Ellis with a good portion of the information on her website, so she knew it was legit. But she also knew that information alone wouldn’t be enough to turn an ordinary person into a Venator.

Natalie looked up at Gitanna, who simply pulled her hood back over her buzzed head, and walked to the car. She sat in the passenger seat, and waited patiently for her partner to wrap things up.

“On a scale of Irrationally Confident to Hell No, Never how likely would you two say you are to try this nonsense again?” she asked.

“We…” Alexis began to answer, before looking at Patrick for moral support.

“We still want to help,” he finished, and Alexis nodded along.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Natalie said, and walked a few steps closer to them. “First thing: Get some real combat training. Understand this: If you can’t beat a human in a fight, you sure as hell can’t beat a monster.

“Second thing: Never, ever, ever go on a hunt without at least two backup weapons. But you probably don’t need me to tell you that after having a slightly-worse-than-usual experience in the public pool locker room. Third thing: Give me your phone.”

Patrick reached into his pocket, and handed over his cell phone. Natalie punched a number into his contacts list, and then offered him the phone back.

“Next time you get a lead; a real lead, you call or text me at that number,” she stated. “But, I swear to god, if you text me with some bullshit questions, or photos of your goddamn brunch, then you will never hear from me again. You understand these terms?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Patrick and Alexis said, almost in unison.

“How old are you guys, anyway?” Natalie asked.

“Nineteen,” Alexis answered for them both.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Natalie followed.

“We’re between semesters,” Patrick added.

“And this is how you decided to spend your summer vacation?” Natalie asked, mockingly.

“We both also work at the mall,” Alexis said, with some embarrassment.

Natalie sighed loudly, before turning, and walking back toward her car.

“Alright, well, try not to die,” she said over her shoulder. “And get far away from here before the cops find that dead guy. Believe me, that’s a conversation you don’t want to have.

“Thank you,” Patrick called after her. “For saving our lives, I mean.”

“It’s what we do,” she said to herself, while absently waving over her shoulder.

“Why do you insist on giving people like that your phone number?” Gitanna asked.

“You know why,” Natalie said, starting the engine. “There aren’t many of us left and, at the very least, we need to rebuild our network of contacts.”

“They are fools,” Gitanna said, matter-of-factly.

“Yup,” Natalie agreed. “Do you expect smart people to venture out into the night, looking to pick a fight with a ghoul or goblin?”

“You could get yourself killed trying to help these people,” Gitanna added, with some concern creeping into her voice.

“You know that I’m notoriously hard to kill, Tanna,” Natalie said, with a slight smile.

“How long until we arrive,” Gitanna asked, considering the previous subject closed.

“We should be there by morning,” Natalie replied, as she pulled onto the highway.

“Do you need me to drive?” Gitanna asked.

“You know that it’s also notoriously hard for me to fall asleep at the wheel,” Natalie said, and they both now smiled.

“I hope we can reach them before things take a turn for the worse,” said Gitanna.

“Me too,” Natalie agreed. “But I’d also prefer to perform an exorcism at dawn rather than in the middle of the night. Those things still freak me out.”

“You just need more practice,” Gitanna said.

“I’ve been getting way too much practice recently,” said Natalie.

“I know,” said Gitanna, leaving the weight of the implication hanging heavily in the air.

TWO

Hollis Caulfield had noticed the people following him for the first time three days ago. Of course, that didn’t mean they hadn’t been following him before then. It just meant he hadn’t noticed them.

It had been quite by chance that Hollis saw the woman during a late-night trip to the bodega down the street from his apartment. The shop was fairly small, as many were in the city, with lights in half the aisles flickering on and off. It was during one such flickering that he’d realized he was standing on someone else’s shadow.

She was at the end of the aisle taking a not-so-subtle look at him. The woman was quite attractive, and looked to be about the same age as Hollis. Sure, he had several apps on his phone where he could reach out for random hook-ups when the desire arose, but it was still nice to do some good old fashioned in-person flirting.

He approached the woman, but she turned and walked away without a word. Hollis did occasionally enjoy a little cat-and-mouse game, so he followed her. But, by the time he reached the spot where he’d seen her standing, she had vanished. This seemed a little weird but, then again, this was Los Angeles.

He’d forgotten all about it by the time he reached his apartment building. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t see anyone nearby. He thought he could make out a shadow moving in the alleyway next to his building, but figured that was probably just some hobo.

After entering his apartment, and locking his door, he walked over to the windows to close the blinds. It was then that he saw the man standing across the street in the dim halo of a street lamp. This was not unusual, in-and-of itself, but the man seemed to be staring directly up at Hollis through his window.

Hollis wanted to believe this was just some weirdo who liked staring into strangers’ windows. But then the man began walking across the street, never taking his eyes off Hollis.

With the hair on his neck now standing on-end, Hollis yanked his curtains closed, and made sure that the deadbolt was fastened on his door. He eventually managed to get to sleep two hours later, but the recurring nightmare he’d been having over the course of the past week ensured that it was not a restful slumber.

Aside from the periodic feeling that he was being watched by unseen persons, Hollis went about his typical work week. He could have sworn he’d seen the bodega woman and the street lamp man at different points during his travels, but faces in crowds always blurred together. Still, he couldn’t shake his case of the heebie-jeebies.

There could be no mistaking the sight of his stalkers the following night, though. They both stood at the entrance to the alleyway, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, watching him as he got out of his cab. Hollis fumbled through his pockets for his keys, as he didn’t want to risk taking his eyes off the creepy couple.

But neither made a move toward, or away from him. They simply stood and stared, unblinking, as Hollis finally turned the lock, pushed his way into the lobby, and quickly slammed the door shut behind him.

The few seconds he had to take his eyes off the stalkers made his heart thump against his ribcage. But, when he snapped his head back around, the watchers remained where they had been. The only difference was that their heads were now turned so they could still watch Hollis stumble backward through the lobby, to the stairs.

He moved sideways up the three flights of stairs to his floor, as he didn’t want to risk having someone sneak up behind him. Once he got to his apartment, he didn’t even bother looking out the windows before closing the curtains. He knew that he wouldn’t get a wink of sleep if he saw those faces staring up at him. And he knew, sight unseen, that they were still out there. And that they were still watching him.

Hollis had a big presentation in the morning, so he popped a few pills, and succumbed to sleep. The nightmare came again. The dark figures lurking. The color of their irises were twisting barbs of yellow and red.

He felt the elation of the knife in his hand. And he felt the pain as the knife was plunged into his stomach. He was both the killer, and the victim in these dreams. He’d never had any desire to be a killer, or hurt people at all. And he certainly had no interest in being a victim either. Yet every night for the past week, these visions haunted him.

Most nights, the sacrifice happened in a deserted building, or a clearing in some nameless forest. But tonight, it seemed to be happening in his own apartment. In his own bed. He felt like his eyes were open, but his eyelids felt heavy as they often do when one is trying to wake from a dream, but can’t quite make it back to consciousness.

There were two pairs of eyes – a man’s and a woman’s – that each had that unnatural yellow, and red coloration. Hollis thought the faces looked oddly familiar, before realizing that they belonged to the man and woman who had been following him. He was becoming unsure whether this was a nightmare, or reality.

That deadbolt would have kept anyone out, but these two were inhumanly strong. They held down his arms, and it felt as if they’d rested hundred-pound weights on both of his hands.

He started to scream for help, but the woman covered his mouth his one hand. Hollis couldn’t believe that, even with just one hand holding down his arm, he could not get it an inch off the bed.

This must be a dream he thought.

No way this slight woman could be this strong.

For some reason that video from five years ago popped into his head. The one with the werewolves, and the zombies, and the man with the flaming eyes.

He remembered thinking it was pretty awesome when he and his roommate got stoned and watched it in their dorm room. A cool little piece of independent filmmaking that went viral.

Some of the online weirdos still talked about that video, as if they believed it was real. He always thought they were gullible dopes. But these demonic eyes staring through him, and this incredible strength holding him down, making him feel powerless had him doubting his convictions.

There was a third figure standing in the far corner of his bedroom. It moved towards him holding something up near its face. Hollis had not yet been able to identify the item when it was jammed into his stomach. The initial pain was so excruciating that Hollis barely felt it when the knife was drawn upward, opening up his belly.

The figure then inserted its hand into the hole, and pushed it upward towards Hollis’ chest cavity. It was a wholly alien feeling, almost like a small animal burrowing through his torso. There was a tugging feeling in his chest, and then the sense of something popping loose.

Hollis was in-shock as he watched the figure’s hand emerge from inside of him holding onto something large, pink, and wet. That something also moved. Pumping, and squirting blood from disconnected tubes.

The last thing Hollis Caulfield saw before departing this mortal realm, was the dark figure taking a bite out of his still-beating heart.

Read the rest of The Sacrifice now on Amazon Kindle, and catch up on the entire Venator Series!

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Who Soared Like A Fanged Eagle In Cobra Kai Season 4?

Like many other people, I binged all of the new season of Cobra Kai on Netflix over the span of three or four days. Consider this my season review, though I’ll be writing it by ranking the journeys of the primary characters over the course of latest 10 episodes.

Just to make things clear, I’m not ranking these characters based on the actors’ performance. Frankly, I thought everyone was very solid this season. I’m ranking based on how interesting I felt their story was.

Spoiler Warning – I will be going into massive spoilers from season 4 of Cobra Kai, as well as from the previous seasons

15 – Carmen Diaz – Carmen, unfortunately, was not given much to do this season. This is not necessarily a new issue, as she’s always been a bit underserved, but it is what it is.

14 – Demetri Alexopoulos – Similarly to Carmen, Demetri didn’t have a lot offer other than some pop culture references, and getting a little better at karate. The reason why he’s ranked above Carmen is because he gave Eli the pep talk that would propel him to his ultimate position on these rankings.

13- Anthony LaRusso – Anthony was essentially a new character this season, as we never got to spend much time with him in the first three seasons. It was clever of the writers to use that when they brought his character more into the action. Every time we saw him in season 1 through 3 he was more-or-less brushed aside by his parents in favor of their more interesting child. The fact that interactions like this might have led him to becoming your classic rich kid bully archetype is an interesting angle to take. Still, not much of an arc here, but we’ll stay tuned.

12 – Amanda LaRusso – Much like with Carmen, Amanda spent much of her time as a sounding board for her children and significant other. However, her attempts to understand and reach out to Tory gave her arc a little more “oomf” than Carmen’s. Prior to this season there was not as much empathy between characters in conflict as you might expect to see on a show like this. But Amanda led the charge as she did was she could to help her daughter’s former tormentor (and current tormentee, as we’ll get to later) get her life on-track.

11 – John Kreese – Kreese gonna Kreese. He’s still an asshole to his students to make them (what he considers) stronger. He still kind of wants Johnny Lawrence to come back into the fold. And he still feels like one should try to win at all costs. Kreese has always been a bit one note, but his interactions with Terry Silver made things more interesting this season. His attempts to lure Terry back under his control using traumatic shared memories and emotional blackmail in his efforts to strengthen Cobra Kai made for some intriguing psychodrama.

10 – Miguel Diaz – Miguel is the steady moral compass of the show, and has been for its entire run, aside from his brief dalliance with jerkhood late in season 1 and early in season 2. But his big character arc happened in those first two seasons, and it was pretty fantastic.
His time in a wheelchair in season 3 showed that the writers were straining a bit to keep Miguel interesting. He’s still a great character, and I enjoy him whenever he’s on-screen, but being a moral compass does not generally lead to dynamic storytelling.
He did have two stand-out scenes this season, though. His heartbreaking interaction with drunk Johnny, and his subsequent refusal to continue competing in the All Valley Tournament due in large part to that interaction functioned as a strong springboard into whatever he gets up to next season.

9 – Johnny Lawrence – The Johnny-Daniel Rivalry was a huge part of what made Cobra Kai so compelling at first. But it’s become a bit tiresome. I’d hoped they had buried that old grudge at the end of season 3, but it was not to be. Johnny’s jealousy over Daniel – especially Daniel’s bonding period with Miguel – caused things to flare up yet again. He and Daniel seemed to reach the fairly obvious conclusion that “no one way is the right way for everyone” at the All Valley Tournament, as they worked together to help Samantha try win the Girls’ Championship. I hope that the peace holds this time, as there really are more interesting angles to take with Johnny and Daniel’s relationship.

8 – Devon Lee – She actually was a brand new character, and was introduced late in the season, but I got a kick out of her. Her fiery, pro-wrestling style debate tactics were fun. As was watching those traits translate to her karate training with Eagle Fang. Her immediate propulsion to Johnny’s 2nd favorite student was fun, and she generally gave a nice spark to the last couple episodes.

7 – Daniel LaRusso – I’ve got the same gripe with Daniel that I have with Johnny, namely stemming from their drawn-out grudge. But Daniel gets a little bump for his scenes with Anthony, showing us some of Daniel’s flaws that he was seemingly unware of. These interactions helped him come to the conclusion that the teachings of Cobra Kai/Eagle Fang might actually be beneficially to kids trying to find their way in the world. That he came to these conclusions before Johnny did is why he’s ranked higher.

6 – Tory Nichols – Introduced in season 2 as a romantic and physical rival to Samantha, and turned into a cartoonish villain in the season 3 home invasion finale, Tory was finally given a proper arc in season 4. The writers took the interesting family stuff from season 3, and used that as a means to kick off a redemption arc. Sure, she was given the threats of an over-the-top dysfunctional aunt as a catalyst, but it served its purpose.
After a few interactions with Amanda LaRusso, and instructions by Kreese and Silver, Tory actually laid off Samantha for the most part. This led to Samantha sliding more into the instigator role, at least in their relationship, which made things fresher for them both.
That she won the Girls’ Championship over Sam in their first “official” fight was icing on the cake. That she won due to Terry Silver bribing an official to not dock her a point for an illegal back-elbow shot turned that icing sour, and put her in a really interesting starting point for season 5.

5 – Terry Silver – The last time I saw Karate Kid Part 3 was a very long time ago, and all I remember about it was included in Terry’s joke with Kreese that he was “So coked out that he spent weeks tormenting a teenager.” So color me surprised at how interesting I found Terry this season.
He has more layers that Kreese, and his teaching are more devious as well. Using his wealth to ingratiate himself to Robby, and the rest of his Cobra Kai students, by loaning out his fancy car, and pimping out the dojo with state-of-the-art equipment and apparel was a great way to show how his methods were different from Kreese’s.
In fact, the expansion of Cobra Kai and cashing in on its licensing was a nice little bit of meta-commentary when you think about how many Cobra Kai, Miyagi-Do, and Eagle Fang shirts you’ve seen out there since the show premiered.
He was briefly put back in his place by Kreese hanging their experience in Vietnam over his head. But then, with the help of physically and emotionally devastated Stingray, Terry got Kreese locked up and booted out of his way.
Terry’s franchised version of Cobra Kai expanding across the Valley has made them a greater threat than they ever were before, and I am totally here for it.

4 – Kenny Payne – In a lot of ways, his arc in season 4 mirrored Miguel’s in season 1. New kid in town, ruthlessly bullied, decided to learn karate, begins to lean toward his worse instincts. But, since Miguel’s Sensei was Johnny Lawrence, he was able to make his way back to being a good guy. Kenny’s been taking lessons from John Kreese and Terry Silver, neither of whom have any interest at all in bettering themselves or their students. Robby’s mentorship could have been a guiding light, but it too was doomed due to Robby’s blindness to his own shortcomings as a mentor. With Kreese out of the way, and Robby removing himself as an influence, that leave Kenny with Terry as his Sensei, and that’s something we have not really seen yet. It should lead to an interesting ride next season.

3- Robby Keene – I always felt Robby was a bit of a weak spot in the show, often used as more of a plot device than a character. But he came into his own in season 4. Actively learning from Daniel, Kreese, and Terry and using those teaching to turn himself into the most well-rounded fighter in the Valley was a cool culmination of things.
But his story turned a bit more tragic when he took Kenny under his wing, and tried to give him the sort of mentor that he wished he’d had as a kid. Robby, however, was too poisoned with anger to teach Kenny to be anything other than just as angry as him. His fight with Kenny in the tournament served as a microcosm of that, as it started off friendly and with best intentions, but ended with Robby embarrassing Kenny and taking him down way harder than he had to. Robby realized this during his epic Boys’ Championship match with Eli, and it ended up costing him the trophy as the revelation shattered his focus.
Losing his second championship match in as many years, along with his remorse over teaching Kenny all the wrong lessons, sent him to his father for probably the first time in his life. I’ll be interested in seeing where Robby stands with Cobra Kai and with Johnny next season.

2 – Samantha LaRusso – Much like Robby, Sam was never a character who I had much interest in. But season 4 changes that, mainly in how they change her dynamic with Tory. She also openly rebels against her dad’s teachings, and picks up some useful karate techniques from Johnny. But her gradual transformation from victim to instigator was what made her arc so interesting.
She even went so far as to mentally and emotionally attack Tory at her job which – as with her brother Anthony – slides her into the classic rich-kid-bully role. And, to cap it off, she lost the championship match to Tory even though she felt that she had done everything right – including taking the “be true to yourself” lesson to heart. This, of course, is offset by the fact that she racks up a ton of bad karma by making Tory’s life miserable in the weeks leading up to the tournament. In a lot of ways, her current situation most closely reflects Johnny’s at the end of the first Karate Kid movie.

1 – Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz – This is kind of a cheat, since Eli’s current arc really began at the end of season 3 when he decided to turn on his Cobra Kai allies in the heat of battle. But even that wasn’t enough to make up for the shit he’d already put the Miyagi-Do students through while he was under Kreese’s influence. This led to him being a pariah to one dojo, and a traitor to the other. Robby, and Cobra Kai, jumped Eli and shaved off his signature mohawk.
This left Eli seemingly without any friends or allies. But a visit from his old pal Demetri got him back at Miyagi-Do and, eventually, his fellow students forgave him. This all led to his big moment in the All Valley Tournament. Miguel went out during their fight with an injury, which put Eli in the Championship Match with Robby.
I was 100% sure that Robby would win but their match goes to Sudden Death and they both go into full Jean Claude Van Damme “Whipping Off My Shirt For This” mode. After the best choreographed, and most epic, fight in the show’s history Eli wins the final Match Point and is crowned champion.
I love an underdog story and, coupled with the fact that Eli went through the same Cobra Kai/Miyagi-Do cross-training process as Robby without all the fanfare, made this a really cool surprise in the finale.

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The Matrix: Revisited

With The Matrix: Resurrections coming in December, I figured it was a good time to re-watch the original trilogy. I loved the first movie ever since it first came out back in 1999, and have re-watched it many times. But it’s probably been a good 10-15 years since I re-watched Reloaded or Revolutions. I always felt that the sequels being as sub-par as they were ended up hurting the first movie in retrospect. Trading in the fairly straightforward narrative with a bunch of pseudo-philosophy didn’t work very well for me at 20 years-old, but I figured it might work better for 40 year-old me. Here’s what I found.

The Matrix – Still an all-time sci-fi-action classic. We’ve seen the enhanced fight scene countless times since 1999 in action films, and especially in comic book adaptations. Sure, some of the fight choreography comes off as a little stilted and over-planned when held up against some of the extremely high level stuff that’s made it to the mainstream since then. Also, the lobby shoot-out featuring our heroes wearing long, black coats and killing without remorse hits differently after witnessing the tragedy and horror of mass shootings far too many times in this country. But everything in this movie else just works.

The story of a beautiful stranger leading you out of the doldrums of your underwhelming life. A wise mage teaching you to see the world in an exciting new way. The idea that you are the Chosen One who can save the world. Practically-speaking, most of the effects still hold up. Whatever CGI that was used was well-blended into everything else happening on-screen. And everything from Neo finally choosing to stand and fight Agent Smith – an unstoppable opponent – in the subway, through Neo himself becoming an even more unstoppable opponent in the end still resonates, and gets the adrenaline pumping. Neo flying into the sky after warning the machines that he was going to destroy the Matrix from the inside is still a hell of a mic drop.

The Matrix: Reloaded – This was actually quite a bit better than I’d remembered it being. Yes, the Wachowskis’ started laying in the whole philosophical free-will-vs-determinism more heavily, but not enough to really sidetrack things. The story still moves along ay a nice pace, and the big action sequences still work a lot more than they don’t. However, it’s when they don’t work that you start to see things stretching at the seams. The fight between Neo and the army of Agent Smiths starts out awesome but, about halfway through the fight, the CGI gets much heavier, and clumsier. Neo’s and the Smiths’ clothing, and movements look very Playstation 1 quality, while their faces take a detour into the Uncanny Valley. This is still a cool scene, but the bad CGI took me out of the moment more than anything in the first film did.

The big car chase is the other major set-piece, and it is also mostly awesome. The phasing ability of the Twins – the Merovingian’s main henchmen – are utilized very cleverly. And it was great to see Morpheus have his own chance to take out an Agent after taking a beating by Smith in the first film. This scene also did a good job of showing how Neo’s growing belief in himself, leads other to believe in themselves just as strongly. But then the bad CGI strikes again, most egregiously when the poorly-rendered Agent jumps – again in super slow motion – onto a car like it’s a trampoline, and launches himself onto the top of a semi-truck to fight Morpheus. One could lay the blame on the state of CGI in 2003, which was clearly nowhere near as advanced as it is in 2021, but its issues could have been hidden better by using it in a more darkened setting, and not in mega-slow-motion.

The bigger problem with Reloaded was introducing a whole new cast of character in Zion, and trying to make the audience care about them. Frankly, the real world is the least interesting aspect of this series, and we’ll discuss how that hurt Revolutions even more when we get there. Maybe they could have put Morpheus on the Council to makes us care more about that aspect of things, but then you’re benching your best character in hopes of having him elevate the weaker scenes. I’m sure there’s a draft of the script where Morpheus plays exactly that role, but it was probably better to end up where they did.

To my surprise, though, Reloaded worked more than it didn’t. Even the droning talking heads scene where the Architect drop a ton of exposition explaining that Neo is only the latest in a long line of “Chosen Ones” and that the machines have destroyed Zion several times already in the past before “resetting” the world was more interesting to me this time around. In part because Neo managing to fry the Squidies at the end was very effective in raising his power level to the point where he could conceivably take out the Source and win the war, and end the cycle, once and for all.

The Matrix: Revolutions – This is where is really all went wrong for me. The failures of Revolutions actually diminished my opinion of Reloaded without me even realizing it. I mentioned the real world being the least interesting thing about the previous film. The first major problem is that about 75% of Revolutions’ run time takes place in the real world. Also, the inhabitants of Zion still never moved the needle for me, even having been introduced to most of them in Reloaded. The Squidies’ attack on Zion, and the humans’ using mechs with giant machine guns is a pretty cool action scene that ends up hitting the same one-note for most of the third act, which makes it feel weirdly static after a couple of cuts back to it.

But the real deal-breaker for me is still the way things turn out for Neo and the Source. The Wachowskis made something of an attempt to humanize (for lack of a better term) the AI in the Matrix by introducing a family of two programs who apparently had a baby program together. It lasted for all of one undercooked scene, and did not manage to form any emotional connection between myself and the machines.

Neo goes to the Machine City to seek out the Source and end the war. Trinity travel with him, only to be killed when their hovercraft crashes – which is amongst the least cool ways to kill off an iconic character. Neo then reaches the Source and offers a truce. Neo offers to take out Smith, who has grown into a virus that the matrix cannot cleanse itself of, in-exchange for leaving Zion alone. The Source agrees, and Neo does his part by seemingly sacrificing himself to stop Smith and reset the Matrix. At that point, the Source calls off its attack on Zion. Yes, Zion was under siege at the time, so Neo had to do what he could to stop that. But, to me, this was like a person making a peace treaty with a bullet.

Aside from the five minutes spent with the Program Family, the machines’ whole reason for existing seems to be hunting, enslaving, and devouring humankind. My problem here is that I don’t see how there could ever be lasting peace between two parties when one party retains all of the power, and that party actually needs to consume the other party to ensure its continued survival. The machines wiped out Zion a number of times before and, aside from the one job that they needed Neo to do for them, they could still wipe out the rest of humankind at pretty much any time they feel it is necessary. The only thing keeping this from happening is the assurance of an Artificial Intelligence for whom, by-definition, morals and ethics do not exist.

I ended up feeling the same way this time as I did 15 years ago: That, when Neo came face-to-“face” with the Source, he should have used the new power he demonstrated at the end of Reloaded to destroy the Source. Presumably, this would lead to the collapse of Machine City, the widespread deactivation of the machines, the destruction of the matrix, and the only real chance humanity would have to escape enslavement and re-claim the world.

I’ll be watching The Matrix: Resurrections when it hits theaters in December. I’m hoping it can offer a better resolution than Revolutions did, but I’m not overly-confident that it will. Revolutions was bad and, sadly, it being bad defeats the purpose of watching Reloaded since they are essentially two parts of the same film. But that first movie, The Matrix, is still worth revisiting again and again. Maybe, if we’re lucky, Resurrections can live up to its title, and earn Reloaded and Revolutions a second chance at redemption.

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Malignant Is The Long Island Iced Tea Of Horror Films

I spent some time as a bartender about 20 years ago. It was something I trained for, and I even got a certification in Mixology. During the two-week course I learned many different formulas for many different cocktails, some more exacting than the others. One of the least exacting, if not THE least, was the Long Island Iced Tea.

The general rule was to pour a big glass of sweetened iced tea, and then just dump a bunch of whiskey, vodka, rum, gin, tequila, or whatever else you happened to have lying around into it. As long as the tea was sweet enough to dominate the flavor palate, it really didn’t matter what sort of brain-melting, toxic brew you added to the glass.

Every time I prepared this drink for a customer, or ordered it for myself, the goal was never anything more or less than to get super f’n drunk. By and large, the Long Island Iced Tea accomplished this goal even if the flavor sensors had no real idea what to make of the elixir that had just been inflicted upon them. The sensation I felt while watching Malignant on HBO Max was very similar.

I’m going to get into big time spoilers below, so consider this your warning.

Director James Wan is most well known for his part in creating the “Conjuring Universe” and played no small part in the wave of small-budget-but-legitimately-good horror films beginning when he directed the first Saw movie. Yes, he also direct a Fast And Furious film and Aquaman, but his calling card remains these smaller films. When one hears that Wan was making a move called Malignant, one can’t help but group them in with his other films The Conjuring and – more specifically – Insidious. But, much like the first 30 minutes of this film, that is merely a smokescreen. Malignant is the Long Island Iced Tea of horror films, because it is a mash-up of at least three different types of horror movies.

The first act of the film plays like a ghost story, which is well-tread ground for Wan and his creative team. There is a prologue at a spooky asylum not dissimilar to a haunted castle. There is our main character, Madison, whose abusive husband is murdered by a shadowy figure that moves in seemingly impossible ways. The lights in her house begin flickering once she returns from the hospital after her own injuries are healed. And she begins seeing specters out of the corner of her eye. All traditional ghost movie tropes.

But the second act changes things. As more people are murdered, and these people have a common link to the asylum in the prologue, we can clearly see a physical entity is brutally killing them. Madison begins receiving threatening phone calls from a mysterious person who calls himself “Gabriel” at which time you, as a viewer, may begin to understand that this was not a ghost story. My interpretation at the time was that Gabriel was a psychic projection that Madison was unwillingly harboring. And, so I begin watching the movie more as a Jekyll & Hyde story than a ghost story. At this point, my interest was piqued, as there had been far fewer Jekyll & Hyde adaptations than ghost movies in the past decade or two. But that also only lasts for another 30 or 40 minutes before Malignant takes on its Final Form.

Act Three begins with Madison being arrested for the murders when a mysterious woman falls through her ceiling while she’s being interviewed by police detectives. This surprises her as much as any them or her sister, Sydney, who has been doing her best to help Madison cope with all the craziness. Madison is taken into custody, and locked inside a holding cell with fifteen or twenty other people. While a few of them being to smack her around, Sydney makes her way to the creepy asylum to grab Madison’s old medical files. Turns out, Madison was born “Emily” and committed to the asylum by her teenaged mother – the mysterious woman who Gabriel/Emily took captive and fell through the ceiling. And this is where the viewer hits the bottom of his first Long Island Iced Tea, and orders up another.

Turns out that Gabriel is real, he was a tumor/conjoined twin attached to Madison/Emily’s back who shared a brain with her and made her do bad things. Gabriel/Emily also has some sort of psychic power that explains how he can speak through phones and radios, and blow up the lightbulbs in the house. But wait, there’s more!

As revealed from old VHS tapes that Sydney finds, the doctors from the prologue – who Gabriel was murdering – performed a surgery where they removed Gabriel’s underdeveloped arms, legs, torso, and most of his head from Emily’s body. This is shown in an extremely gruesome montage. The problem was that, due to them sharing a brain, there was just a little bit of Gabriel’s face remaining on the back of Emily’s head. So, naturally, the doctors pushed that little bit into Emily’s skull, and somehow that left Gabriel in a dormant state until Emily/Madison’s husband cracked a wall with her head at the beginning of the film.

“That’s pretty nuts,” you might be thinking. And you’d be right, but you’d be wrong to assume that it couldn’t possibly get even more nuts when they finally show us the full transformation – werewolf movie style! While taking a beating in the holding cell, Gabriel (or what little is physically left of him) physically emerges out of the back of Emily/Madison’s skull. Gabriel, now in-control of the body, then snaps all of his (their?) limbs backwards to fall in-line with his face (more or less). So, now everything he does is contorted and in-reverse, which makes for quite the discombobulated viewing experience. After that brief foray into Cronenbergian body horror, Malignant becomes a Terminator or Predator movie in the home stretch.

Gabriel somehow has super-strong-backward-murder-ninja skills. How, or why, is not discussed or frankly relevant once you’ve gone this far into this batsh*t insane movie. Much like after chugging that Long Island Iced Tea, you’re now fully along for the ride, and there’s not much you can do about it. Gabriel slaughters the twenty people in the holding cell, breaks out, and then murders the twenty cops left in the police station with fairly minimal effort. Now, when I say “slaughter” and “murder” I want to be clear that these killings are both balletic and bloody. Much of the stunt work was done by a contortionist, and that honestly makes me appreciate the film more than if it had all be CGI. But Gabriel is a whirling dervish of a murder machine, and the fight scenes in the holding cell and police station are amongst the most original and visceral that have come along in quite some time.

Gabriel is eventually stopped when he tries to kill Sydney and Emily/Madison’s mother and Emily/Madison re-takes control of her body. She then locks Gabriel away in her mind, presumably until he’s needed for the eventual sequel where he’ll probably be used as more of an anti-hero. Which, by the way, is a movie I would definitely sign up for. Although, in another never-explained revelation, Gabriel was apparently feeding on the life energy of Madison’s unborn children, causing her to have several miscarriages, so maybe “anti-hero” is not really in his future.

Like the morning after a Long Island Iced Tea bender, you may not know what the hell happened in Malignant, but you’ll somehow know that you had a fun time. The benefit that the film has over the bender, though, is that it will surely return you home, safe and sound. You’ll also probably have less of a hangover.

The post Malignant Is The Long Island Iced Tea Of Horror Films appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Unlucky 7: The Most Notable Times WWE Failed Bray Wyatt

Bray Wyatt (real name Windham Rotunda) was recently released from his WWE contract. This sort of thing happens all the time in the pro wrestling business, but not typically to a performer who holds the spot on the roster that Rotunda holds. Whether cheering or booing, the fan at-large never stopped responding to Rotunda. And, by all accounts, he sells a lot of merchandise, and makes WWE a lot of money.

This would lead one to believe that his release was due to less typical circumstances. One such circumstance is that Rotunda has always brought creative ideas to the table that are both complex, yet still clearly-executed. Vince McMahon has never been one to push a complex idea, and the only clear ones he cares about are his own. For the time-being, I’m going to theorize that Rotunda and WWE parted due to the ever-popular reason of creative differences.

But, the bigger question, is how did we get here? Rotunda has been over with the fans since his main roster debut back in 2013. For the most part, the audiences engagement with him never really faltered. Along with his creative storytelling, he is a very good in-ring performer with a strong, signature move set, and even stronger in-ring psychology. With that package, Rotunda should have have a decades-long run at, or near, the top of the card. The problem is that, no matter how great a package you present, McMahon needs to push that package the right way.

Frankly, Rotunda’s success seemed to come more in-spite of Vince McMahon than anything else. If you take a look back at the points in Rotunda’s WWE career when he was on the cusp of becoming a true main event superstar, you can can see a very clear pattern of Vince McMahon’s booking undercutting Rotunda’s momentum. The list I’m presenting below will certainly not tell the whole story, but I believe that it offers the highlights (lowlights?) of the problem. The list has been sorted in chronological order.

Bray Wyatt vs John Cena – WrestleMania 30 – April 2014 – The Wyatt Family, a cult-ish, backwoods crew who gained notoriety in the burgeoning NXT made their main roster debut in 2013 after that year’s WrestleMania. The fans were immediately interested in the Wyatt Family, and that was almost entirely due to Wyatt’s ability to spin a great promo, and perform like a badass in the ring. This was Bray Wyatt’s WrestleMania debut match. And it was against the man who had been at the top of the company for nearly a decade, but had one foot out the door and pointed toward Hollywood. A win here would have given Wyatt a massive rub, and set a new star rocketing toward a main event spot. Instead, Cena was booked to overcome Wyatt, and his Wyatt Family, as Cena had been booked to do to virtually every other previous challenge. The result here presented Wyatt himself as just another one of those challenges, thus sullying his credibility right out of the gate.

Bray Wyatt vs The Undertaker – WrestleMania 31 – March 2015 – Prior to what is popularly referred to as “WrestleMania Season” Wyatt has started calling himself “The New Face Of Fear” as a direct shot at the old face of fear. It seemed like a good angle, since that face was only showing itself on WWE programming two or three times per year by this point. The Undertaker’s legendary streak ended the year before in a loss of Brock Lesnar, and he was several years into the phase of his career where he really only had matches at WrestleMania to defend said streak. With the streak over, WWE was presented with a great opportunity to pass the baton, and give Wyatt the sort of win that could define his young career. With the streak over, the only real thing Undertaker had left to offer was his own career. A match between Taker and Wyatt at WrestleMania, where Wyatt could both retire the legend, and officially claim his New Face Of Fear mantle would have set Wyatt off on the path to great things. Instead, Taker wins, even though he was an aging part-timer who was no longer even defending a historic win streak.

The Wyatt Family Getting Clowned By The Rock & John Cena – WrestleMania 32 – April 2016 – You may notice a pattern forming here, but I promise there will be a few non-WrestleMania examples coming up soon. Though, the fact that there are so many examples of his at Mania makes the problem very clear. This was not even a match, other than The Rock beating Erik Rowan in an impromptu match that lasted all of seven seconds. The Rock was retired and, frankly, could have laid the smackdown on any undercard talent here while getting the same pop fro the crowd. Instead, they brought out the semi-retired John Cena, and the pair bounced Bray Wyatt, and his cohorts, around the ring for a few minutes. Hardly the best use of Bray Wyatt, and certainly not helpful to his credibility after losing matches in the two previous Manias.

Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton – WWE Championship Match – WrestleMania 33 – April 2017 – The match itself ended up being overbooked, and undercooked at the same time with silly moments provided by the WWE AV Club. Wyatt lost the match, and the title, after a single RKO in an era where no one stays down after one finishing move in big title matches. The bigger travesty in this case, was that they were so close to finally doing right by Wyatt.
Just two months prior, Wyatt outlasted John Cena, AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose, The Miz, and Baron Corbin in an Elimination Chamber match that concluded with Wyatt, himself, pinning both Styles and Cena. Wyatt was still nominally a heel, but the crowd showered him with a “You Deserve It!” chant that clearly had its origins in the many previous mishandlings of Wyatt’s booking.
On top of this, Wyatt had been involved in a months-long program where Randy Orton joined the Wyatt Family, despite Luke Harper’s (portrayed by the late Jon Huber) suspicions about Orton’s true motives. Wyatt sided with Harper over Orton, only to be betrayed by Orton just as Harper had expected. The stage was set for an epic Triple Threat Match between Wyatt, Orton, and Harper for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania.
Instead, McMahon had Harper booked out of the angle a few weeks before Mania, and then booked a terrible gimmick match that was won by Orton, who was already a multi-time world champion, and did not need this win nearly as much as Wyatt did. A few months later, Orton dropped the title to Jinder Mahal, who went on to have an extremely forgettable title reign himself, and Wyatt had to get back to the drawing board to build himself up again.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Seth Rollins – WWE Universal Title Match – Hell In The Cell – October 2019 – See? I told you we’d have some non-Mania examples coming up. Wyatt floated around the mid-card, and tag team division for a little while, before re-inventing himself with one of the most staggered character transformations in the history of pro wrestling. Leaving the cult leader persona behind, Wyatt became a creepy children’s show host who sometimes transformed into a horror movie-style monster called The Fiend. Again, he was working heel, but the fan were super into this new presentation. Only a few months after The Fiend’s in-ring debut at SummerSlam, he was given a Universal Title shot at the Hell In The Cell event.
One couldn’t imagine a more perfect scenario for the monstrous Fiend to claim his spot at the top. October. Halloween season. Hell In The Cell match. The Fiend took all of Rollins’ best shots, and kept coming after him. Until the end, when Rolling piled a bunch of steel chairs atop The Fiend, and then beat those chairs with a sledgehammer. No pinfall, no submission, a HitC match has no rules. But the referee stopped the match. Rollins retained, The Fiend attacked him after the match, and the crowd hated it all. This ending hurt Rollins as much as it did Wyatt to the extent that Rollins – who was running at an all-time high popularity – had to turn heel shortly afterward.
A few weeks later, at one of WWE’s ill-advised cash grab Crown Jewel Saudi Arabia shows, The Fiend did take the title off Rollins. But having the title change happen at such a controversial show, rather than in the perfectly-themed Hell In The Cell was another in the long line of booking mistakes for Wyatt.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Goldberg – WWE Universal Title Match – Crown Jewel – February 2020 – Speaking of the morally-problematic Saudi Arabia shows, The Fiend dropped the Universal Title at the very next one to 50-something year-old Goldberg, who happened to show up a few weeks earlier and demand a title match.
If there’s one thing Vince McMahon loves doing, it’s feeding his current stars to relics of past eras (see the first three entries on this list). Goldberg speared and jackhammered The Fiend a few times, and then pinned him to take the title in less than five minutes. The Fiend stood up afterward, and dusted himself off like it was no big thing. But he’d already lost the match, and the title, so the damage was done.
Goldberg dropped the belt to former Wyatt Family heavy Braun Strowman two months later at WrestleMania 36, while Wyatt actually had his WrestleMania highlight in a Firefly Fun House match against John Cena. This Wyatt-Cena match was a lot more fun than their previous Mania encounters as both Wyatt and Cena were committed to making something really self-referential and interesting.
Wyatt himself won his second Universal Title from Strowman at that year’s SummerSlam, but then lost it in a Triple Threat Match to Roman Reigns only one week later at the Payback event. Honestly, that could warrant its own entry on this list, but I’m trying to keep it to seven.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton – WrestleMania 37 – April 2021 – And, just like that, we’re back at WrestleMania, and we’re back with Randy Orton. It makes sense that this would be the final nail in the coffin of Wyatt’s WWE career, as McMahon had used Orton and Mania to kill Wyatt’s credibility at his previous career peak four-years prior. This time around, Wyatt and Orton had a much less interesting story. Orton set The Fiend on fire in the ring some months earlier, so Wyatt’s new acolyte Alexa Bliss became a thorn in Orton’s side, until The Fiend returned to lay out Orton, and make their WrestleMania match official.
With fans in the arena for the first time in over year, due to the Covid pandemic, and chanting for The Fiend, McMahon again books Wyatt to be pinned by Orton after a single RKO. Sure, The Fiend was confused by Alexa Bliss’ make-up or some such thing, but this was still terrible booking, and the crowd let them know it.
Wyatt would make one more brief appearance on the following night’s episode of RAW, before disappearing for several months until his release was announced.

So, what’s next? No on can tell for sure, but Rotunda is a highly imaginative person, and I would certainly be willing to check out whatever he does next – be it wrestling, writing, or filmmaking. My personal preference, though, would be to see him show up in AEW. The rival promotion has been putting on a better wrestling product than WWE in every way pretty much since its premiere, and it certainly seems to be a place where where more creative minds can thrive as well.

AEW has a growing list of performers that Vince McMahon couldn’t (or wouldn’t) figure out how to use properly, that they have presented like the superstars they always seemed like they could be. Cody Rhodes, Jon Moxley, Miro The Redeemer, Andrade, and Malakai Black, just to name a few. With word that former WWE super-duper-main-even-stars CM Punk and Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) are set to debut in AEW over the next few weeks, acquiring Rotunda on top of that would elevate AEW to a whole other level of relevancy amongst even the most jaded pro wrestling fans.

It’s exciting to look forward to whatever Windham Rotunda does next. But, looking back, it’s also pretty easy to see where things went wrong with WWE. Vince McMahon likely won’t learn any lessons from this, and one of the lessons Rotunda probably learned was that Vince never learns his lessons. Hopefully, whatever else Rotunda learned, will serve him well in what he decided to do next.

The post Unlucky 7: The Most Notable Times WWE Failed Bray Wyatt appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Where Are We Going In The Marvel Cinematic Universe (Multiverse) Phase (Fantastic) 4

It would appear that Kang (or Kangs) is/are the new Big Bad for MCU Phase 4. So, where do we go from here? Let’s take a look at what has officially been announced and try to piece together how Phase 4 will play out the challenge of Kang The Conqueror.

Disney+ Shows:
Below is the list of Disney+ shows, as it was released by Marvel Studios –

What If…? (Summer 2021)

Ms. Marvel (Fall 2021)

Hawkeye (Winter 2021)

Moon Knight (2022)

She-Hulk (2022)

Secret Invasion (2022)

Loki Season 2 (Late 2022?)

Ironheart (TBA)

Armor Wars (TBA)

Out of that list, Tom Hiddleston has said that What If…? will deal with the multiverse. But, it’s an anthology show, and will likely not be essential viewing for the Kang arc. Should be fun, though.

We can also assume that Loki season 2 will pick up where season 1 left off, which was with Kang’s conquest begun in-earnest. But, it would also just be an assumption that the whole season would be spent on that threat.

I believe the other shows, mainly featuring street-level, Earthbound heroes, will be following a different track than the one laid out by WandaVision and Loki. I think, perhaps, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier has set that other track to a new Avengers team that will culminate with the recently-announced Captain America 4. It makes sense that the MCU, now filling hours in movie theater as well as television, would start building in multiple different directions at the same time.

They may even build in a third direction, if they want to work towards a Young Avengers team. We’ve already seen a new, younger Black Widow in the Black Widow movie, Wiccan and Speed on WandaVision, and Kid Loki on Loki (complete with Gator Loki). Ms. Marvel and the new Hawkeye will be debuting on Disney+ later this year, not to mention they have announced an Ironheart show.

Movies:
Unlike Disney+ shows, I think the threat of Kang will be dealt with primarily in the movies. But there will be some notable exceptions.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (Fall 2021) – From what we’ve seen, this likely won’t deal too heavily with Kang. Considering the shuffling of schedules and production that occurred due to the pandemic, Shang-Chi was probably always intended as a standalone movie that now happens to be releasing after the Kang reveal.

Eternals (Fall 2021) – The only trailers we’ve gotten don’t tell us much about the actual plot. Though, it does seem to span hundreds – if not thousands – of years on its own, so I wouldn’t expect there to be too much room for Kang.

Spider-Man: No Way Homes (Winter 2021) – Everything we’ve heard about this one suggests that it deals with the multiverse, and multiple Spider-Men, so Kang will likely factor heavily into this. If not directly, then certainly as a catalyst.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (Early 2022) – There is a very strong, direct link from WandaVision to Loki to this movie. I expect this will be a place where we see Kang himself raising hell, while poor Stephen Strange tries very hard to clean up everyone else’s metaphysical messes.

Thor: Love And Thunder (Spring 2022) – We don’t know much about this, other than that we’ll see the Guardians Of The Galaxy (Thor’s new running buddies) and Jane Foster will wield Mjolnir. But, since Mjolnir was destroyed by Hela in Thor: Ragnarok, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we’ll be seeing a different universe’s Mjolnir. And possibly a different universe’s Jane Foster as well. I would say that means we get some of the Kang Thang here.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Summer 2022) – Due to the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman last year, this script has been re-written numerous times according to some cast members. The first Black Panther was mostly standalone, but Wakanda (or Wakandans) did play a big part in Infinity War and Endgame. At the end of the day, I have no idea whether or how this will involve Kang.

The Marvels (Fall 2022) – This is another one we don’t know much about, other than that the title was changed to involve Captain Marvel, Photon (not Monica Rambeau’s official superhero name yet in the MCU) and Ms. Marvel. Considering that Captain Marvel is one of the heaviest hitters they have, a time travelling supervillain may be the most realistic threat to her. I expect we’ll see a good bit of Kang in this one.

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (Early 2023) – This is the movie that Jonathan Majors was first announced for as Kang and, considering how much the Quantum Zone factored into the time travel exploits of Avengers: Endgame, this may well be the culmination of Kang’s arc as the primary antagonist. One would assume that, if this ends up being the climax, it will be used as a sort of Trojan Horse Avengers movie, like Captain America: Civil War was. Which would mean we’d be seeing a lot more heroes than just the ones in the title.
However, it might be a stretch to assume that the threat of Kang will wrap up before Loki season 2, and there’s a very good chance that Loki season 2 is not ready to roll out before the release of this film. But they have stated that season 2 starts filming in January 2022, so they might make it under the wire here.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3 (Spring 2023) – If Kang is finished as the Big Bad of Phase 4 in Quantumania, GOTG V.3 could well be its own thing, with the freedom to have some fun, and potentially send off one or more of the core characters. But, there is one big factor to consider when thinking about the end of Phase 4, and that’s…..

Fantastic 4 (Summer – or later – 2023) – This movie was announced, as was director Jon Watts, as part of Phase 4. But we’ve had no word yet on a script or a cast. Kang was originally introduced as an F4 villain, and Marvel Studios got the rights to him back when they re-acquired the rights to F4. In comics continuity, he is a descendent of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, so that all ties in nicely to whatever the end of Kang’s story arc might be. Also, if they don’t actually have a proper Avengers movie to cap off Phase 4, the next best thing would be to welcome the First Family of Marvel to the MCU, while actually making a good F4 movie for the first time. And, hey, Phase 4 capping with Fantastic 4 just seems poetic.

Blade and Captain America 4 – I believe these two movies will end up falling into the early stages of Phase 5.
I fully expect Kang to be the Big Bad of Phase 4 but, unlike Thanos, I don’t see Marvel Studios carrying over these supervillains for multiple Phases. Especially now that they have the rights back to more of their best bad guys (Mephisto, Dr. Doom, Magneto, Galactus, Annihilus).

I could be wrong about that, but I feel like – at this stage of the MCU’s evolution – they won’t expect their audience to have the same sort of patience. Also, Kang is a immediate and ongoing threat. While Thanos didn’t even really make his presence felt until six years into the MCU’s existence (2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy). He also didn’t truly become a clear and present danger until 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War.

This is all, of course, 100% speculation on my part. But, I’ve got to say, speculation is way too fun to just be a spectator sport. I guess we’ll see how right, or wrong, I am by 2023. Until then, I’m just going to enjoy watching every single one of these movies and shows.

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Taking A Nostalgic Stroll Down Fear Street

SPOILER WARNING – This blog post contains massive spoilers for Netflix’s Fear Street Trilogy (1994, 1978, 1666)

I was fifteen-years-old in 1994, and I loved horror movies. I still do, but back then I was still in the process of discovering the classics and mainstays. I believe I had already seen most of the Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, and Halloween films. While I was still a year or two away from going back further to things like Universal Horror classics, and Hammer Horror franchises. It was around this time (1996) that the first Scream movie took it upon itself to deconstruct elements from a very specific type of horror movie: The slasher flick.

It was actually Scream that made me go back and find the deeper catalogue of slasher flicks like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Prom Night, The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, Terror Train, The Funhouse, Madman, and the like. Scream then begat a era of similar movies that featured teenagers in some half-winking, slashery situations such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, Urban Legends and, of course, numerous Scream sequels. But it was only a few years after Scream when I lost interest in slasher flicks, and that was due in large part to the fact that I was no longer a teenager myself. As such, I wasn’t really finding the lives (or deaths) of the characters especially relatable. So, I went off and expanded my horror movie palate in different directions.

But Netflix was very clever in their approach to casting out the widest possible net for their Fear Street Trilogy. Yes, the core characters are teenagers in-peril. But they are teenagers in the year 1994, and then in the year 1978, and then way back in 1666. Much like Netflix’s other retro hit Stranger Things before it, Fear Street ropes in viewers from my generation with nostalgia, while also appealing to the current crop of teenage viewers with teenage character who aren’t so very different than they are – even with 20+ years of history between them. However, unlike Stranger Things, Fear Street is very much R-Rated horror. Fortunately, for teenagers of today, no one is carding them on the way into the theater (give or take a Parental Lock Password). Personally, having been a teenager in the 90’s, while also watching slasher films of the 80’s and 70’s, Fear Street managed to double-hook me in.

But here’s where things get more interesting – The first entry, Fear Street: 1994, opens with a famous young actress being murdered in a mall by a masked killer. Which was very Scream of them. But, rather than playing the long game of “who is the killer and when will they strike next” the killer is immediately unmasked and shot by the local sheriff. So, Scream basically plays out in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Through the rest of FS: 1994, more killer are revealed. And these killers are very much supernatural in-nature. This first film lays out some details about a supposed curse over the town of Shadyside placed on it by a witch named Sarah Fier, wherein a person is possessed every decade or so, and goes on a killing spree. We are introduced some previous killers with effectively creepy character designs who were possessed in prior decades, as they rise from their graves. More specifically – they rise from a giant, gooey, black heart that resides in a cave beneath the town to kill anyone who sees a vision of Sarah Fier. In this case, the unfortunate target is Sam, who had the lousy luck to bleed in the wrong place, which triggered a connection to Sarah Fier.

The evil is seemingly defeated by the end of FS: 1994, at the very gory cost of the primary heroines’ friends’ lives. But then there’s a hook at the end: Sam becomes possessed in much the same way as the killer from the beginning of the movie, leaving her girlfriend Deena, and Deena’s brother Henry, to try and save her soul. It’s a cliffhanger much like you’d have seen in almost every Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, or any other slasher franchise. Happily, I only had to wait for a week – rather than a year or two – to see the next installment.

This was another part of the brilliance of Netflix’s release strategy. The same sort of near-instant gratification they offer by dropping entire seasons of TV shows at one time is emulated, only with movies. The story arc of Deena, the possessed Sam, and Henry actually forms a framing device around the next two movies. Yet another clever trick used by Writer/Director Leigh Janiak, and her creative team, to ensure viewers stay invested through all three movies.

Fear Street: 1978 begins in 1994, with our protagonists tracking down Ziggy, who was the lone survivor of the previous Shadyside massacre at Camp Nightwing back in 1978. This then launches us back to the year 1978, where we see how that all played out. Ziggy, the local “weird girl” formed a very sweet bond on the last day of camp with popular boy (and future sheriff) Nick Goode just before all hell broke loose, ending with Ziggy’s sister (and many other campers and counselors) being slaughtered by another counselor after he is possessed.

FS: 1978 might be my favorite of the three films, since it doesn’t really need to do the heavy expositional lifting of FS: 1994 or handle the job of wrapping everything up like FS: 1666. It’s honestly the most straightforward installment, and it has the emotional advantage of offering a tragic ending of Ziggy watching her sister being murdered, while her sister watches Ziggy being stabbed and believing that she failed to save her. But Ziggy does survive. Well, technically, she’s brought back to life by Nick Goode performing CPR.

But that brings us back to 1994, where Deena and Henry ask a grown-up Ziggy where to find Sarah Fier’s severed hand. They had found Fier’s body back in FS: 1994 but, according to the legend, they needed to bury the hand with the body to end the curse. So, they retrieve the hand, and Deena goes to bury it with the body. But, much like Sam before her, Deena gets a nosebleed from being too close to Fier’s remains. Unlike Sam, Deena’s mind is actually swept all the way back to 1666, when the curse is said to have begun.

Fear Street: 1666 actually only spends about half of its runtime in 1666, where Deena sees the town as it was when it was still just a colonial village. The kicker is that she’s seeing it all through Sarah Fier’s eyes. The time spent is 1666 moves quickly to the point where horrors are unleashed upon the village due to someone’s deal with the devil. The films uses the cast from the previous two installments to fill out the roles of the villagers. In an ironic twist, the actors who play characters that survived the previous films are killed, while the actors who play characters killed in the previous films survive. It caps of with the first possessed killer slaughtering a chapel full of children, and cutting out their eyes (as well as his own) before he is killed by Sheriff Goode’s ancestor Solomon.

This being 1666, a witch hunt is promptly launched. Sarah and her secret beloved Hannah are accused by the town asshole after he was spurned by Hannah. Hannah is captured, but Sarah makes a run for it. She hides out at Solomon Goode’s home, as he’s always been kind to her, only to discover that Solomon is the one who cast a curse on the village in order to attain power. Sarah is recaptured by the lynch mob, and hanged from a tree after she promises Solomon that she will expose his evils one day. That day, as it turns out happens in 1994.

When we get back to 1994, Deena shares her new knowledge with Ziggy and Henry, that the Goode family has continued this deal with the devil for more than 300 years. Every decade or so, the eldest son of the family allows a townsperson to become possessed, and go on a killing spree. This casts every interaction between Ziggy and Nick from FS: 1978 into a very interesting new light. If there’s one complaint that I have about the Fear Street Trilogy, it’s that the emotional payoff between the adult version of Ziggy and Nick is never really explored. At any rate, the key to ending the curse is to kill Sheriff Goode. Now, Nick’s brother is the mayor of neighboring Sunnyvale, so killing Nick doesn’t really end the bloodline. But, considering Nick is the one who cast the curse in both 1978 and 1994, I guess that offers as much explanation as we’re going to get.

In the end, we’re brought back to the mall, where the undead previous killers attack again. But our heroes manage to survive using some interesting tricks they picked up in FS: 1994. Deena chases Sheriff Goode into the tunnels beneath the mall, which are the same tunnels that were formed way back when Solomon first made the deal, and cast the curse. A chase ensues that ends with Deena stabbing Sheriff Good through the eye, thus killing him and ending the curse. The giant, gooey, black heart in the caves shrinks down to nothing. The killers in the mall disintegrate. And Sam is freed from the possession.

If we hadn’t been given a proper conclusion at the end of this trilogy, I’m sure my opinion would have soured on it. Happily, that was not the case. I’ve never read any Fear Street books, or frankly any R.L. Stine at all. By the time those came along, I was already reading the likes of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dean Koontz. I’m sure this means that I missed some Easter Eggs throughout. But it also means that I can recommend the Netflix Fear Street Trilogy to anyone, even if they are also unfamiliar with the source material.

All the installments are highly entertaining, with barely an ounce of fat on them. So check them out now or, perhaps even better, add them to your list for Halloween season viewing. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a new teen slasher flick, and I’m very happy to have now found three of them. Fifteen-year-old me would absolutely approve.

The post Taking A Nostalgic Stroll Down Fear Street appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

The Evolution Of Loki

Hello Again. It’s been a while since I’d posted here, but that’s because I was finishing up the fourth novel in my Venator Series (coming soon), and also posting a new story on Kindle Vella (available now).

But I’m back now, and this blog will contain major spoilers from season one of the Loki Disney+ series. I’m not going to go too deep on the show itself, as many writers have already done a better job than I could. But I do want to examine the core arc of the show, and of the titular character.

Before I get into the details, I want to say that I kind of loved Loki season one. I would probably rank the MCU Disney+ shows as Loki, WandaVision, and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. Before watching any of the shows, I would have thought that list would be the exact opposite. But WandaVision and Loki took fresh, new angles that I had not really seen in the MCU before. I found that to be a much more interesting watch than Falcon & Winter Soldier, which I also liked, but seemed more like business-as-usual.

At any rate, here’s your last spoiler warning for Loki.

On its broadest level, Loki was about getting the character to a point where he would have been had he not gotten killed by Thanos in Infinity War in a very underwhelming fashion. Since this Loki jumped timelines directly from the invasion of New York at the end of the first Avengers movie, that seemed to be a lot to ask. But taking him into custody in the Time Variance Authority (TVA) where his powers did not work, and showing him a greatest hits reel of “his” life after 2012 got Loki to a state where he was ready to move forward.

At its heart, the show was about allowing Loki to attain a level of self-awareness that then, in-turn, inspired him to become a better man (better god?). To the show’s credit, it managed to do just that in a fairly brief six-episode season. Loki was certainly not able to better himself without a lot of help along the way. Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie was Loki’s primary companion (and I mean that is a very Doctor Who sense, as that was clearly a large influence here). Her Loki variant had been taken by the TVA as a little girl, spent her entire life on the run, and now had vengeance as her only true compass. She never really got to live a life, while Loki lived one for well over a thousand years. Which made him understand just how selfish, and unwarranted his thirst for power at all costs was.

Owen Wilson’s Moebius made no pretensions about being able to see right through Loki’s usual predilections, which helped Loki see them more clearly himself. Nothing makes it easier to embarrassingly smell your own bullshit than someone calling you out on it without a second of doubt. But Loki came to appreciate Moebius’ candor, and he became the only real friend Loki had probably ever made for himself.

In the void at the end of time, after being pruned and attempted to be fed to a ravenous creature named Alioth, Loki ran into a number of other variants of himself. There was Richard E. Grant’s older, Classic Loki, who escaped Thanos’ clutches, and lived in isolation for hundreds of years, wishing only to escape the vicious cycle of his life. Jack Veal’s Kid Loki was a reflection of what Loki may been been like had he actually succeeded in killing his brother, Thor. That this act was committed by a child who demonstrated more sorrow than any sort of sense of accomplishment, was apt for a childish grudge that Loki had long harbored. And there was Gator Loki, who mainly served as a way to chop down the last of Loki’s ego, when he saw that – in another universe – he was literally nothing more than a reptile. An awesome reptile, but a reptile nonetheless.

True rock bottom came for Loki when Boastful Loki betrayed those who seemed to be his friends in order to be given a throne, which was nothing more than a chair in a broken down bowling alley located in a post-apocalyptic dystopian feeding ground for a giant smoke monster. And then Boastful Loki was promptly betrayed by President Loki (perhaps the closest reflection of our Loki as he was at the start of the series), who was then betrayed by all the other Lokis in his posse. The capper coming when Gator Loki bit off President Loki’s hand, the latter of whom emitted a high-pitched shriek as Gator, Classic, Kid, and Primary Loki made their escape.

A reunion with Sylvie and Moebius, who had also been pruned, set off the endgame. Classic Loki, Kid Loki, and Gator Loki made their way off, as Moebius returned to the TVA to bring it down. That left Loki and Sylvie to work together to get past Alioth, and reach the castle beyond him where the true leader of the TVA resided. Classic Loki returned to save Loki and Sylvie by distracting Alioth with a massive illusion of the kingdom of Asgard. His sacrifice gave the others enough time to enchant Alioth, and make it to their final destination.

Their final destination was THE final destination as it was, literally, the end of time. Inside the castle the delightful, if somewhat sinister, living cartoon Miss Minutes offered Loki and Sylvie a deal, which they promptly turned down. Once they were past Miss Minutes, they encountered the half-mad and ancient “He Who Remains” (HWR) who is never referred to by any other name but is played by Jonathan Majors, who was already announced as playing Kang The Conqueror. What followed was an honest description of how the TVA came to be, and what its true purpose is.

HWR, and his variants in countless universes, were scientists who each discovered the multiverse in their own way. Many were interested in understanding how the multiverse, and multiple timelines, came to be. But many others were determined to conquer all the universes. This lead to a massive, multiversal war that – we are told – nearly destroyed every universe. But HWR managed to weaponize Alioth, and defeat all of his variants. He then created the TVA to ensure that another Kang variant (or similar threat) would not again rise to threaten the multiverse. The cost of his chosen method is paid in the sacrifice of free will, and the destruction of countless universes and those living therein.

But HWR is tired. And, while he at-first appeared to have omniscient knowledge of all that ever was, or will be, even he reached a point where he does not know what happens next. It is in this moment that he offered Loki and Sylvie another choice: Kill him, and allow the TVA to crumble, or take over the TVA and run it as they see fit. The catch is that, if they choose to kill HWR, there will be nothing stopping his more malevolent variants from rising to resume their conquest of the multiverse.

Loki, who has been changed by his recent experiences, somehow manages to be the most level head in the room. He suggests taking over the TVA, and figuring the rest out later. Sylvie, who has been unable to move past her need for revenge and her inability to trust others, believes the Loki simply wants another throne. They fight, Loki attempts to explain his true intentions, but he is ultimately lured into a trap with a kiss, and pushed through a portal back to the TVA.

Sylvie then fulfills her lifelong goal, and kills HWR. Though HWR’s dying words of “See you soon” come to fruition almost immediately. Back at the TVA, Loki tried to alert Moebius and some other allies of the impending apocalyptic threat. But they don’t even remember who Loki is, and Loki then turns to see a massive statue of Kang The Conqueror looming over the TVA.

Loki season two was officially announced in a mid-credits tease, and there are some interesting questions to answer, aside from the obvious “How screwed is the multiverse with evil Kang variants unleashed?” We have Sylvie left alone in a castle at the end of time, with no idea of what comes next after claiming her vengeance. I didn’t mention the TVA red tape big wig Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) fleeing the scene through a portal in search of (what one has to assume) a Kang variant who can get her back high up on the food chain. And we have a desperate Loki and an oblivious Moebius at the TVA, in ground zero of Kang’s kingdom.

But, putting away any future talk for the moment, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is now the most fully-realized, and complex version of the character we’ve seen since he first appeared in 2011’s Thor. The show looked great, had a great, sci-fi, synthy score, was strongly written, and wonderfully directed. Much like it was with WandaVision and Thor: Ragnarok before it, the Loki series has taken a character who many MCU fans felt had run his or her course, and made that character more interesting than they ever were before. It’s a new trick for the MCU in a bag full of them, and I cannot wait to see what happens next.

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